Imbolc
What is the quality of this time of year?
It’s still so dark. But something is moving.
We’ve done our time in the deepest winter stillness.
And now a flame is conceived in the womb of night.
Small, precious promise, newly come. Again.
Its delicate, the promise. It’s so quiet you might not notice it – you might not notice it until closer to Ostara – the Spring equinox – when you can see the full greening of spring. But for now it is just gestating, the new year is enwombed, but it has begun.
What is the quality of this?
Seeing a glimpse of dawn after a long dark night of waiting.
This is the Goddess awakening, the life-giver returning. She rises only out of the pure dark.
You can’t have the awakening without the long sleep, without endurance of darkness, and nothing(ness). So this is the festival of beginnings. The lighting of the fire of creativity, poetry & gentle mothering.
Holding this infant year is our task now, with honouring & trust that what it will become is whole (holy). Hold it with care, despite the not-knowing.
You can’t know what it might become – that is the invitation of mothering. Can you watch, wait, guide but not constrain? Allow the blooming of a mysterious flower of which there has never been the like? You are the mother to all your visions, creations, dreams & realities. How will you mother them?
In the Five Element system, Winter is Water. Flowing down down down to the nadir. Now, a flicker of a turning can be felt as a sprout, seeded down below starts to push back up. This is a hint of the Wood element phase, which will rise up, eventually proliferate, split and stalk into a thousand unpredictable forms of life and cover us in glorious greenery.
But, for now, the sprout is just bursting from its seed form, with a thought of what could be. Time to listen carefully, love watchfully. You are both the mother and the child.