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Imbolc / Festival of Light - February 1st



Welcome to the very glimmers of springtime! 

Lore
In traditional Wicca and a lot of Pagan traditions, this holiday is referred to as Imbolc. In my personal path, I have chosen to refer to it as Festival of Light, and I will explain why a bit further down. I suggest also checking into more traditional lore of the Sabbats in books on Wicca, this is the 'lore' from my personal path. In the UK, thing are still fairly cold, windy and wet around this time, but there are still signs that the Sun is returning and seeds are germinating! The flower of the sabbat is the humble snowdrop which might be poking through the frozen earth already at this time!

Activities
Good things to do on this day are spring cleaning and organising your home, I do it every year around this time. Also great are having a spa day (rejuvenate yourself), walking in the woods looking for the signs of spring, rooting around in your garden hanging protective amulets for the year ahead and giving your home a face lift by redecorating. I also tend to do a purge of clothing and items I've not used for some time!

Crafting
A traditional activity is to make a Brigid's cross for your home. If this vibes for you, there are plenty of tutorials on this online, just need to search for it! Personally I always renew my protective amulets around this time after spring cleaning, so here is my tip for making pentagram amulets for your garden from twigs!

You'll need;
5 equal length twigs
Twine, string or yarn
Any additional decorative things you want!

Lay the sticks out, I suggest crossing over alternatively to make it more rustic. Make it into a pentagram shape.

Wind the string around the joins; you can add a bead of hot glue to make it more permanent if you want.

I will hang mine in the garden for protection. If you want to, you could make them into talismans instead and you can chose colour of the twine/string to correspond to specific intentions, like black for protection, pink for healing or green for growth, and of course, all woods have magical properties (but that's a whole book in itself, I suggest checking out Tess Whitehurst's 'The Magic of Trees').

Magical workings
Lighting lanterns! Christmas lights are usually long gone but the persistent evening darkness is still here. I have a habit of lighting lanterns inside during this time, hence my personal name for this Sabbat; there is nothing more magical than a flickering lantern on the windowsill in the depth of night! Since I have a toddler and two kittens, this year I am using LED tea lights but you do you... If you have large lanterns with use for candles you can use these to light up the garden - it feels very powerful this time of year to really entice the Sun to return.





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