Welcome, Brighid. Imbolc is here! We greet the pulse of new life deep in the earth.
At 4:03 am EST, the Sun reached 15 Aquarius. Within the heart of Aquarius, fixed Air, the place of principle, theory, the beautiful, cerebral vision, we feel a shift.
Imbolc is one of the four great Fire Festivals of the Celts, each marked by the center point of the four fixed signs whose symbols are the tetramorphs.
The Greeks gathered them from the Babylonians, the four who began as zodiacal symbols: human, ox, lion, and eagle. Adapted as symbols for the four evangelists, they appear on the World card of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot.
For the Celts, this is the feast of Brigid, whose skills encompass healing, smithcraft, and poetry. Sun goddess, daughter of the Dagda, she returns as the Cailleach goes to sleep.
This is an ancient, sacred moment.
Have you been at the shore as the tide turns? There is one moment when all is still. The pause between in breath and out breath. This is where we are.
The Gemini Moon is alive to many possibilities. Today, the waxing trine marks a moment of insight within the First Quarter phase.
Moon trine Sun, Moon square Neptune, Moon moving to oppose Mars.
The stillness of Aquarius is the calm of careful, committed thought. The stillness of Gemini is the center of a whirling dervish, the balance within a dance that keeps us from falling over. Here is poetry, the shift that gives meaning, the volta.
Mercury has entered Pisces, already within the retrograde shadow. Our poetry is magical, mystical, unbounded.
Find your moment of stillness within the blooming, buzzing confusion of the world. What do you sense? Gather that stillness and bring it within you, heart and mind and bone.
This is what carries us through.
“There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
…
I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.”
– Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning
Image adapted from a photo by Daniel Sandvik:
https://unsplash.com/photos/IQBqIpa8VgI