Imbolc

[poliphilo]

IMBOLC

And if you leave your fire banked up
And your kitchen clean and your table scrubbed
And your plates and cups all neat on your dresser
Then maybe Holy Bridget will come
All unseen on this night of nights
And trail her beggarly rags to your hearth
And stretch her hands to your fire for its blessing
And stretch out her hands and bless your house.

Comments

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Curiosity compels me to ask you given your spiritual background -

How do you feel celebrations such as Imbolc (with a decidedly agrarian bent) are properly celebrated by urban populations which are so far removed from the land and seasonal cycles? Is it a question of a perception shift where the city-dweller attempts to make him or herself more aware of their ties (however hidden) to the land? Or is something unavoidably lost in translation?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I celebrated the Wheel of the Year for a decade and it had the effect of making me see and feel and understand things about our relationship with nature that I hadn't seen and felt and understood before.

But you're right; there is a disjunction. And the big danger with all forms of neo-paganism is that they become means of evading reality and escaping into an idealised agrarian past that never was.

I don't know how one brings Imbolc into the here and now. I tried and failed- and that's one reason why I'm no longer a practising Wiccan.