REL GENRL Happy Imbolc/St. Brigid's Day/Irish Spring!

Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Today is not only the Pagan Holiday of Imbolc (still called that on Irish Calendars) it is also known as St.Bridgid's Day here in Ireland and was traditionally the First Day of Spring in the Irish Calendar.

My guess is this was because this is when the first lambs start to be born and the very first blubs and flowers start to bloom (often in the snow).

I love this picture I saw of "St. Brigid" (who most historians believe was a Goddess of Fire long before she was a Sainted Abbess) waking up in the Irish countryside.

In the Catholic Calendar this is Candle Mass; when candles are lit for St. Brigid's and St. Brigid's Crosses (the Irish four armed cross) are popular (there were young girls selling them in the grocery store last week and making them while you watched).

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F

Faroe

Un-spun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ZbwPRXwis

Above, is a five minute video from an Irish museum on how to make one. No rushes around your twenty story apt. building? You can get the kits with materials from Etsy. These are use as protection, and as I understand it, stay up all year. Link to a kit. (I have no affiliation with this seller.) https://www.etsy.com/listing/677220779/make-your-own-stbrigids-cross?ref=listing-shop-header-0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9or7hUOBgA

Here is another. Less on instruction, but featuring beer, traditional music, and a remarkably good looking Aran sweater. 13 min run time.

Quote from the above Etsy seller: "St.Brigids crosses where traditionally made on the eve of St.Brigids Day (1st February). So on the 31st of January all over Ireland, families would cut and gather the rushes from local bog land and start weaving the crosses. The cross repels against evil, fire, hunger and disease. it is also thought to help women with fertility issues, trying to conceive children."

So folks, get your cross and go make some babies. :)
 
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LightEcho

LightEcho

Has No Life - Lives on TB
You just suspend your white privilege right there! This is the first day of black history month. I will be spending many hours trying to figure out what great things black people did in history. I am sure my list will be long.
 
D

Dozdoats

On TB every waking moment
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and...n-to-be-celebrated-around-the-world-1.3777791

St Brigid’s Day: Irish women to be celebrated around the world
Events celebrating female talent to take place from London to Warsaw to Washington
Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 16:30 Updated: about 7 hours ago

Ciara Kenny

Camille O’Sullivan performing at the Irish Embassy in London for St Brigid’s Day in 2018.

From London to Warsaw to Washington this weekend, events will be held around the world celebrating the talent and creativity of Irish women, to mark St Brigid’s Day.
What started as an Irish community event at the Embassy in London last year has grown into an international festival, spanning six countries in Europe and five states in the US over five days.

February 1st honours St Brigid, the fifth-century nun from Co Kildare reputed to have performed miracles and healed the sick. The legend of Brigid stretches back to pre-Christian mythology, when she - as daughter of the chief of the gods, - was a goddess herself, associated with poets, healers, childbirth and inspiration. Originally a pagan festival, St Brigid’s feast day on February 1st marks the beginning of spring.
The Department of Foreign Affairs chose St Brigid’s Day to showcase women in the Irish diaspora, and build a programme of international events offering an alternative celebration of Irishness to St Patrick’s Day, according to a spokeswoman.
The packed programme of St Brigid’s Day events in London (see www.dfa.ie/st-brigids-day-London for the full list) kicks off on Thursday evening with the opening of an exhibition of women’s art at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, featuring the works of painters Margaret Egan, Deirdre Walsh, Hetty Lawlor and Julie Cusack, and sculpture by Orla de Brí and Ana Duncan.

Pauline McLynn speaking at the St Brigid’s Day event in London in 2018.

The main event will be hosted by the Embassy in London on Friday evening, with talks, performances and panel discussions showcasing “trailblazing Irish women who are making their mark in diverse fields such as music, comedy, poetry, literature, theatre, business and entrepreneurship, and politics”.
 
von Koehler

von Koehler

Has No Life - Lives on TB
LightEcho said:
You just suspend your white privilege right there! This is the first day of black history month. I will be spending many hours trying to figure out what great things black people did in history. I am sure my list will be long.
Click to expand...

Peanut butter? And of course there is this:

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von Koehler
 
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B

Ben Sunday

Deceased
LightEcho said:
You just suspend your white privilege right there! This is the first day of black history month. I will be spending many hours trying to figure out what great things black people did in history. I am sure my list will be long.
Click to expand...

"Negro Intellectuals I have met while Yachting"

Your search goes downhill from that point.
 
P

Pinecone

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Happy Imbolic Day, to all who practice. You post such interesting things, Melodi. Thanks for the historical/cultural stuff.
 
Raggedyman

Raggedyman

Res ipsa loquitur
happy Imbolc to you Mel - and to all who celebrate it. I appreciate the history you shared with us. Raggedyann is a green eyed Irish red head; she wasn't aware of this at all.
 
Seeker22

Seeker22

Has No Life - Lives on TB
For the Northern crowd who practice Asatru, Imbolc is known as the Charming of the Plow.

http://www.theasatrucommunity.org/charming-of-the-plow

Charming of the Plow/Disting

Today, in correspondence with the Celtic Imbolc, is a celebration and honoring of the coming spring. The harshness of Winter is starting to come to an end for our ancestors, although food is scarce, and life is difficult at this time, it is always important to be looking ahead, and making it through to the more fertile times of Spring.

On this day, in Asatru many heathens will honor the beings of fertility and spring, such as Frey, Nerthus, Jord, the Goddess Ostara, the Ancestors and vaettir of the land, the wights. To Frigg and Freya, many of the divine are honored at this time, for there is much to give thanks for, and be mindful of. We give thanks and honor to these beings of life and fertility, we thank them for the gifts that they give us, and we ask them to continue to do so.

It is however, important to remember that we are still in Winter, and the dark tendrils of the cold are still tight on the land. Some darker aspects of the divine are also appropriately honored, such as Odin, with his many aspects, giving Odin thanks is never a bad thing.

Charming of the Plow is a time of fertility, thanks, and hope for the coming spring. It is a time to give thanks to the land for keeping us during the winter, the earth, the divine, and the spirits for the fertility that is to come in the spring. Charming of the Plow is an important holiday...
 
Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Thank you Seeker, there is an old Cat's Eye on the Future show (still up on youtube I think) where my husband talks about this - the actual dating for the Charming of the Plow varied depending on where in the Germanic areas people lived - but was usually about this time of year in Saxon England.

Further North the snow is often on the ground past Mayday (when we lived in Sweden we visited the "MayEve" Fires in the deep snowdrifts at Uppsala on May eve) so "Charming the Plow" was kind of absurd in early Feb but made perfect sense in England.

I gather in Germany again it depended on how far South one was, but for modern Asatru (like my family) Feb 1st/2nd is a good time for it as any; since most people start thinking about and planning their gardens about now even if they live in Iceland or Toronto - they just are doing it with seed catalogs rather than getting out to plow the still frost covered fields.

For most people, this is mostly symbolic anyway unless one is actually a smallholder or farmer; ditto hanging cookie or bread animals from the Yule Tree instead of personally slaughtering a pig, sheep, goat or horse for the feast; a few people with land and their own animals still do that, but most of use bread horses and buy the meat from a local farmer or butcher shop.

My husband did his "Charming of the Plow" this year a bit early by working last week to get his new garden beds dug before the heavy freeze set in; he can plant them when the thaw starts.
 
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