Imbolc Blessings with St. Brigid and the Angels
As I write to you I am gazing out my window at a blanket of brilliantly glittering snow shining in the sunlight. The temperature outside is so cold that nearly everything I can see is frozen. All except for the flickering tails of the little grey squirrels who chase each other through the pine trees. They spiral up the tree trunks as quick as lightening and disappear. A little black and white chickadee perches on the branch just beside my window and looks about curiously.
And suddenly I am in a state of wonder. How miraculously awesome is God that a world so bitterly frozen might yet be so beautiful, and home to such delicate, resilient little creatures? The Winter is truly an inspiring time to witness the miracle of creation. It is as if the world is taking a giant, glacial ice bath, and our spirits are bathing with it. To meditate and open one’s senses to the frozen world is to open oneself to deep stillness of spirit.
Today is Imbolc, the Celtic celebration of the Mid-Winter—the day halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Imbolc is a time for purification, hope, and new life. Traditionally, the Celtic pagans celebrated the Goddess, Brigid (later known as St. Brigid when the Catholic Church adopted her story into its narrative). Brigid was the goddess of the hearth and the sacred, holy fires of life. Early Pagan priestesses devoted to Brigid spent their days tending to the sacred fires that were always lit in Brigid’s honor. These fires represented the life-giving powers of nature as if a little ray of the Sun might be captured in one’s own hearth to light the way through the cold of winter. Fire is both creative in its ability to shed warmth and light, and destructive in its ability to burn away the old, dead and dry things.
We all have such a holy fire within us. The presence of Source is a flame of life-giving, inspiring, and purifying warmth in the hearts of all beings. The purity of Source energy returns all of the old, finished cycles of our lives back into the pure light from which they came. In their places, the light gives us new hopes, inspirations, and seeds to plant.
As Imbolc brings the dawn of a new cycle in nature, ask your spirit what it is ready to give up to the purifying holy fires? What old energies, thought-patterns, activities, or objects are you ready to release? Take steps to cleanse your life today. Call upon Brigid to help you purify your heart and life, and the Angels to guide you in every step it takes to do so.
According to the Angels…
The winter is a time in which life is sleeping deep in the Earth. The stillness we can experience at this time of year is aided on by the quietly sleeping rhythms of nature. We are now just beginning to feel the first tingles of life stirring from beneath the ground as the sun returns, like the fluttering of awareness from deep within a dream. Just as we rise in the morning, clean and new in our consciousness after having bathed in spirit during our sleep, we will rise in the Spring, renewed and in touch with all the potential the world is ready to give.
Co-create with these cycles, beloved. Affirm your intentions in your heart, and set your dreams ablaze in the spirit-plane. Heaven and Earth will align with your intentions to help you build and grow according to your soul’s highest purpose. Purification is a crucial force in this dance of co-creation. Let purity weave your February days with light, peace, and self-discovery.