Seasonal Wheel + Awakening with Imbolc
The Celtic Wheel of the Year is an ancient symbolic touchstone that has influenced my life and work for many years. I find myself held in seasonal connections that inform me again and again. As I turn on the wheel, the wheel turns me…
This resonates so deeply, reminding me of wisdom that I can access and explore any time I need to return to Source. I have found this to be a mythic experience, tapping into what shamanic practitioner Michael Harner called “deep history”. Connecting with earth based wisdom, through ancestral wisdom and remembering. This has inspired my work through Mythos Journey and QuestPath eCourses, gatherings, retreats and offerings over the last twelve years!
Discovering that my own inner expression invites me to become aligned with the seasonal wheel, I have found personal connection held within each of the eight seasons of the Celtic Wheel, honoring the Solstices, Equinoxes and Cross Quarter Celebrations of Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain, that are called fire feast days. For those living in the Southern Hemisphere you may find and feel your Wheel of the Year, in reverse from what I share here, because your seasons and moon phases are traveling in opposite directional cycles from the Northern Realms. If you live of resonate with the energy if the Southern Hemisphere, you may want to look to the direct opposite energy of what I am sharing here.
On February 1st or February 5th, which is Imbolc Exact in 2024, we celebrate Imbolc and welcome and invite the energy of hidden Spring, deep under the surface where something is awakening…still there may be a strong sense of winter, yet we are turning into a time of rising energy. At Imbolc we are gathering the potential of a new season awakening, lighting the flame of potential in the darkness.
My own ritual time went deep this year…gathering with women, prayerful releasing, blessing with milk and honey, seeking the fire seed, activating a dreaming place of awakening.
I am delighted to share the poem I Am Imbolc, The Dream of Awakening by Caroline Mellor, with gratitude for her brilliance and offered in my circles over many years by permission, you can find more about Caroline below.
This poem is a mytho-poetic invocation, deeply impactful in a way that offers reflective embodiment.
Poem:
I am the dream of awakening.
I am the returning of the light.
I am the tough green shoot pushing up through the pavestones,
I am the first kiss of sunlight on the unfurling petals of the snowdrop.
I am the wind, which whispers the gentle pull of home to the migratory bird.
I am the drop of ice melting on the mountainside with its great dream of the ocean.
I am the sap rising in the blossom tree just before it reveals its sticky buds to the sky; I am the riotous celebration humming away beneath the earth’s mantle of frozen sleep.
I am the rousing of the bee from its winter slumber, and the soft pad of the mother-wolf’s paw on the snow as she prepares to birth her pups.
I am hope, potential, rebirth and promise. I am the kindling breath which transforms the flicker of inspiration in your creative core into a blazing torch.
Give me the silent crescent moon rising over the sea and I will build you a bridge of silver light so you can walk up and lie in it.
Give me the frost-hardened wilderness and I will breathe radiant green life over it.
Give me the healer, the writer, the craftsperson and the storyteller, and I will replenish their essence and make them new again.
I am Brigid, Bast, Inanna and Hestia. I am the fierce protectress of the sacred fire.
Tonight I bestow my gifts of power and courage at the hearth of your soul: power to step out of the shadows of self-doubt and negativity which have held you in darkness for too long, power to shed all that which no longer serves you, and courage to clear your heart and mind for the dawn that awaits you.
I am the time to honor your unique gifts for their true worth and to protect and nurture your creative self as you would a child.
I am the deep longing of the spirit which refuses to be consumed by a narrative of fear and chooses instead to place itself vivaciously on the side of love.
I am the stirring in your belly, which knows exactly what you are capable of — and that it’s time the world found out.
I am the fire within which will not be contained any longer.
I am the quickening, I am the serpent uncoiling, I am Imbolc.
I am the dream of awakening.
– Caroline Mellor
Used by Permission.
Caroline Mellor is a freelance writer based in the UK. You can connect with Caroline on Facebook
RETREAT WITH ME – In England!