So if you are sad to see the Yuletide decorations disappear, maybe, precisely, you would enjoy doing a little to decorate for all eight Northern/Celtic seasons of the year… …and that impulse is precisely an impulse to improve ourselves and improve our culture for ourselves…
Next up is Imbolc, which is about welcoming back the Spring as Great Nature just starts to get started, while the snow is still on the ground…
Each of these festivals comes out of the ground, so the true timing of Imbolc is when the snowdrops and crocuses start to bloom, where-ever it is you are…
Candles should be white. Cloth white and green. A golden bough with bells for Brighid 1), goddess of metal-workers and poets… A cup, a mirror, a spinning-wheel… A white wand of birch or willow… A glass of spring water…
- If you have a golden element that represents the moon, it needs to keep pace with the real moon. You need a range of phases you can swap out, and during the waxing moon, you want to be just a little ahead of the real moon. Then during the time of full moon, you should change the location of the element twice: the second time you change it, change the location to somewhere up high, and less conspicuous. Then during the waning moon, you want to be four or five days behind the real moon. At Dark of the Moon, your element can be absent, or it can settle at a thin sliver of a new moon…