Brigid's Day

Today is St.Brigid's Day, or Imbolc - my favourite Christianised pagan day of the year. I wrote a bit about it last year. And the year before, in fact. Seems it's become a bit of way-marker for me, since moving to Glasgow, it means that I survived the long dark winter. To celebrate I bought a myself card from Opal Moon, this design by Jaine Rose:

lit some candles,

and made a (somewhat dishevelled) Brigid's Cross out of reeds I'd picked earlier:


I've also been knitting, as one of my sabbat shawls, a stole in a colours and a lace pattern that reminds me of flames, as Imbolc is a festival associated with the lighting of fires, to encourage the coming sunlight:


From a poem by Ruth Bidgood,

We call her now to walk on the riverbank,
Brigid of Ireland, Ffraed of Wales, the Saint, the golden one,
who breaks the ice, dipping first one hand, then two hands,
freeing the river to flow into time of seed,
time of ripening, time of harvest.
We greet her from her churches and her wells,
from the cold sea-coast and the doorsteps of hill farms,
with the immemorial cry,
'Ffraed is come! Ffraed is welcome!'

We call you, saint of fire,
Protectress of the peat-stack,
meet us where we kneel on the hearth.
Give kind warmth of fire
to us and our kin,
like the outstretched hands of a mother
taking our hands,
like her arms sheltering us.
Be in the midst of the house,
be the mothering fire
in the midst of the house.