Imbolc: The Very Edge of Spring

Imbolc always seems to me, since I started following the Wheel of the Year idea, to be a very light green, snowdrops and simple time of year.  I read of a lovely practice associated with it by Australian Goddess follower Jane Meredith, that felt very appropriate: that of tying wishes into trees, as blessings written on coloured ribbons[1].  Catching on a breeze.

The same author also caught the emotion of the season as I see it: hope in the face of uncertainty,in the face of tragedy and confusion. Trusting that despite rain and frost, killing or war, endless grey days with icy fingers deep in pockets, head down, frozen toes in boots – that all will come good again, eventually.  Or at least good enough.  Better.

Whenever I think long on the Wheel of the Year, I always think its double edged for me.  I am very lucky and grateful that I don’t live in the past, where my community might be wiped out by a bad harvest, or apotato blight taken early in the season from rain (remember Victorian Farm?).  I don’t romanticise the past in that way; though I’m sure I do in other ways.  I also feel that I’m so fortunate to be able to be relatively sure that the shops will continue to be ripe with fruit, and grain and flowers, at all times of year, since I don’t grow my own. (Who are the deities of Commerce and Forced Factory Farming?!)

But of course, in my security, also not living anywhere war-torn or very poor, comes a complacency I can’t hide from.  I DO trust that food will continue to appear in the shops.  Brought by lorries. By sea.  By air.  Bar a Survivors type disaster.

So I am divorced from the urgency of each season melting into the next, what it meant for survival.  The urgency of the Wheel of the Year in the past.  Which is probably why us modern neo-pagans, reconstructionists or eclectic syncretics like this more or less modern invention of the Wheel of the Year so much.  It reminds us of an urgency we no longer always feel with such immediacy, especially if urban.

It reminds us to search for the first patch of snowdrops, if we have a garden.  To look for the first green shoots. It is, this modern paganism, as Professor Ronald Hutton said at his talk on the Wheel of the Year’s historical antecedents at last Witchfest, a “religion of celebration primarily”.  He pointed out that so many of the festivals are borrowed hither and thither and assembled in their current associations only in the last 100years or so, into what we need them to be now (my emphasis), so that we can best appreciate this land we try so hard to control and distance ourselves from so much of the rest of the time.

It’s a bit like Sheldon said in The Big Bang Theory: “If outside is so great, why have we spent hundreds of years perfecting inside?”!!  It’s because, obviously, nature is scary and harsh and too cold, too hot, too wet, too windy, TOO MUCH, so much of the time! We have been trying to get breathing space from it for ages.  And once we had it, we turned our minds to all that could be accomplished with the extra time gained not simply surviving. More rest, sleep, thinking – invention, art, engineering, science.  The sorts of stuff you can think about when you aren’t about to be eaten by a woolly mammoth, or freeze on a hillside, or die of thirst.  

What privilege we have!

How easy it is to forget!

Hence: I like the Wheel of the Year.  Every 6 weeks or so, it reminds me stuff is changing and to pay attention, be interested, be learning, be thankful for the good things.  And here, any minute, at the beginning of February: Imbolc.

The green shoots.  The snowdrops.  The tentative, often unimpressive looking green shoots in leaf mulchy dirt. 

Amongst the mess of my leaf mulchy garden,this is what's growing, currently

The very edge of Spring!

Hope!

Again, things can change, things can be new, different.  The snowdrops may come up a little early, a little late; but they will probably come, we can more or less trust it.  Some green shoots almost certainly will by now.  My daffodils in my back garden: came up very strongly in late January 2013; in 2014 they barely grew at all till fierce flowers in March – this year, no shoots from them at all as yet.  But the snowdrops are starting, just as tiny shoots.

I don’t know how things will develop, but they definitely will.  I have to hope, to try to not be scared of change.

The snowdrops look joyful to me, whenever I see them in pictures.  Every afternoon I watch as the light lasts a little longer, just that bit longer before it goes that oddly absorptive deep blue, before the dark saturates outside and fills all spaces.
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I think this year, instead of reading about the Blessing Ribbons, like I did last year, I  will make some.

As author Jane Meredith suggests, I will select my ribbons – 3 I think, by colour that seems right to me.  One to symbolise my wishes for Fluffhead, a thick and shiny satin ribbon of deep blue – about 30 cm long.  I have a fluffy white feather he found in the garden to tie to its end, so my wish, and my blessing can fly in the wind, each time it blows. I will write on my blue ribbon ‘blessings of good health’, in my golden pen.  One for Fry, in happy green fringed with gold, with seeds of sunflowers strung along the end, and written: ‘blessings of expanding horizons’.  And one for Stanley, in rich red, with honey smeared profligately on its tail, with the wish ‘blessings of evergreen love’.

I’ll take them outside when it’s windy, and Fluffhead can watch or help while I tie them high on one of the thinner branches of the cherry blossom tree.  So that whenever he is in my book room, he can watch the wishes catch and move, dart and feint.  Look at those wishes go!

And I shall think of my Herne, striding through the countryside and the cities, touching his fingers along walls and windows, being the reborn Sun, melting frost wherever he passes.

And I shall think of my Hekate, to whom I will leave saffron, as I whisper to her: “Spring is almost here, the time is yours, we’re still between. Help the new things come…” Somewhere a wolf will howl, and TimeTraveller will comment while out with on her walk with muddy happydog Jill, who suddenly starts barking for no reason, that you really can’t be doing without all this, and that tarot designer and author Anna Franklin will tempt me to her food book again, to make me inspired to cook one of her lovely veggie Imbolc dishes[2]. Probably this one, as it really couldn’t be simpler:

Leek Pie

2 lbs. leeks

4oz. grated Red Leicester cheese

2oz.margerine (I’ll use Pure Soy or Pure Sunflower margerine)

Pinch of nutmeg

1 lb. potatoes

1 pint white sauce (I’ll use soy milk for that element and make from scratch)

White pepper

Method: boil the potatoes in a pan and steam the leeks over them until the vegetables are soft.  Remove from the heat and drain the potatoes. 

Arrange the leeks in a greased pie dish and cover them with the white sauce. 

Mash the potatoes and combine with the margarine, cheese, white pepper and nutmeg.

Spread this mixture on top of the leeks and white sauce and bake in a hot oven at 200’C/400’F/Gas Mark 6, until the top is golden.

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This is a time when I remember to plant things: to wait for the hyacinth I had given to me for Yule to burst up into growth.  No idea what colour it will be yet.  I wait and I wait and I wait.

 The hyacinth sits patiently next to Herne, who I have a notion likes to sit next to growing things.

I hope and I wish and I trust and I bless, because I can and I feel like it would be a good idea.  I try to recover from fear and to gradually go forth once more and do things, my new friend holding her torches and her keys ahead of me.  My old friend stands behind me with his headdress of staghorns. He nods, he covers my back.

We move forward. Because that’s the direction to go, really.  The past is done, what I do with what remains of its echoes in my head is the choice.  The future will always be there, in one way or other.

And now? Now I watch for the green shoots, hang my ribbons in the wind. And go to the shops, to get leeks.  I have a pie to make.

I've got the ribbons ready early, as I know how disorganized I can be; the pie will obviously have to wait till the day!

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[1] Rituals of Celebration, by Jane Meredith, Llewellyn, 2013, pp.79-82, for the Blessing Ribbons full description – it’s as fancy or as simple a practice as you choose to make it.  This is a very good book, full of anecdotes and thought provoking ideas, as well as ritual suggestions if you’re that way inclined. I like the diary sections for each festival and season  in particular.

[2] Pagan Feasts: Seasonal Food for the Eight Festivals, by Anna Franklin and Sue Phillips, Capall Bann, 1997, pp.93-111 for all the Imbolc recipes; p.100 for the Leek Pie.  Read the book and be hungry!