Natalie Ross on Folklore & Rituals of Imbolc, a Celtic Holiday on the Wheel of the Year REPLAY

 
 
 

In this episode replay, I, Natalie Ross, Earth Speak co-founder, and podcast Hostess, share about the traditions around the Celtic holiday called Imbolc that signifies the beginning of spring. My ancestral lineages are Celtic and Nordic. What I’m sharing is part of my investigations into my own ancestral roots to discover who are the people in my lineages who were Indigenous to a land, and what were their beliefs and customs. If you enjoy this, please let us know!

I’ll also share several ways you can celebrate Imbolc in your own practices and rituals.

If you’re wanting to connect more with others who practice Earth magic, then join us in the Earth Speak Collective membership. We’re doing community rituals and co-creating a culture of Earth-honoring and magical connection. You can join the Collective at https://www.earthspeak.love/collective.

We would LOVE to see how you choose to celebrate Imbolc. Please tag us @earthspeak in your Imbolc posts on Instagram, so we can celebrate with you.

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CELTIC CONTEXT

While the Celts lived across mainland Europe, in this episode I’m sharing specifically about the culture of Celtic people who lived in what we now call England, Ireland, and Scotland. 

Some of what I share is not directly attributable to the ancient Celtic people but is thought to have evolved from ancient Celtic roots.

I am able to find pronunciations for some Gaelic words, but there are many that elude me. So if you speak Gaelic, please forgive my mispronunciations - and hey, reach out to me because I’d love to learn more.

Celtic people celebrated 4 main festivals, called quarter days, and 4 secondary festivals called cross-quarter days.

The Celtic people, however, recognized two seasons, the warm season of light and work, called sam, which began around May 1st at Beltane, and the cold season of dark and rest, called gam, which began around November 1 at Samhain.

The cold season would bring freezing temperatures, and the warm growing season would bring lush green with growth, provided there wasn't a drought.

The warm season and cold season were split into two parts each, you can think of these as mini-seasons. February 1st marked Imbolc, which is the beginning of spring, and August 1st marked Lugnasad, which is the harvest season and is the beginning of autumn.

These four days that marked the seasons and mini-seasons are the quarter festival days on the Wheel of the Year. These days are also sometimes called fire festivals or feast days, and they are:

  • Samhain - Nov 1

  • Imbolc - Feb 1

  • Beltane - May 1

  • Lugnasad - Aug 1

Life was centered around tending to agricultural crops and livestock, with the quarter days falling on important points in the seasons for specific things to happen within those agricultural cycles.

These days were also seen as liminal times where the veils between the mundane world and the Otherworld were thin. 

***

The Celtic people didn’t write. They passed down their culture through oral traditions, so much of what we know about them has been either passed down through the generations or was written down by Roman and later Christian colonizers or is known through archaeological evidence.

Even so, much of what was written was lost over centuries of invasions first by Vikings, then by the Normans, and then the English. 

Until quite recently speaking the old Celtic languages, such as Gaelic and Welsh, and practicing many old traditions were outlawed.

Even today systemic oppression casts shadows of discrimination against people who come from certain places, religions, or practices, such as can be seen in anti-Irish sentiments.

All was not lost, however. 

While the Christian church did much to destroy the Earth-connected Pagan cultures of the Celtic people, many of the practices of the Celtic people were so strongly tied to the agricultural cycle, that the church couldn’t do away with them. 

The church turned gods and goddesses into saints and put a Christian angle on the practices and festivals, essentially assimilating Pagan practices into Christian ideologies. So, if you dig a little deeper beneath the surface of Celtic Christianity, you’ll often find a pagan connection.

For those of you with ancestral roots in places where the Celtic people lived, studying their culture is a pathway to discovering your own indigenous roots and helping to heal the harm that has come from millennia of colonization and appropriation.

If you find yourself drawn to Celtic culture but have no genetic or cultural roots connected to it, I offer you this viewpoint from the Celtic revivalist, Alexei Kondratiev, who is now on the other side and whose spirit I have invited to guide me in my own studies:

“It must be understood and stressed that the Celtic tradition is a cultural continuum, a way of thinking and imagining the world. It has to do with language, symbolism and action, not with genes and physical appearance. Anyone who will freely and wholeheartedly embrace it can become a part of it.”

And with that, let’s get into the Quarter festival of Imbolc!

IMBOLC TIMING

In modern times we celebrate Imbolc on or around February 1st, and this marks the beginning of the Celtic spring season.

This date is not arbitrary, however, and we’ll get into why it was celebrated at this time in just a second.

The Celtic people saw time as a spiral of cycles, and the 4 main fire festivals or quarter days were the most important celebrations of the year.

In fact, the basis of the construct we now call the Wheel of the Year is a relatively modern representation with roots back to 1835. The term the Wheel of the Year was coined in the 1960’s and now includes solstices and equinoxes which were not as important to the Celtic people as the main 4 Quarter days.

Julius Caesar reported that the Celts measured time by nights, rather than by days. 

And it is thought that rather than starting their days with the sunrise, a new day began at sundown.

This was the same for counting the months. A new month began with a new moon, and of course, they had different names for their months than our modern month names.

The Coligny (koh-lee-ni) Calendar, a bronze tablet from the 2nd century, is our greatest piece of evidence for how the Celts measured time.

According to the Coligny calendar, what we call February was known as Anagantios.

In old Scotland this time was in the middle of a month called am Faoilleach (pronunciation at ~50 seconds -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1RaAL7mcGA), or the wolf month.

However, the exact date of when to celebrate Imbolc would be determined by tracking the movement of the sun, moon, and stars and by observing signs in nature.

In Ireland, there is a Neolithic burial mound now called the Mound of the Hostages on the Hill of Tara. The passageway to this mound is lit by the rising sun at Samhain and again at Imbolc. While this mound pre-dates the Celtic people, its significance remains as a signal of this sacred time.

For us modern folks who want to celebrate Imbolc, we might celebrate on or around February 1st, or if you live somewhere with sheep that are bred, you could observe it when lambs are born in your area. You could even choose to celebrate on the closest new or full moon, as is commonly practiced by modern pagans worldwide.

Personally, I practice a mix of adapting Pagan practices to the cycles and seasons of where I live and also using arbitrary dates.

IMBOLC BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

Remember how I mentioned that the Celtic beliefs and traditions were centered around agriculture and livestock?

Well, this time of year gave cause for much celebration because after a few months of cold and dark, with their only food being that which they had stored up from the last growing and hunting season, at Imbolc ewes, or female sheep, were starting to lactate and baby lambs were starting to be born, which meant that they now had a fresh supply of milk to cook with and turn into cheese and butter.

Can you imagine months of eating your mushy gruel without butter, only to once again have fresh milk and butter to liven up your tastebuds?!

This wasn’t only important flavorwise. As the Celtic people were entirely dependent on what they could grow or hunt for food, the time between the first frost that killed off plant life and the first harvestable growth in the spring was long.

The coming of fresh milk at a time of year when the ground was still frozen and fresh foods were not yet available served as an important source of nutrition for making it through the rest of the cold season.

Farmers would work to ensure sheep would give birth before cows, as sheep are better able to graze on the meager vegetation available in late winter. Sheep’s milk is also higher in fat than cow’s milk, which helps to make it through the rest of the cold season.

The name Imbolc is believed to come from the words ewe’s milk.

Another theory of the origin of the name is from the Gaelic word bolg - meaning “in the belly.”

At this time of year, people would work to settle disputes and gather allies for the coming season of raiding.

While the three other Quarter festivals were large celebrations with bonfires, feasting and music, it seems that Imbolc was a quieter, smaller celebration. 

It was often celebrated mostly indoors with one’s own family and local community.

Just as for the other three festivals, at Imbolc a skillet bread or a flat quick bread called a bannock cake would be baked for eating and for making offerings.

One tradition says that families would walk the perimeters of their land while eating and simultaneously tossing bits of bannock cake. The bits they tossed would be made in offering to anything that might bring harm to the farm, such as a bit for the wolves, so they might spare the lambs.

This is something you can easily do, too, as bannock cakes use everyday ingredients and are easy to bake. There’s endless recipes online.

Another tradition speaks of a farmer drinking a cup of ale or whiskey for himself and pouring a cup on his plow while saying, “May Brigid bless the plow.” Afterwards there would be feasting.

Purification and protection is a practice common to many cultures. In Scotland this practice is called saining. Saining is not limited to one object or activity. It can include smoke, salt, water, and other elements or objects. I’ve even seen accounts of urine being used to sain. 

The most popular plant for saining with smoke that I’ve come across is juniper.

Saining was often carried out in the home and walking sunwise (or clockwise) around the fields on Quarter days.

At this time of year, while still cold and dark, signs of spring-like snowdrop flowers or perhaps primroses would start to emerge.

New grass might grow with the rains, lambs were born, and some birds would start to build their nests.

You can celebrate Imbolc by looking for and appreciating the small signs of new life and spring to come. Maybe you see crocus leaves sprouting up through the snow, or perhaps you’ve noticed the angles of light changing and are beginning to sense the lengthening of days.

IMBOLC GODESSES - THE CAILEACH AND BRIGID

Imbolc is also called Bride’s day. On the Christian calendar, it’s correlated with Candlemas, which used to be called Brigit’s Feast Day.

Brigid, who also goes by many names, including Bride, Brig, and Brigantia, is an important Irish and Scottish Gaelic goddess with two forms - one for the warm season, named Brigid, and one for the cold season, named the Cailleach.

Cailleach is a term that could be used to describe any old woman, and there are, indeed, many different Cailleachs, each named in connection with elements of a landscape, like a hill or a loch, or in connection with a ritual. 

There is, however, a common thread of the Cailleach, who is the winter goddess that controls the weather, winds, storms, and frosts. She is often said to be a mountain giantess who leaps from mountain to mountain and across the sea.

In Irish and Scottish folklore the Cailleach is otherwise known as the “hag”, “old woman”, or “ancient veiled one” in reference to her connection with the Otherworld beyond the veil. She is also called many things like the “Bringer of the Ice Mountains,” and the, “great blue Old Woman of the Highlands.”

She is an ancient goddess, and you’ll find many common threads that describe her, as well as many variations. Some say she is rooted in the Earth-goddess from the pre-Celtic Indigenous people of the era when megaliths like Stonehenge were built.

I love this description of her, “The Cailleach appears primarily as a veiled old woman, sometimes with only one eye. Her skin was deathly pale or blue, while her teeth were red and her clothes adorned with skulls. She could leap across mountains and ride storms.”

The Cailleach is connected to the creation of the physical landscape. It is said that she was running and dropped stones and peat from her apron, which then became islands, mountains, and hills. When the Cailleach left magical wells uncovered, they became Lochs, or as we say where I live in the USA, lakes.

The Celtic new year is called Samhain, literally summer’s end, which in ancient times is thought to have fallen on a new moon between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In modern times we celebrate Samhain on November 1st. Samhain is when the goddess of the warm season, Brigid, would become the Cailleach and winter would begin.

One version of her transformation from Brigid to the Cailleach says that she was washing her cloak in the whirlpooling waters off the west coast of Scotland, and the snow on the mountains was her cloak being laid out to dry.

The Cailleach is said to live high on a mountain with her eight sister hags or in some stories, eight servants. Some folks say that she has officially arrived when the first snowfalls.

The Cailleach carries a hammer or magic wand called a slachdan made of birch, bramble, willow, or broom, with which she is said to control the weather and hammer frost into the ground. She points her wand at the green life of summer to kill it with winter’s icy cold.

When the warm season comes and Brigid takes over, the Cailleach hurls her slachdan to the base of holly or gorse, where her icy power is stored until she re-emerges next winter.

There are ancient forms of weather divination that have evolved into what we call Groundhog Day.

At Imbolc it is said that if the Cailleach wishes to make winter last a while longer, then the weather will be sunny, so she may go out and stock up on firewood. If she sleeps in, the weather will be unpleasant. Thus the Cailleach will not go out to collect firewood, and winter will soon end.

Ancient practices also involved observing whether a groundhog or in Scotland the adder snake, left their holes in the ground and stayed out for a long or short time.

At Imbolc, when the Cailleach’s strength is all but gone, she drinks from or, in some tales, washes her face in, the Well of Youth and becomes Brigid, the youthful goddess of the warm, growing season. 

It is said that there is still some power struggle between the Cailleach and Brigid until the spring equinox in mid-March or Beltane on May 1st, when Brigid officially reigns and the daylight becomes longer than the night.

There is another version of the connection between the Cailleach and Brigid I really like, that you can read in a book called Kindling the Celtic Spirit by Mara Freeman.

IMBOLC GODESS - BRIDID / BRIDE / BRIG

There is so much lore around the goddess Brigid, so I will share here only a snippet. If this intrigues you, I highly recommend you do some of your own research and discover more about Brigid’s many facets.

The English pronunciation is Brij-id, while the Gaelic pronunciation is Breej or Breej-eh. I will be using the English pronunciation.

As I mentioned before, Brigid goes by many names, including Bride, Brig, and Brigantia. In the Christian church, she is also sometimes called Mary of the Gael.

Her name means “exalted one, high one, or she who rises,” and is thought to come from the root form of bríg, meaning flame, force, and vigor. Another source says her name comes from two words that mean fiery arrow. She herself is the personification of spring with the return of life and growth of new abundance in the year to come.

Brigid was such an important goddess to the ancient Celtic people that the Christian church sanctified her worship by turning her into Saint Brigit.

Today the lines between her pagan roots and Christian overtones are blurred.

The author Mara Freeman, speculates that Brigid is the closest thing to a “Great Mother of the Celts,” for she oversaw every aspect of life for the people and the land.

Brigid is known as a goddess of poetry.

In those times a poet was not just a writer, but an oracle and a seer. Poets were called fili, and poetry was believed to have power over things and people. Thus, she is a goddess of divination, seership, divine inspiration, creative arts, and magic.

She is said to have two sisters, also named Brigid. One was the goddess of smithcraft, while the other was the goddess of healing.

Scholars believe that these “sisters” all named Brigid are three faces of one goddess, and it’s for this reason that you’ll often hear her called a triple goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft.

Her father is a Celtic god called the Dagda, and they are both part of the Celtic pantheon called the Tuatha Dé Danann. It is said that as a child she would only eat milk and cheeses from an Otherworldly white cow with red ears. 

My completely personal inquiry which has no known evidence is whether a white cow with red ears is code for Amanita muscaria mushrooms.

Brigid has strong ties to the element of fire expressed through each of her triple goddess aspects. In poetry and divination, it is with the inner fire of the soul and inspiration, with healing it is connected to the hearthfire, and with smithcraft it is connected to the forge.

She also brings fire in the sense that she brings the fire of life back to the land, as the cold season slowly starts to turn towards the warm growing season, and the sun’s fire starts to grow with each lengthening day.

The 12th-century writer Giraldus Cambrensis wrote of a sacred temple that no man could enter where 19 nuns tended an eternal flame dedicated to Brigid. This flame had allegedly burned for centuries, perhaps even 1000 years reaching back into pre-Christian times.

The flame went out after the Protestant Reformation under the rule of King Henry VIII. Then one Imbolc day in the early 1990s a convent of Catholic nuns in Kildare Ireland relit the flame. Today Brigid’s eternal flame burns in the town square of Kildare.

Tending to a flame of literal fire, such as a candle or a bonfire, or perhaps tending to your fire of inspiration are both ways you can honor Brigid at Imbolc.

As an offering to Brigid I have beautiful white beeswax taper candles burning on my altar, a whole stick of butter that I’ve cut into cute little squares, and a bowl of milk.

Waters that rise from the earth such as sacred springs and holy wells are often devoted to Brigid, especially across Ireland. 

These wells are often called Clootie wells.

Clootie means cloth. At these wells, visitors will dip a strip of cloth into the water while praying to the deity or spirit of that well. They’ll then tie the cloth to a nearby tree, typically a hawthorn or ash tree, where, as the cloth disintegrates, so too will their problem that they’ve asked for help with. 

On Imbolc people would visit sacred wells to make offerings and receive blessings from Brigid.

I have made a modest representation of Brigid’s connection to sacred waters by putting a small crystal cauldron of water on my altar along with my candles and offerings.

There are several traditions around Imbolc that involve Brigid, all of which can be modified to be practiced in your own life.

On the eve of Imbolc Brigid is said to travel throughout the land with her white cow. People would leave food offerings of things like bannock cakes and butter for Brigid and grains her cow outside. 

They would also leave out a ribbon or piece of cloth or clothing for Brigid to bless, thus endowing the cloth with healing and protective powers which were especially helpful for headaches and childbirth. This is called a Brigid’s Mantle.

Brigid is believed to have woven the first cloth in Ireland. She wove magic threads into the cloth, and it is for this that she is associated with blessing cloths for the people.

Some places believed that for an item to gain full potency it had to be left out on the eve of Imbolc for 7 years.

You may have seen or heard of Brigid’s crosses, which are simple crosses with arms of equal length that are woven with rushes or straw. Families would make them on the night of the eve of Imbolc. The crosses would be placed in houses, barns, above children’s beds, and in other important spots to bring Brigid’s protection and abundance.

I like to think of Brigid’s crosses as an alternative to dream catchers, as, while they weren’t specifically tied to dreams, they were indeed hung above beds for protection and blessing.

The original meaning of the cross shape is lost. Christianity has claimed that the cross represents the cross that Christ died on, but this is merely a convenient claim to an ancient practice. 

Another tradition was the Brigid doll, where a sheath of straw or perhaps a butter churn would be dressed up to represent Brigid.

Girls would carry the dolls around to neighbors asking for treats in exchange for Brigid’s blessings. The treats would then be shared at a gathering later.

In some places they would make a bed for the Brigid doll, and on the eve of the festival of Brigit they would place the doll in the bed. This represented welcoming blessings and abundance by receiving Brigit into their home and providing her with hospitality.

They would place a wooden stick or club next to the bed, and before going to bed the women of the house would say out loud three times, “Brigid is come, Brigid is welcome.”

In the morning they’d look for signs of Brigid’s staff in the ashes as confirmation of her presence and blessings.

Any of the practices I just shared can be creatively modified in your life. 

If you don’t have rushes or straw, you can make Brigid’s crosses out of paper. You can very easily leave a little cookie or butter offering and a ribbon or piece of cloth outdoors on Imbolc eve to be blessed by Brigid. As for the doll, you don’t need to make a whole doll. You can choose an object to represent Brigid and use a little basket for a bed to welcome Brigid into your home. 

Get creative, and perhaps even ask Brigid to show you how she wants you to honor and connect with her. Trust what shows up!

While this is not specific to Imbolc, I read in several places that Brigid is associated with dandelion because of how the white sap of the plant resembles milk, which is so sacred to her.

In some parts of the world, dandelion will surely be blooming at Imbolc, so you could incorporate them into your celebrations - perhaps by making dandelion wine to drink at Beltane in a few months.

Again, feel free to get creative with how you can honor Brigid at this time of year. Some more ideas include:

  • Engaging in peacekeeping, healing arts, poetry, divination, smithing

  • Honoring your own inner creative fire

  • Protecting springs and sacred waters

  • Lighting candles in her honor

  • Share your abundance with others

  • Making offerings at your altar of cakes, milk, butter, and grains for brigid and her cow

An Irish blessing says:

Faoi bharat Bhríde sinn!
May you be under Brigid’s mantle!

AKASHIC RECORDS ON IMBOLC

I did a little Akashic Records reading on Imbolc, and here is what came through.

Imbolc flows... from froze to flows. Observe what flows in your own gateway.

Observe what flows that was once froze.

Honor not only that which brings life, but also that which brought death, so new life may spring forward.

Believe not what little lies you've been told. But dream big, big big, big bigger, bigger than the arms of the goddess who holds the world.

Imbolc is a cause for celebration. It's the return of life to Earth, birthed through ewes and earth but also through what flows in your creative imagination, your mind's fertile space, that vivid place of vision, prophecy, and truth. 

Behold within, that it may sprout without.

Put your mind at ease and see what flows through

Put your mind at ease and see what frees itself from the grasp of limitations.

Imbolc comes and Imbolc goes, but you may be forever here standing in this present moment. 

Behold, and grasp the power of this vastness held within the hand of your imagination to shape and guide the vision of your prosperous future, rooted in your truth that takes YOU to move forward with grace, action, and ease, for no one else will unfreeze this potential you hold within. So be it.

Come join us in the Earth Speak Collective membership and step into a community of Earth-honoring and magical connection.

And remember - we would LOVE to see how you choose to celebrate Imbolc. Please tag us @earthspeak in your Imbolc posts on Instagram, so we can celebrate with you.

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