Honouring Imbolc 2025

The Fires of St Brigid's Day (and a...celestial whale?)

The ancient fire festival of Imbolc in Britain spans 1-2 February, celebrating the arrival of the goddess Brigid, the harbinger of the coming of spring. Brigid means ‘Exalted One’. Astronomically, Imbolc marks the 1/2 way point between the winter solstice (Yule) and the spring equinox (Beltane.)

Brigid From The Sacred Circle Tarot

February comes from the Latin ‘Februarius’, referring to Februa, a Roman festival of ritual purification. Below, the Roman spa in Bath, UK.

Later known as Candlemas, the northern English scholar monk, saint Bede, wrote that February was celebrated as “the month of cakes,” when ritual offerings of savoury cakes and loaves of bread were made to ensure a good year’s harvest. The Anglo-Saxons called February “Sōlmōnath” the month of mud, from sōl, the Old English word for wet sand or mud, referring to the weather this time of year, and the effects of rain and snow melt. The Solway Firth between North-West England and South-West Scotland is actually the massive tidal ‘Mud way’, rather than the glamorous ‘Sun way.’

But the fire festival of Imbolc goes back further, to a more ancient celebration in Gaelic Britain, including Ireland, Scotland, swathes of Northern England and the Isle of Man. ‘Imbolc’ is thought to mean ‘in the belly’ When we think of the new lamb, we think of Aries, not Aquarius. Imbolc is not the lamb but the ewe in lamb. Brigid was the protector of women in childbirth, as well as the safe birthing of precious livestock, a goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, The Tribe of the Gods, also known as the Fae.

“The Tuatha de Danaan, the people of the (mother) goddess Danu in Celtic mythology; a race inhabiting Ireland before the arrival of the Milesians (the ancestors of the modern Irish). They were said to have been skilled in magic, and the earliest reference to them relates that, after they were banished from heaven because of their knowledge, they descended on Ireland in a cloud of mist. They were thought to have disappeared into the hills when overcome by the Milesians.

The Leabhar Gabhála (Book of Invasions), a fictitious history of Ireland from the earliest times, treats them as an actual people, and they were seen as such by native historians up to the 17th century. Later they were reclassified as a mythical people, associated with the fairies still said to inhabit the Irish landscape. These fairies or Fae are a serious business should we encounter them. It would be better for us if we did not.

Brigid was a triple goddess of healers, poets and smiths. She might visit you at Imbolc. People would make a bed for her, and leave food and drink and items of clothing outside, petitioning her to protect their homes and livestock. A gift for a gift is a must in dealings with all and any gods. Every breath we take exchanges oxygen for carbon dioxide. Nothing is for free.

A Brigid’s cross is made from rushes, representing the wheel of the seasons. The cross was placed in the doorway of the home, invoking the protection of the goddess.

There was feasting and visits to sacred wells, and performances of ritual divination. Bad weather on this day was counted as good news. If the Cailleach - the Divine Crone -knew the worst of winter was not yet over, she would conjure good weather at Imbolc to gather more firewood to top up her stores. If it rained, the Cailleach wasn’t worried about running out of firewood. She had turned over and gone back to sleep, and the worst was surely over.

The weather here today and yesterday has been cold and clear. February shall show what the Cailleach knows.

Via Pinterest

‘Dark sacred night’… Yes. But when the dark goes on too long, we shout back at the dark, fighting back with action, assertion, with the Promethean gift of fire.

Prescience is not omniscience. A meaningful prediction or forecast, if it is to be timely and specific, requires a context or a question, unless it arrives in a form such as a vision. But at the very least, Astrology and Tarot facilitate time specific observations, seeing patterns, making correlations.

Speaking in the broadest terms then, the fires of Imbolc in 2025 are up against greatest powers of Air and Water, Sun and Pluto in Aquarius. And with Venus in Pisces conjunct Neptune in Pisces, the sign of the Twelfth House, and with the north lunar node, a significator of our collective direction of travel, now also in Pisces, we are being forcibly confronted with all that is unresolved or unresolvable. All that is unknown or unknowable. All that is beyond the limits of our direct personal agency. The Hanged Man is the tarot card correlating with the zodiac Pisces, or Pisces transits and aspects.

Smith Waite Tarot

The Hanged Man is not about defeat. Nor is death a question of defeat. There is a parallel here with Nordic myth. Odin hung upside down nine days and nights on Yggdrasil, the World Tree, entering the state by which he could seize upon the knowledge of the Runes. The price was terrible. It cost him an eye, exacted by the giant Mimir. In return he gained the knowledge of everything, including the knowledge of his own destruction to come, at Ragnarok.

Live and learn, we say. Sadder but wiser as we say. The price of knowledge is the burden of that knowledge.

“Can thou drawn forth Leviathan with a hook? Or press down his tongue with a cord? Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? ³Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee? ⁴Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?”-Book of Job 41:1

Photo by Seiji Seiji on Unsplash

It reflects nothing on us that we cannot negotiate with a Leviathan. But today we have Venus in Pisces is in her higher octave, divinely inspired, beautiful, benevolent, gracious, tender, poetic, nostalgic, and Neptune in Pisces could not dive deeper. Insights. Psychic experiences. The power of memory to haunt. Confusion. Illusion. Delusion. Deception. Misdirection. Misinformation. Blurring of boundaries. Ghosts, even.

This from Shakespeare and Henry 1V:-

Glendower:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

Glendower:
Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command
The devil

Hotspur:
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil—
By telling the truth. Tell truth and shame the devil.

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

Is the devil ashamed, I wonder, because we just told the truth, which takes guts, where he is Mr Liar-Liar Chicken-Shit Pants-on-Fire, or because he is so appalled that whatever it is that we did, we just went and out-did him?

I have gone off on a bit of a tangent. But this feels like where we are right now, on the broadest, most general collective level. Mars in Cancer is still retrograde, such that we may have been intensely preoccupied in recent past weeks with matters attached to Mother, Home and Homeland, so that quite apart from the most recent and ongoing monumental events and terrible tragedies on the world stage, we may indeed be feeling as if we are wading through mud, this Sōlmōnath. And an Aquarian blast of cold air turns this into frozen mud. Cheers!

The Hanged Man

The Hanged Man is the major arcana card corresponding with Pisces. The story of this card is about a time of acceptance, a time of surrender and even sacrifice. We withdraw. We watch, we wait, we go deeply within, we consider a new angle, abstain from reaction, in readiness for a re-launch in the born-again season of the Ram, Aries.

But a liminal Window is about to shatter

Even the bottomless Pisces hits its limits. We could picture these as the continental shelves. This recent mood, this numinous, end of era zeitgeist, this tempo will change before long.

-Jupiter is about to go direct again February 4, after a 4 month retrograde. The tempo picks up. Action stations!

-Venus goes into Aries February 4, releasing a cosmic primadonna

-Mars will go direct in 15 degrees, Cancer 23 February

-Neptune will move into Aries from March 30, Fire and Water, STEAMING off and on until 2039.

This has been, still is, is a liminal time. A time of signing off. A time of strangeness. New insights. Psychic experiences. Ghosts, even. Confusion. Illusion. Delusion. Deception. Misdirection. Misinformation. Blurring of boundaries.. From the depths of Pisces this Imbolc, we seek, and perhaps we will find new words, new tunes, new answers.

Thank you for reading.

Till next time.

Imbolc Fire Festival, Marsden