Imbolc, Brigid and the Light
Imbolc marks the beginning of Spring in the Celtic tradition. It is a time of rebirth and new hope. The earth stirs from its winter slumber, the hard frosts thaw, and the first green buds and shoots appear, bringing with them the promise of transformation.
Brigid, the ancient triple Goddess, is celebrated on Lá Bríde – “Brigid’s Day” at Imbolc. She stands on the threshold of spring, invoking the archetypal energies of healing, creativity, imagination, and poetry and symbolizing the alchemical fires of the forge and transformation. She is said to breathe life into the mouth of the dead winter. In the Celtic tradition, in Samhain, the Cailleach, the old hag of winter, descends into the underworld to incubate the seeds of new life. These seeds will emerge at Imbolc (meaning “in the belly”) in the Celtic spring.
Connemara Light
I am noticing these January days that the light has a different quality now than what I experienced in November. There is brightness in the sun, almost like a freshness about it. As the rays of light lengthen through the bitter cold of these January days, they reach into the earth, warming the buds and inviting the earth to stir and return to life. After the wintering season of slowing down, reflection and contemplation, the season of Imbolc is the invitation of the light to return with the promise and fresh hope for the coming Spring.
Artist - Elin Manon
I was thinking today about how the light has a different feel and quality throughout the changing seasons. And the light is different, too, at various times of the day, from dusk to dawn and to dusk again.
At Dusk, the light has an enveloping quality, an invitation to come in, slow down, embracing the night that unfolds before us.
At Dawn, it feels like the day is opening. Opening into the world, opening out into the day. It reminds me of how a flower opens to the light of day and closes again to rest at night.
I love how our landscape and seasons teach us so much. These moments are easily missed in our busy lives— our schedules are less attuned to the sun’s position in the sky. This week, I spoke to a lady who said she keeps the artificial light off in the evenings for as long as possible to look out over the Burren region in Co Clare, where she lives. She wants to see how the light changes with each passing moment in that ancient landscape where she lives.
I thought it was a beautiful practice. It reminded me of a memory from childhood when I was about ten years old. We went to mass on a Sunday in the village schoolhouse in Connemara. It was the same schoolhouse my father went to. It had not been used as a school for many years. The priest at that time said mass there to facilitate the people of the village, who did not have ready access to transport. The local church was three miles away.
On this Sunday morning in the 1980s, a woman had returned from America to visit. Her old neighbours greeted her warmly before mass. She then said something that has stayed with me ever since, she said “I want to sit here, in this seat where I can look out that window and watch the light crossing the face of the mountain. I have waited to see that sight for a very long time.”
My village sits at the foot of a beautiful mountain - Cnoc Mordáin. That spot that she spoke about had a particular view of the mountain. It seemed to fill the entire window with Mordáin's craggy, weather-worn, bare granite rock face. Ancient and ever-present. It was stunning when the light changed as the clouds changed direction across the sky. It was different from one moment to the next.
I remember being struck by what she said because I loved watching the light in that same window and how it crossed the fields, filling it with different light and shade throughout the day. It didn’t occur to me until then that this was something others felt, too. It was something she clearly had deeply missed.
“I have waited to see that sight for a very long time…”
Imbolc and the Symbolic
When we have been in places of darkness – in the metaphorical “dark night of the soul”, we are in a space of psychic growth, change and transformation. It is hard to trust that “light” and energy return to the body when we are in those periods of our lives. Carl Jung used the ancient alchemical process (changing lead into gold) as a metaphor for our psychological development. It was a way to highlight how it is an unfolding process.
“Only after I had familiarized myself with alchemy did I realize that the unconscious is a process, and that the psyche is transformed or developed by the relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious.”
When we cultivate a relationship with our unconscious, we go through a growth process. A dying away of old beliefs and ways so that new aspects of ourselves are revealed. A symbolic birth, a light of consciousness in the darkness of the unconscious. This is a move towards wholeness, which is the journey of individuation. In the alchemical process, the first stage is called Negredo – which means blackness or putrification—the dying away to make space for new life to come in. The alchemists called the next stage Albedo, which means whitening. A symbolic returning of light, a consciousness, something being revealed from the darkness into the light.
Winter has its place in the seasons of our lives. A coming in, a slowing down, allowing, and reflecting. We need to slow down to allow what is emerging to come forth. We are now on the cusp of Imbolc, and it is an invitation to see what energy and new life are about to be revealed to us.
Brigid, the Goddess, and the Cailleach of Winter know much about transformation. According to ancient myths, the Cailleach, at the end of the winter, transforms herself into the “iníon buí”, the yellow daughter. Throughout the ancient myths, Dawn was often depicted as a beautiful young woman. This is sometimes said to be Brigid, the goddess of our ancient Gaelic culture.
What is her message to us this coming Imbolc time?
Photograph by Seán Mac an tSithigh
Brigid and the Sunbeam
I found a wonderful story about Brigid the other day that I want to share with you now. It was written by Cogitosus, an Irish monk in Kildare who lived in the 7th century. He wrote Vita Sanctae Brigidae, which is, I understand, one of the first written accounts of Brigid.
As she was grazing sheep while working as a shepherdess on a level grassy plain, she was drenched by a heavy downpour of rain and returned to the house with her clothes wet. There was a ray of sunshine coming into the house through an opening, and as a result, her eyes were dazzled and she took the sunbeam for a slanting tree growing there. So, she put her rain-soaked clothes on it, and the clothes hung on the filmy sunbeam as if it were a big solid tree. And the occupants of the house and the neighbours were dumbfounded by this extraordinary miracle, began to extol this incomparable lady with fitting praise.
In Ireland, February 1st, 2024, marks the first time in recent history that we will officially celebrate and praise Brigid on our national holiday calendar. How wonderful, after all these years.
May this threshold time at Imbolc bring us renewed energy, vitality and nourishment for this coming Spring, Brigid and new life. May we go gently into it.
Eileen
ReferencesJung, Carl (1963) Memories, Dreams and Reflections p.209Cogitosus - The life of Saint Brigid as quoted in 'The Irish - A Treasury of Art and Literature' (ed.Lesley C Carola) 1993. Hugh Levin Associates Inc. Additional image by Artist Elin Manon