Imbolc

Today is Imbolc, by my reck­on­ing, halfway between Winter sol­stice and Spring equi­nox, and effect­ively the begin­ning of Spring – and didn’t we know it here in Mel­bourne with the lovely 19° day! I’ve tra­di­tion­ally (as in, the last few years) cel­eb­rated Imbolc with a party of poetry and candle­light, as it’s Bri­gid’s fest­ival in the Celtic tradition.

Sadly, I was work­ing hard on gross profit ratios and cal­cu­lat­ing break-even points. Soon, I’ll be able to focus on the actual magazines. Thursday, in fact. Mind you, full moon isn’t till tomor­row, so maybe a small crew, a bottle of red, some poetry and some candles are still in my future.

Non­ethe­less, tonight I man­aged to squeeze in a film, a lovely con­ver­sa­tion with e_dan about his life right now and a pam­per­ing bath with Jurlique Wise Women’s Blend oil (lav­ender, rose­wood, rose­mary, basil), l’Oc­citane lav­ender face masque (thanks, crystal_storm) and Lush Pied Pepper foot rub with ginger, clove and cin­na­mon oils. Mmmm.

And I drew a guid­ance rune from my rune bag that isisrose gave me so long ago, as I do every Sabbat. This time it was Nyd, which pleases me and makes sense right now. It’s a rune that indic­ates the path is now in my hands, that my own pos­it­ive reac­tions to my envir­on­ment (pos­sibly an envir­on­ment of fric­tion or frus­tra­tion) hold sway right now. It can also mean self-reli­ance, a drive to achieve and pas­sion. There’s an inter­est­ing con­nec­tion with the name, which means ‘need’ or ‘dis­tress’ and hints that there is a need that drives the reac­tions or even that even if the envir­on­ment is frus­trat­ing, dis­tress­ing or con­fus­ing, the need to respond cre­ates the pos­it­ive reaction. 

And, yes, Karl-Erik, if you’re read­ing: I know his­tor­ic­ally this is prob­ably all bunkum and you’re hor­ri­fied, but I’d argue that any system of char­ac­ters can be used for this sort of divin­a­tion if the person doing it has assigned mean­ing to the char­ac­ters, writes them on stones and then ran­domly draws them from a bag.

Anyway, this has been a very brief insight into the abso­lutely non-logical, non-polit­ical life of me. Happy Imbolc!