Groundhog Day comes down to us as the remnant of the ancient Celtic festival of ‘Imbolc,’ meaning ‘in the belly’ and referring to new life stirring as seeds and babes gestate. It is the cross-quarter day half-way between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox in our Earth’s spiralling dance around the Sun.
On Imbolc, February 1st, if the Celtic Goddess of Winter, the Cailleach, wishes Winter to last a while longer she will venture out to gather firewood and will ensure the day is sunny to better facilitate her task; if the day however dawns overcast the people know that she is sleeping through the morning and Winter will soon be over.
At this time the Cailleach knows she will, as Winter gives way to Spring, pass her reign on to Brigid, Irish Goddess of fertility, learning, healing, artistry and the fires of smith-craft. Imbolc is a time of renewal, of cleansing, of welcoming the growing strength of the sun—a time of promise, potential, and preparation. This is the time to begin a gentle reawakening into a new season of becoming.
This Winter has been feeling somewhat like a back-eddy in the flow of my own becoming—a time of downward, inward deepening. Cleansing and freeing the dark depths of old woundedness. Letting dreams of what-may-be circle and simmer below the surface, refining and rendering, readying themselves for when their time might come. And now, feeling the approach of Spring as Earth turns to this new year of the Fire Horse—this year when in the heavens all the planets will be shifting into new Zodiac signs, this year of unprecedented potential for the awakening of humanity—I am myself feeling the shift to rise, to spiral up and out of the spin I’ve been in—to face outwards again.
Like the seed, sleeping and dreaming in the cold still dark forest floor all Winter long, we now begin to feel a stirring of Spring on its way, and our casings begin to crack, a tender root begins to push out and down, a tentative shoot thinks it might just be able to push upwards, and in our dreams we begin to feel a momentum toward flowering and eventually fruiting.
May humanity rise with this impetus and awaken. Let us—all of us who value compassion, empathy and love as the guiding principals of our evolving—let us catch the wave and ride it out of the back-eddy where we’ve been deepening. We’ve been finding and shedding the old wounds that have been keeping us fearful and separate. Now it is coming time to spiral up and out—time to rise and shine.
~Barbara Brown
