Celebrating Candlemas

Tags

candlemas, ceromancy, imbolc, sabbat fairies, sun cake

Some Pagans celebrate the Feb 1 or 2 holiday as Imbolc, which is Old Irish  for “in the belly” (i=in, bolg=belly).  Old Irish is the Gaelic language introduced to Ireland from Scotland in 500 AD, until it evolved into Middle Irish, sometime around 900 AD.  Others may celebrate this cross-quarter day as Oimelc (which means “ewe’s milk”), although this seems to be a name that is less often used.  Candlemas is another common name for this day, although some Pagans aren’t terribly keen on it, since it originates from Catholicism.

In contemporary Paganism, Brigid is the goddess most often honored at this time of year.  I’ve never been all that in tune with the Celtic deities (or the Norse ones, for that matter), so we celebrate it a bit differently…including appropriating the Catholic term for the holiday, Candlemas (candles are a great symbol of the strengthening of the sun),  borrowing a tiny bit from the Roman holiday of Februalia (mainly honoring Vesta-as-Hestia and cleansing everything from the house to ourselves), and honoring Sedna in her role as mother-of-the-cetaceans (this is the time of the year when the humpbacks make their appearance off our shores).

As with every Sabbat, there are a ton of Imbolc rituals and holiday histories and all sorts of other ideas of what to do for this time of year (this site has one of the most comprehensive starting points I’ve seen yet).  I recommend perusing around a bit to find what suits you are your family’s practice and beliefs (or not), rather than buying into something that doesn’t work for you (of course, sometimes, the only way to be sure, is to try it anyhow!).

Some of my plans include:
Super cleaning the house for a family blessing ritual
Doing some basic cleansing and blessing of myself…I’ve gotten a bit lax and I can feel it Reaffirming my commitment to my self, via my newly established dietary needs
Re-reading T. Thorn Coyle’s Evolutionary Witchcraft
Thinking about some things and doing a little divination work for inspiration on what to do about them

Some of our family plans include:
Ceromancy–Technically, ceromancy is a form of divination using melted wax in a bowl of water, in which the reader interprets the shape and the meaning of the shape. We do it as a form of story telling…the shape you see has to feature in the story you tell.
Making Vestas–We already did this one yesterday…making dipped candles is a great way to charge the candles as you make them!
Baking Sun Cake! we are going with cream cheese icing this year though, and I’m making our cake in a springform pan because I don’t have a bundt cake pan (when we made it last year, we were at Grandma’s house).
Home Blessing…now there’s a post I should blog about again, that one’s from 4 years ago!!
Family altar cleaning, cleansing, and rededication, and building Chickadee her own personal altar (she and Collin have a “baby altar” that mom handles right now)

Also, I’ve been reminded that you all need to meet Citrine! …You may remember the Sabbat faeries, but if you don’t, this post might help refresh your memory!

I’ve never met Citrine, but Chickadee tells me that she is the faerie that oversees Candlemas. I have it on good authority that Citrine lives in a stand of my second favorite tree  (Emerald apparently lives in my favorite tree, but Chickadee won’t tell me any more than that until Beltane), the Live Oak (its called the Live Oak because it is an evergreen oak tree).  In the winter, she shares the home of a rabbit friend in a burrow at the base of the branchiest Live Oak of them all.  If you’ve never seen one before, Live Oak trees are very branchy…and very gossipy; they are always ready to tell a good yarn about someone or something that has passed them by!  In the summertime though, she stays in a hammock that sways in the breeze from one of the tree’s many branches.

According to Chickadee, Citrine is friends with The Shining Ladies–you know, those goddesses that some people choose to celebrate at this time of year, who usually have something to do with candles and flame and coziness and inspiration and all sorts of stuff like that, who have given her a number of tasks to organize for this time of year?  Citrine checks on the hibernating animals to make sure that they are still snug and hidden, and she makes sure that the the birds and other animals that are not hibernating have enough food to last them a little while longer.  Citrine, if asked (and left a treat of oats, or dried fruit or nuts), will also bless candles made at this time of year, and will send her friends to add a little faery sparkle to newly cleansed and blessed homes.

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Wordless Wednesday: Vesta Making

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candle making, candlemas, vespa, wordless wednesdays

Honor the Hearth, A Maxim for Candlemas

Tags

candlemas, Delphic Maxims, fire, hearth, Hestia, kitchen witch, maxim monday, womens roles

hearth (noun)
1. the floor of a fireplace, usually of stone, brick, etc., often extending a short distance into a room.
2. home; fireside: the joys of family and hearth.
(from dictionary.com)

In the beginning, before mankind had hearths, we just had fires.  A community fire offered protection from the elements, from darkness, from wild animals, from things that go bump in the night.  A fire acted as a gathering place for the meal to be cooked, for generations of a community to come together to share their common bounty of food and story.  When the community fire became the family hearth, it shifted the cohesion that shared protection, sustenance, and company offered directly into the home, and made it the province of those that tended the home.  For many generations, in many cultures, the hearth tenders (and most deities of the hearth) have been female.  This begins to change, but the stereotype of the Hearth as a “Woman thing” prevails (often even among women).

A lot of the historical context for honoring Hestia, and honoring the hearth (since this maxim can be taken to mean either…though, as all of the other maxims fail to mention any deities by name, I tend to prefer the latter as the meaning the Greeks were going for) is directed towards women, as a result of this stereotyping.  I could talk about things like proper housekeeping, about nourishing food, about keeping a household shrine, about magic in the home…and all sorts of traditional and non-traditional, modern and historical ways to honor Hestia, and to honor the hearth as a physical place (and I do, among other things).  But I think, as a kitchen witch (and a kitchen is just the modern hearth), honoring the hearth ultimately has very little to do with a physical place (even though most of what we do is centered there).  The hearth is just a symbol, a tool, for the working of a certain type of magic…the type of magic that embodies honoring the hearth.

Honoring the hearth is really about honoring those you would share a fire with.

Check back on Saturday for The Bewitching Home blog party!

Six More Weeks of Winter!?!?

Tags

candlemas, groundhog day, imbolc

First off, Happy Candlemas!

…or Imbolc, if you prefer.

According to the news, Mr. Phil saw his shadow while his NY counterpart Chuck did not–precisely what that portends for the weather, I’m not sure.  To be quite honest, I’m not sure the weather knows as of yet either.  This has effectively been the strangest “winter” of my memory.

We sort of skipped some of our usual Imbolc observances–like making snow candles (or ice candles if the weather isn’t co-operating) and our “Goodbye Winter” Ritual (a bit like this one), since we aren’t at home, and winter has been just as unlikely and unusual in Illinois as it has been in Virginia (apparently thanks to the Artic Oscillation and an more northerly jet stream that normal).  We’ve decided instead to have a “Birthday Party” to celebrate the Baby Sun King’s transition to the Sun Prince (off to the grocery store, and I think I have the perfect cake recipe to try out!)…the weather is expected to hit the 60’s again, and it seem like the perfect day to celebrate the transition of winter into spring with an outdoor picnic.

We’ve been studying the solar system lately (eventually I’ll have a homeschool info/project post up), and I think this is the perfect opportunity to start the discussion about the Earth’s orbit and how the sun affects our seasons, as well as how people around the world have studied the skies and celebrated the days that marked the changes of the seasons (and why we choose to honor that idea and make our own seasonal traditions as a family).    I think a trip to Cahokia may be in order, while we are in town visiting Grandma…