The Second Sabbat of the Year
As tomorrow is the start of the two day celebration of Imbolc, also known as Brigid’s Day, I thought it was fitting to talk about the holiday’s history as well as how I am planning on celebrating this year.
Imbolc has its roots in Celtic history. As the halfway point between Yule/Winter Solstice and Ostara/Spring Equinox, the holiday acts as a jumping off point for the spring. This is when Mother Nature slowly begins to make its turn towards spring, all of nature making the necessary moves to awaken come the time. It is also known as Brigid’s Day after the goddess of the same name. She represents fertility and oversees poetry, crafting, and prophecy.
The Catholic Feast Day that exists on the same day came much later when the Church was working on converting non-Christians to the faith. The Catholic Church still maintains that Brigid was an actual person with accounts of her life dating back to the 8th century.
Based on my research, Imbolc/Brigid’s Day is the time of year when – weather permitting -fields begin to be cleared and prepped for the year’s crops. It is my belief that this is why practitioners who prescribe to the Wheel of the Year use the holiday as a spring cleaning day.
I, for one, have already gotten a headstart on my spring cleaning. After cleaning out the closet in the second bedroom of my apartment that I use as storage, I have already made multiple trips to donate the things that I for one am never going to use. I have also been working on slowly cleaning out my closet. While yes I would love to have listed all the clothing I wanted to let go of on Poshmark, I just don’t have the time to list the amount of clothing I was letting go and still don’t.
I still have another bag of stuff to drop off again but haven’t quite filled it with everything I’m considering letting go. This is not the only thing I’m working on doing though. Since I work from home tomorrow, I fully plan on spraying the bottom of my oven down with Easy Off and taking another stab at getting what it caked onto the bottom of my oven cleaned off. I cannot handle it and I want it clean so that I can then put my aluminum foil in the bottom to properly protect it from any future spills.
The amount of purging I’ve done in the last two to three weeks alone has made me feel a little more in control of 2023 being more my year. Plus it helps that a lot of it was just taking up room because of emotional attachment and weren’t actually doing anything to serve me. So if you are a practitioner or just want to get ahead on your cleaning for spring, may I recommend taking the day to just give yourself the motivation to do so.
Cleaning is not the only thing I’ll be doing. I have a book with recipes in it for the Sabbats that I will most likely be plunging into to see if there are any warm meals I can make. There have been some recommendations floating around to make some type of baked apple dessert so I may work on the Apple Fritter Cake that I discovered thanks to TikTok and have been playing with the recipe when I make it to see if I can make it more special to me. So we shall see.
Either way, I hope Imbolc blesses you and you are able to do what you need for the holiday.
Blessed Imbolc,
Trula Marie
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