Imbolg 1992
Julia Phillips
Temple in darkness, apart from the Yule log in the center. Brigid in her bed on the small altar. Lots of unlit candles in sand pots around the room. All enter as usual, and the Circle is cast in the normal manner.
After the central invocations:
HP: says: Awake O Earth from your slumbers! Awake O Sun and restore the Earth! Mother - we are in darkness.
HPS picks up a jug of water, and pours it into the cauldron saying:
HPS: The waters are broken. The ice melting towards Candletime. Blood has been along the track, but now the ways are clear of death. Old and grey I was, but here in the mystery of the waters I am renewed. For I am the one you sought, but could not find. For I was singing to my child unseen, beneath the hills of birch and rowan.
HPS takes the asperge, and all circle around her chanting the Witches Rune. She asperges each person as they pass, and on the last round, hands each person a white candle. When everyone has a candle, the circling stops, and HPS lights the main candles and says:
HPS: The darkness of winter is passing: the Earth awakens once more from its slumbers; the Virgin walks among us again, and brings Her blessings upon the land and upon our lives.
Priest and Priestess step forward and remove the cover from Brigid's bed, revealing the Virgin.
Everyone shouts: Brigid is Come! Brigid is Welcome!
HPS takes a light from the Yule log and says:
HPS:
Let the inner light bear fruit in our own lives, even as the Earth bears the first flowers.
I am Brigid: She of the Golden Hair; Queen of the White Hills, and rider of the White Swan. I bring three gifts of fire.
The first is the flame of creation; of the poet and artist; of the lovers' passion for union with the beloved.
The second is the flame of purification and testing, the flame of truth. With this flame all dross and weakness are made clear and cleansed from thee, so thou become like a true and tested sword.
The third is the greatest of all, for it is the healing flame born out of the love that gives all, the maker of peace and harmony.
But I do not give these gifts one by one;
I give them as a whole in the form of the growing Sun.
Everyone then lights their candle from the Yule log, and starts to circle deosil, lighting the candles around the room as they go, chanting:
Thus we banish winter, thus we welcome spring;
Say farewell to what is dead, and greet each living thing.
When all the candles are lit, everyone places their candle in a sand pot, and the chanting ceases.
HPs and HP bless cakes and wine.
