Why Imbolc is important to me
I'm not Irish, which is where the Celtic calendar is still followed by many.
But I am learning to follow it, since it matches the Seasons so perfectly.
Even these days, when most of us don't live on farms or even in the countryside, and most farms are mechanized and treat animals cruelly, as nothing but commodities.
I grew up in a village whose layout hadn't changed since medieval times, where you could still find the site of the village Pound, where straying animals were held until their owners reclaimed them. It was easy to understand the origins of the saying, still widely used in my childhood in answer to a repeated whiney question like “WHEN is it tea-time, Mum” - “When the Cows come home”, from the days when the family cow would return from the fields on it's own, at dusk.
I'm a life-long English Pagan, something I already knew at the age of 13, when I was asked if I wanted to be confirmed in the Church. (Yes, this happens in the CofE as well).
Up to that point, the only reasonsI took part in Church activities were 1) to get away from home 2) because I loved the Girl Guides, and 3) because they paid us 50p a week to sing in the choir - more if it was a special service - so it was easy to say “no, thank you” to Confirmation.
I had enjoyed Sunday School, learning about the Middle East as depicted in the beautifully illustrated, gilt-edged, pocket-sized King James Bible my parents had at home, although they were not practicing Christians.
But every village event and festival revolved round the church, the church hall, or on the church field.
I loved being in the church and churchyard, feeling it keenly as a genuine sanctuary - for me, away from the school bullies who lived in my neighbourhood, and for Nature and wildlife. I was interested in it's history, learning about it's construction and the local families commemorated in stone plaques on it's walls.
Underlying these feelings of safety in the church and it's rituals, was a basic knowledge that most of it was borrowed from Paganism.
The buildings and graveyards were often on the same sites, in order to entice the local population to continue visiting and merge their traditions with Christianity.
Like the traditions around Christmas, Easter, All Hallows Eve. I knew about them. Even as a young teenager, I knew where the local ancient sites were, in a 20-mile radius of my home.
As I got older I learned about the Sheela-Na-Gigs, the symbol of Womanhood in fertility and old age, and their curious assimilation into some Parish churches.
(It has always intriguedme that the Australians, whose ancestors we exported as petty criminals, poachers, who undoubtedly grew up saturated in the old countryside Lore, call women “Sheilas”). Here's where you can learn about them:
https://sheelanagig.org/
But my Paganism was formless, built on the instinctive closeness to Nature and local history af a child lucky enough to grow up in the 60s/70s.
A time when you could still go off playing in the woods and fields all day, with no mobile phones, no adult supervision, as long as you were home in time for tea.
I'm sure some of you remember the insane escapades it was possible to get up to, back then. From the harmless but mucky (building dens) to the normal-but -impossible-today, using the railway line to walk from village to village to visit your pals.
To the outright dangerous, like dropping off your mate's garden wall to try and ride on the back of the Farmer’s Bull, and clambering around the slippery rocks in the Avon Gorge.
It was the tail-end of the Hippy era. What many called “New Age woo-woo”, and chit-chat about the Paranormal, was common.
My parents, who grew up in WW2 /the austerity years, grew fruit, veg and herbs in their garden and allotment. I was taught food preparation and cooking from a very young age. (This included being a “taster” for my Mum's home-made wine)!
This type of childhood is rare today. Another important input to my Paganism was a large body of popular “hippy” literature - such as Alfred Watkins’ The Old Straight Track, Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, and most of all, The Lord of The Rings, which I received for my 8th Birthday, the year it first came out in it's entirety in one (fat, with tissue-thin paper) paperback edition.
Tolkien used his own experience of the English countryside to invent The Shire. He wanted to recreate an English mythos, and boy did he succeed. To the displeasure of the literary snobs, the book came out top in Waterstone's “Britain's Favourite Book" poll for year after year.
In his masterpiece he gave us a romantic folk-memory, false or not, of an England everyone wished had once existed, and secretly thought, probably had. There are two YouTube “Sages" who often refer to TLOTR, Thomas Sheridan and Malcolm Guite. Very different in their world-views, they both see Tolkien as an important figure who helped put us back in touch with a dream of England.
A longed-for Pagan past, as Merlin describes it, in John Boorman's extravagant 1981 film of the Arthur Legend, “Excalibur”, the Sword of Power was: “Forged when the world was young, when bird and beast and flower were one with man, and death was but a dream".
Folk music too, (of all cultures including African) was an early love of mine, which is an oral method of keeping old stories in living local memory. The Albion Band were pretty much the only band I ever made an effort to follow by actually going to their concerts.
You only have to listen to songs like (their first release, in 1978) “Ragged Heroes" to understand the hippy-pagan mentality: “Where are all the ragged heroes, buried in their suits of iron”? refers to the myth of Arthur and his knights asleep, waiting to “Rise up like the Sun” to fight England's enemies again.
So English Paganism is an (often humorous) mish-mash of actual ancient Celtic traditions, fantasy literature, and the Judao-Christianity we've all grown up in. Morris Men (many Sides include women now) are a perfect example of this.
To those of us who love Morris, it really doesn't matter where it originated, whether they paint their faces blue, black or green, PLEASE shut up and let us enjoy the music and dancing!
Yesterday was the first day of Imbolc, (Spring) in the Celtic calendar. Sunday (4th February) is the Cross-Quarter Day, and many Pagans around the British Isles will be holding their Imbolc ceremonies then.
I have rediscovered my innate Paganism and am on a journey to give it some structure.
A sceptic will say at this point, “well, you can't really help being a Pagan, growing up in the Church of England”, and I take that as a compliment, because it proves that the Church only managed to lightly layer itself onto Paganism, but was unable to usurp it.
A short anecdote will illustrate this. About 30 years ago I was going out with a chap who was from a family of ravingly devout Irish Catholics. (He claimed to have 300 first cousins, and to know all their names). He also claimed to be an atheist, but still had to attend the many family weddings and funerals, and couldn't help being influenced by his upbringing, any more than I could by mine.
One holiday we went to a remote Lighthouse on the Scottish West Coast, where the hotel windows looked out directly at the sea, and the ferries going across to Ireland.
There was little to do apart from look at the scenery, so we decided to walk the 3 miles to the nearest pub. (Just like in “Withnail & I”)!
On the way we saw a bunch of dead rats hung up on the fence of a farmer's field. He was visibly shaken. “Why are they there”? he asked me. I had grown up seeing rats, foxes and crows hung on fences or nailed to trees, so I wasn't alarmed. “As a warning to the others” I calmly told him.
“What? What do you mean? How can it be a warning? How could they know"?! He was white in the face. He asked me again several times afterwards. Because Catholics, as far as I understand, don't believe animals have souls, and certainly not the sentience to understand the farmer‘s warning not to venture onto his land.
His family were so anti-animals, they wouldn't even take children to a city farm, or have cats or dogs in the house. But my version of Pagan-rooted Christianity had taught me to accept this rather grisly sight as a common feature of the countryside.
I celebrated Imbolc yesterday by a long walk on the Somerset Levels, my first of the year, on a lovely bright sunny day, with a glorious sunset. As if Mother Nature was having a laugh at our expense, it was just one day. Today we're back to our typical dreary, wet, English winter!
Happy Imbolc, however you celebrate the arrival of Spring!
For more understanding of living Celtic traditions, I highly recommend the website and YouTube channel “BEALTAINE COTTAGE ”.
(This drawing of a Centaur appeared on the cover of a book of SF for teenagers, “Catch” by Steve Bowkett in 1988. You can still find it on Ebay).
As an English pagan and a terf myself I wish you a belated happy Imbolc.