Enchantments by Mya Spalter

Author:Mya Spalter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

Imbolc

It’s another cross-quarter day, the height of a season, at that peak point of winter where you can begin to see over the hump. Spring finally seems like it could be a reality. A world without parkas could exist again. Imbolc celebrates and welcomes the thaw; it’s a ritual time of looking forward. By now it shouldn’t surprise you that Groundhog Day, a secularized prognostication holiday if ever there was one, occurs around Imbolc. When seeking signs of spring, it seems, we’ll take ’em from whatever crocuses or giant rodents happen to cross our path.

Imbolc is also associated with rituals of welcoming and preparing, as if for an honored guest. In this case, the guest is Brigid. Brigid is the Celtic goddess of the forge fire. She’s red-hot and badass. There are tons of other goddesses associated with the coming of spring, but Imbolc (celebrated by Christians as St. Brigid’s Day) is a holiday that celebrates the creative spark aspect of the goddess, the pilot light that rekindles the warmth of the world. It’s thought of as a quickening holiday, where the fetal spring season begins to rouse itself to life. Brigid can be honored with offerings of milk and her incense smells of cinnamon. In addition to her forge duties, Brigid also presides over poetry, herbalism, and midwifery. Busy lady.

Candles are ritually important for Imbolc. Some traditions make a crown of tiny candles for a young person to wear during this ritual, and though I’m sure they do it safely, this practice rings all my fire alarm bells. When Christians celebrate Candlemas or St. Brigid’s Day, people bring their candles to the church to be blessed.

Around this same time in the year, ancient Romans celebrated the festival of Lupercalia, aka Februa (from which we get the month’s name), a time of purging or cleansing. The lupe in Lupercalia refers to wolves, specifically the she-wolf who, legend has it, nursed Romulus and Remus, the human twins who would go on to found the city of Rome. The holiday observance would be conducted by a young man, naked except for a pelt over his junk, running through the streets while playfully flogging anyone who hoped to conceive a child that year. Ladies would get naked to give him a better shot at it. It was probably all very hot, so clearly the Christian patriarchy felt the need to shut it down, box it up, and regurgitate it as St. Valentine’s Day. Happy February. Here’s your fucking chocolate.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.