| Imbolc By: Ana Fernandes Growing up, February 2nd usually meant two things to me - Groundhog's day history lessons in school (growing up in Pennsylvania, there was a bit more focus on old Punxitawny Phil) and my mother's birthday. Even with that little personal holiday to shake us out of January, February seemed to be a seasonal No Man's Land, stretching on longer than seemingly possible through the cold, grey winter. It all dragged together through the slush as we sat listlessly by our windows, waiting for the first signs of spring. Years later, I found myself not only in a completely different climate - which still did little to improve the month's disposition, so far as I was concerned - but with a different group of people, a different way of looking at the seasons. A time of year that had previously gone by almost completely unnoticed was suddenly to be seen as a time for celebration and rejoicing. My Pennsylvania sensibilities were most befuddled by these sentiments. How could anyone possibly find something worth celebrating in the frosty dregs of winter? I only recently came to understand what it is that is truly being celebrated this time of year. Everyone speaks of the Goddess's reawakening, tending to the young Sun King who was reborn at Yule, and how it marks the first stirrings of all those ideas just coming to form in the earth beneath the snow. All the seed metaphors went against my idea of the growing seasons, since the ground is almost always still frozen down deep at the time of Imbolc up in the northern climes, but I had a sudden moment of clarity where I realized that even if everything around us is still covered with that layer of frost, we're mentally preparing for Spring. The time spent grousing over the entire month of February is the prelude to the rest of our mental thaw. We spend the deepest parts of winter turned inward, focusing on introspection and making plans for all those things we need to do for the coming year. Mentally, we create the seeds of ideas, and Imbolc marks the time when those ideas can begin to grow. Even if, externally, the environment doesn't seem to have changed, Imbolc is the turning point, and we begin shedding the layers we have accumulated in expectation of the warmer season. Excitement begins to build, for the stirrings of the Goddess are the promise that we will have the opportunity to put all our plans into action. As I sit here rolling all this over in my head, I find it exceedingly appropriate that the revelation came to me the night of the Solstice. What better time for such a stunningly new outlook regarding a Sabbat of growth and progress than the one which gives birth to the ideas behind it? I'm officially ready to trudge through the rest of winter in order to meet the spring. The lotus rests beneath, waiting for its chance to break upward into our waking world. |
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