blog description

Old women talk about old things: history, myth, magic and their
checkered pasts, about what changes and what does not.

Thursday, February 13, 2020

IMBOLC, (Candlemass)


This festival is a power point on the wheel of the year. To our ancestors, one happening (one that only a few of us are today even know about) marked this date with great importance:

"Lambs are born; there is milk now."




 The winter (or at least that's what this season used to be) was in those Little Ice Age Days winding down. There was higher sun. Bare turf patches appeared in the pastures that lay upon south-facing hills. 

Perhaps, down in your valley, the sun sets today in the center of the notch upon that looming crag.

Or, maybe, over there in the next valley, the sun sets at a particular spot, right there in the circle of stone built by wise ancestors.



The sun stays above the horizon for longer every day—and with that and some regular rain and no plague among people or livestock—there will be enough to eat again. If we are lucky, there will be plenty over to get us through the next winter, and enough to leave seed to plant in the year after that. 

Besides the agricultural, there were contracts between men and families which must be made, oaths given, hand clasping hand, in a community where a man's word was his bond. 

I think it's a good thing to remember such times, though long ago.

Our world is different, but aren't our basic tasks similar? Shouldn't we support one another in community? Shouldn't we celebrate the simple miracle of the lambs? Shouldn't we speak truth to one another? 

So, let's suck up our courage and go forth to continue the work which will reshape our society for the good of all of us. Let's give up our fears and rally to put a brake upon those privileged few who sit like dragons atop the spoil of an entire planet's resources. Remember, even here in the 21st Century, "sunlight is the best disinfectant."






~~Juliet 

https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/