Imbolc is a perfect example of how holidays, along with gods and goddesses evolve over time. Last year, 2023, St. Brigid’s Day was made a national holiday in Ireland. That the holiday likely originated in the veneration of a pagan goddess, also named Brigid is lost on no one. But naming the holiday after St. Brigid, rather than Imbolc, the other name for the holiday, gives Ireland their first national holiday named after a woman.
But if you want to understand Imbolc from a pagan perspective, or Pagan perspective, it’s best to forget the name entirely. If your idea of pagan Ireland is the people who built the ancient monuments, then it’s a safe bet the name for the celebration wouldn’t have been any variation of the word Imbolc. That’s an Indo European word at its root, and that language didn’t wash up on Ireland’s shores for another thousand years.
Imbolc is believed to refer to a cleansing, possibly a ritual one. That would certainly connect to Brigid the saint, and perhaps Brigid the goddess as well. And it might also be a name that only came into use over the next few hundred years of Irish history, after St. Patrick drove out the snakes, and the pagans.
The alternate spelling, Imbolg is now believed to be a late addition, no older than the 19th century, meaning in the belly and referring to gestating sheep. This we now know is a spelling based on a mistranslation.
So perhaps the reason that the word wasn’t translated correctly, is this is what people believed at that time. That Imbolc was associated with the lambing season, and had been for a thousand years or more. But that still wouldn’t have taken them back to the pagan era, so it’s a forgivable mistake, if a mistake it was. For to look into the roots of Imbolc is to look into a scryer’s cup, which begins to blur right below the surface.
The ancient Irish calendar
It’s also best if you don’t think of Imbolc as a single day. Even if it began with a celebration of one to three days, it set in motion a chain of events – welcoming the first new signs of life and preparing the land and yourself for growing things. What you started at the beginning of Imbolc, you continued to do up till the next lunar cycle at least.
It wasn’t a day on the calendar, it was likely determined by events celestial or of the Earth. And different groups of people celebrated it at different times. There is no universal when it comes the ancient pagans.
Including Imbolc, the Irish had four major celebrations associated with the seasons and agriculture, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain.
If you’re a modern day Pagan, you’re likely not involved in an agricultural lifestyle. So you’re better off focusing on the cleansing aspect of the celebration, a purification if you want to connect. Or make the move to the country you’ve always thought about. If you’re looking for mystical pagan aspects to the holiday which can be called historical, I’m afraid there are none.
But nature is still there, even if your agricultural effort is nothing more than a vegetable garden in the back yard. Our ancestors had to learn the lessons that nature has to teach. When you open yourself to that curriculum, actually start putting your hands in the Earth and hoping something grows from it, the framework for the holiday which came to be known as Imbolc is still there. And the scryer’s cup grows clearer.
If you want to understand the lifestyle of the Gaelic people, you have to put yourself in their shoes.
Here’s an example. The Gaelic festivals are fire festivals, right? Gaelic festivals began at sundown, so what’s the first thing you do? Light a fire. It doesn’t mean that there’s anything mystical or even important about the fire. It’s what happens in the firelight that is the essence of the celebration. Over time that essence disappears, or becomes an undecipherable symbol. But you still need a fire, and so the fire becomes the constant, and over the centuries, the focus of the celebration. But to our pagan ancestors, it might have just been a bit of light.
There is no single definition of Imbolc. It’s different every year, and how it’s celebrated in one spot is different than someplace a few miles away. It’s been that way for thousands of years.
In the twenty-first century, our civic celebrations, even when associated with churches, are still steeped in ancient symbolism. When you read about the festivals and celebrations in Ireland in the seventeenth century, or even the twelfth century, it’s not much different. It’s the same for Pagan celebrations. These are pageants, just as you find in Scotland, England and Wales for the past millennium. The actual meaning of the holiday, if there ever was one, was long gone.
Imbolc might have been no more than a gathering of the tribe, a party before work began in earnest. A celebration that it appeared they’d survived another winter.
When was Imbolc?
If you set aside the name and simply look at what was going on at the beginning of February, then the roots of the holiday become clearer.
By the time of recorded history, Imbolc was about the sheep. You wanted your sheep to breed before the cows, because there was less vegetation for livestock to graze on. Sheep ate less. So when the sheep’s milk began to flow, you knew the season had begun. That didn’t require a calendar which is lucky. As for all we know, the ancient Irish didn’t keep one. Farmers and hunters didn’t need them. They had other ways of knowing where you were in the year.
So the exact date likely isn’t important here, and was probably fluid based on when the boy sheep did his duty with the girl sheep.
There are some celestial alignments that connect Imbolc to some of the ancient Irish sites. But those alignments can happen by chance, as well as design. And the frequency of those alignments fit more with happenstance than intent.
Which makes sense, as any information you can glean from a massive construction job involving stones which we still haven’t figured out how they moved, can just as easily be sussed by following the phases of the moon. With nothing more than your eyeballs.
If you kept time by the moon, February 1 would mean nothing to you. Instead, your month, and Imbolc would begin the full moon before the first of February. Or as others believe, the full moon after the first of February.
As the four holidays shared common traits, it’s entirely likely that the celebration held at Imbolc would have given its name to the month, just as the other three did. The oldest Irish name for February is _______, which is Roman in origin, which is even later than the arrival of the Celts. So it’s a safe bet that wasn’t the original name given for the month.
One of the botanical symbols of Imbolc, which might also have affected the date of the celebration, was the blooming of the blackthorn tree.
Are Imbolc customs pagan or Christian?
Celtic art is big on symbolism and short on representative pieces. You don’t find much in the way of ancient carvings of Brigid the goddess.
That many of the customs, such as parades involved rushes and woven straw, visually Imbolc looks very pagan. Particularly to those born after the Blair Witch Project, when this type of rural craft became firmly associated with the dark side. But in reality, these were the materials the Irish had to work with at this time of year.
The symbol most associated with Brigid on the surface relates to her Christian descendent. It’s said that speaking to a dying chieftain about the Crucifixion, Brigid collected and wove together grasses into a cross. The old gent converted on the spot and was baptized before dying. The weaving technique varies, but in its most common form it forms a diamond and somewhat lozenge shape in the center. As both Brigids share the same feast day, it’s thought that the diamond/lozenge is the remnant of pagan symbols associated with that celebration. And likely then, associated with Brigid, the goddess.
So could Brigid the goddess live on in the center of the saint’s cross? Absolutely. Will we ever know for certain? Absolutely not.
The night ride of pagan gods and goddesses are well attested to. The same trait is attributed to various saints. Saint Brigid was thought to wander the countryside on St. Brigid’s Eve, the night before Imbolc. If you left an article of clothing, or even a strip of cloth, and you were deserving she would bless it.
Clootie Trees can be found next to ancient wells in Scotland, particularly those associated with saints or the old gods. Traditionally you dip a stripe of cloth into the well, called a clootie, and tie it to the a branch of a tree, usually a Hawthorn, Rowan or other tree deemed sacred. While doing so you make a wish, usually for health or protection.
It’s believed that this is a remnant of an older tradition, when pilgrims would leave a votive offering at these sites, dating back to the pagan era. In Ireland, it was still tradition until fairly recently to visit a holy well or spring on Imbolc, St. Brigid’s Day, and dip a hankerchief or other piece of cloth. These cloths were thought to be effective for headaches in particular. Sailors did the same thing, and when in peril on the sea, they would whip out the cloth as a last resort, and began their prayers.
There are many of those sailors who lived to give credit to the saint, or the goddess, depending on how you look at it.
The custom of setting a place for Brigid at the table at Imbolc, or laying a bed for her in the home also has an air of paganism about it. In some parts of Ireland, a member of the family took on the role of Brigid, carrying rushes in her arms and circling the home three times. A birch rod in the ceremony represents the wand Brigid would use to wake up nature and inspire the plants to grow again.
Imbolc customs for predicting the weather
As befitting a holiday closely associated with agriculture, Imbolc is a time for predicting the weather. In Scotland it was the serpent coming from its hole that predicts warmer weather in other places a badger.
Distinctly supernatural, if not pagan as well is the legend of the Cailleach, found across Ireland and Scotland. The Cailleach is an old woman, literally translating to a hag, thought to be a witch who can control the weather. It’s on Imbolc when she comes out to gather more firewood for the winter. If she’s going to need a lot of wood, or in other words, a longer winter, she makes the weather bright and sunny for her gathering. So a rainy day means she doesn’t need much wood, and winter is almost over.
Over time, customs take on new meanings. Saint Brigid has been celebrated at Imbolc for over 1,500 years, and during those years it’s certain that some elements of the celebration disappeared and new ones appeared. The stories changed with each generation’s retelling. It’s very possible some chunks of the pagan goddess are floating in our Imbolc gumbo still, but they’ll be all but unrecognizable now.
One of the reason many Christians condemn Catholics is for their emphasis on saints and statues and status of Mary, which they consider pagan in origin. They might well be right, and for that I applaud the Catholics. Perhaps the connection between the goddess Brigid and the saint kept more of her traditions alive?
Is Brigid the universal mother goddess worshipped by Pagans and Wiccans?
The closer you get to a belief in the divine feminine, the most importance you tend to place on Imbolc. Of the four Gaelic seasonal holidays, the only other one which shows a strong influence of a specific supernatural being is Lugnasa, named after Lugh of the Tuatha De Danann. But there isn’t a lot of his essence still in the ceremony. The other two major Gaelic festivals – Beltane and Samhain no longer have a predominant figure attached to them.
So it’s easy to overstate the importance of Imbolc, and the influence of the divine feminine in the Gaelic pagan pantheon. It’s just as likely that the influence of other members of the Tuatha De Danann were associated with those holidays, but the trail has grown cold after so many centuries. Especially as both of these holidays have eclipsed Imbolc and Lughnasa in notoriety, if not importance worldwide.
I do find some of the early history in places like Turkey interesting, in pointing to cultures which might have been matriarchal. Though as even Wikipedia points out, just because a culture worships feminine gods, doesn’t mean their political structure was the same. There’s a natural tendency amongst humans, which goes back in this country to our founding even, that there must have been a time when people lived in harmony, a golden age. In America we point, just as wildly to the native Americans.
But if you’re looking for a mother figure in Celtic culture, Brigid is the woman. Whether it’s pagan or Christian. She embodies many of the qualities associated with the universal goddess worshipped by Pagans today. The only problem with that is that in the pagan era, Brigid was the single feminine leg of a three legged stool, a trinity. And again, in the Christian Era, Brigid the saint is the sole feminine influence in the three main saints of Ireland.
So while important, the feminine wasn’t necessarily the dominant characteristic of the spiritual world of the Celts. It’s also worth remembering, that the women of the Tuatha de Danann weren’t all about nurture and harmony. They could wield a sword and engage in treachery as well as the men.
I never was one to believe that there was a mother goddess who once extended across the ancient world. I’m more of a dualist … as there are female and male influences, both are important to keep things in harmony.
I found it heartening on my first visit to Ireland that at the first B&B I stayed in, out in the countryside, the business end was handled by the wife, while the husband did the cooking, serving and cleaning. That might be the most visible pagan custom of all, division of labor. In Ireland, long known for strong, independent and often powerful women, if you had the ability and the inclination to do a job, you took it over. Which eventually included piracy, but that’s another story.
How to celebrate Imbolc
Imbold îs one of those rare Gaelic holidays that don’t involve sacrifice, or even the darker elements of Samhain. Imbolc is about life, new birth and preparing for growth. To receive Brigid’s blessing, you simply have to be worthy, and perhaps set a plate for her at the table.
Ireland has embraced Imbolc, making it a public holiday in 2023, and the first named after a woman, St. Brigid’s Day. Imbolc was the last of the four Gaelic holidays to get an official sanction, which didn’t matter as celebrations were already springing up all over the island.
Most of these are typical public fare, with a few traditional accessories thrown into the mix. In some, Neo Pagan elements are tossed in as well. But these are a far cry from a pagan celebration.
For a pagan ceremony, food would certainly be involved. Coming at the end of winter, it would be heavy on root vegetables and perhaps freshly butchered, or even dried meat or fish.
Putting cloth outside on Brigid’s Eve is a good tradition to keep. I’d be skeptical it worked, but if nothing else was available and my ship was going down, I’d certainly whip out the ribbon and begin frantically praying. And if you’re the kind of person that prefers the night, magic relating to the moon would be appropriate. Especially if you choose the full moon closest to Imbolc for your ceremony.
The same applies for those who favor the sun. Brigid had her sunny side as well, as we’ll get into later.
As for me, I’m sticking close to the agricultural roots. I don’t raise lamb, but I can begin preparing for the first planting, due to take place a couple weeks after Imbolc. As Imbolc has a flexible date, and technically was the name of the whole month, that seems an appropriate time to celebrate. For it’s not just about the feast. It’s about all the yearly traditions that go into preparing your land and tools for the growing season.
For those who are unable or uninterested in agricultural pursuits, distilling Imbolc down to fertility is a fair substitute. Just don’t shirk the basics. The focus, or rather the payoff isn’t in the fertility dance you do on Imbolc. That just sets the pieces in motion. You still have the growing season and the harvest ahead of you, and it’s all related.
Don’t forget to build in the wildcard, nature. Nature is never wholly benevolent. Mother Nature can be a real bitch sometimes. So don’t eliminate the possibility of failure in what you set in motion at Imbolc. Otherwise it’s little more than pretend, and if that’s all Paganism is, then what’s the point?
The History of Imbolc: The Celts rise and the Tuatha Dé Danann go underground
Ireland was populated by the Celts, beginning close to a thousand years before Christ. The Celts weren’t the people who built Newgrange and the other strange and wonderful ancient monuments. Those were built more than a thousand years earlier, by the people the Celts pushed further to the edges.
When the Celts came to Ireland they encountered the Tuatha Dé Danann, a race of ancient gods to simplify things, with whom they clashed in a battle of sorcery. Fighting to a draw, they made a pact. The Celts were to have control of the overworld, and the Tuatha Dé Danann, the underworld.
It’s a safe bet that the beliefs and myths of the Celts would merge with the ancient Irish. The Celts believed the soul lived on, eventually inhabiting another body. But first it went into a period of stasis, in the Underworld. The soul could be damaged, delayed in its rebirth or even destroyed, in particular by fire. Hence the ancient Irish people’s fear of cataclysm.
There was a heaven, or rather a world above, like the Underworld, populated by heroes and gods. Falling between the two realms was here, the realm we inhabit. In various ancient writings, the Underworld is equated with the sea, and it’s this three branched view of the universe – sky, earth, ocean – which might be the basis of the trinity, which pops up throughout the history of Ireland, well before St. Patrick plucked a shamrock out of the ground.
Brigid the goddess
When the Celts came along, the Irish gods didn’t disappear, they simply went to the Underworld with the the rest. The Tuatha Dé Danann was made up of immortal humans – heroes, ancient kings and queens, bards, warriors – along with the old gods. These entities could come to Earth and interact with people, and had the ability to work magic, such as affecting the weather and also, shape-shifting.
One of those goddesses was Brigid, daughter of Dagda, chief amongst the ancient Irish gods. Brigid was known for her wisdom, her healing powers, a benevolent goddess who would watch out and care for you. She invented the custom of keening, that heart piercing wailing sounds that Irish women made at funerals. She was an inspiration to poets, handy working the smith, and invented a whistle to blow at night, so you knew where each other was in the darkness.
When the storytellers described her, she had hair like fire and was wrapped in a sunbeam. Her son was known for having red hair as well. That red hair was associated with passion, so in Brigid you have the two contradictory forces of nature. That which grows, and that which could burn you alive.
An ancient association with water is better attested to than fire, often in place names and associations with wells and springs. She’s also who you’d pray too for help with fertility, for the crops and livestock, which also dependent on water, via rain.
She kept two oxen in a field in country Kildare, a boar and also a ram, which was the King of Sheep.
Saint Brigid comes to Kildare
Saint Brigid was raised into slavery, in the family of a Druid. It’s not specified what kind of Druid, which is important. Druid was essentially a term given to the professional classes of Celtic society, like religious leaders, healers and even lawyers. This Druid began to see that Brigid was different when she refused to take milk from him, because he was impure. He had a revelation and he saw that she was indeed pure, and released her and her mother.
So Brigid knew both worlds – pagan and Christian intimately.
Brigid the goddess lived on through her saintly counterpart for most of the past two thousand years. It’s only been since the Celtic revival that people have dug into her past, and what she represented.
Writing in The Comenian, Sabrina Moody theorizes that “As Ireland began to transition between the ancient pagan practices and the new Christian practices, various curious things also began to emerge. In regards to the women, for a while there was a lack of clear distinction between druidesses and nuns. The word for nun was actually the same word used for druidesses, Cailtach (Pronounced Kall+Tock or Kall+Taw), and the interweaving of the old traditions and new practices saw an interesting integration of the two together.”
“Most notable would be Saint Brigid of Kildare, or Naomh Bríd (Pronounced Neev Breed) in Irish. Besides Brigid herself often being suggested as having been a Christianized version of the Goddess with whom she shares a name, other suggestions have her as a high priestess of a druidic order of women who focused on the worship of the Goddess Bríd. The most curious part of this is the fact that Brigid’s original Abbey at Kildare was built on a site noted as being the holy site for this druidic order of women, known as the Daughters of Fire. The followers of Brigid of Kildare are among a number of Christian nun groups who are considered to have been in one regard or another, druidesses. “
That’s an interesting thought, that the women might have been able to bridge the two cultures, and keep alive traditions which stretched much further back. To this day, the Irish still pray to Brigid. If you’re praying to one, aren’t you really praying to both? That doesn’t make Brigid the goddess Christian, but it does make Brigid the saint somewhat Pagan. And I’m alright with that.
The reasons Christians adopt pagan customs? Gods evolve.
For some reason, people cry foul when Christians appropriate Pagan holidays and customs. But that is a common practice in the evolution of deities.
The gods worshipped as the Irish were hauling the stones for Newgrange weren’t the same as those displaced a couple thousand later by Christianity.
One thing to remember when considering the Pagan world of ancient Ireland, is that like the Celtic cultures throughout Europe, they didn’t have a centralized structure. The Celts organized themselves by clans, or in Irish, a fine. So your identity, your loyalty, was defined by who you were descended from, and what lands the clan currently held. Local rule was the rule in most cases. While there was contact with other parts of Ireland, as well as Scotland, Wales, Europe and even the Romans occupying England, it’s unknown how that contact affected your clan’s religious beliefs.
The commonality of gods had more to do with their characteristics, rather than their names. Or as Proinsias Mac Cana explains in Celtic Mythology, “this incoherence simply reflects the decentralised structure of Celtic society, in which each tribe functioned as an independent political unit, the inference being that political autonomy was coupled with religious autonomy and that each tribe had its own special gods, which might, or might not, be common to neighbouring tribes.”
When in Britain, the Romans only identified one goddess worshipped by the Celts, who fits the description of the Irish Brigid. But the name she was worshipped under was Minerva amongst the Romans and those in Britain who absorbed elements of the Celtic gods. Minerva was already an adaptation of Athena from the Greeks, and Brigid’s traits were mixed in with hers.
It’s a Pagan tradition to adopt prior gods and recreate them in your image. So for that, I can’t hold Christians at fault. Something that gets lost in the shuffle is the fact that once upon a time, Christians were the pagans. It shared similarities – the trinity that Saint Patrick spoke of fit with the Celtic tendency to hold things in threes in high regards.
The Christian message held out hope for those who die in a cataclysm, and for whatever reason, this was a fear of the Irish, even before the Christians arrived. Nature it seems was seen as a force to fear. This was not a nurturing mother goddess the Irish believed in. Patrick used this fear to promise salvation afterwards, and even worked it out with the Christian god to give the Irish fair warning if he was to unleash on the world again.
Patrick was as radical in ancient Ireland as Jesus was in ancient Palestine. But he was effective, and you can’t underestimate the power of Catholicism in Ireland.
Good and bad, one thing you have to accept about the Irish, is whether it’s Paganism or Christianity, when it comes to spirituality they tend to go all in.
What I see is Irish Christianity building on top of an existing belief structure whenever possible. It made the transition easier, and allowed the people to continue to worship the old ways to some extent. It’s the continuity of practice which came about from that, which gives us some insight into older gods who would otherwise be forgotten.
A hidden connection between the pagan and modern era lies right in front of our noses
The beautiful thing about religion is that it gives us hope. When all else fails us, or is totally out of our control, there’s always the hope that divine intervention might save our ass. I know, for I’ve called on that favor myself. And it seems to work. Occasionally.
Anyone who has ever called on a deity in a time of crisis is paying homage to a god in the same way our pagan ancestors did. They just had more reasons to call on them. The more we live secure lives, the fewer times we have to scream out to our deities to be rescued.
When the Irish transitioned from paganism to their own peculiar branch of Catholicism, they kept an important part intact. The ability to choose which god to pray to for a particular circumstance. If when in peril on the water you’d pray to the goddess Brigid, you’d now pray to Saint Brigid. It worked because it was seamless.
When the reformation came in, the saints fell out of fashion due to their pagan roots. But they didn’t disappear.
Because by then they were a part of the holidays, of celebrations now spread all over the world. So the saint joined the goddess underground, brought back to life year after year on their holy days.
And our gods and goddesses became civic functions. Each year our little town here in the midwest has a harvest festival, Corn Days. It was singular, but now spread out over the weekend more in tune with its pagan past. Though that was furthest from the civic leader’s minds.
There’s a cake walk, and those fairly reek of pagan customs. There’s also the Corn King and Queen, and anyone who has ever read The Golden Bough will look on that with horror. According the Sir James Frazer, that would be about as pagan as you can get.
An unholy kinship between the pagans and evangelicals
The Celts had the Druids to explain the finery of religious thought to their people. The Catholics had their priests. But for the most part, the scattered pagan peoples of Ireland and Britain had a direct line to their gods.
My ancestors came into this part of the Ohio River Valley a little over 200 years ago. When my ancestors moved in it was wilderness. The fought for survival. It was like the pagan era in Ireland and Britain, where many of these people came from, but with slightly better technology. Plus bears, more venomous snakes and a lot more bugs. In short, once again they were fighting first for survival.
They were short on religious education, or at least educators. So they had to figure it out on their own. This is the area where Evangelic Christianity was born.
The more you learn about the pagan era, the more you realize that closed societies fighting for their survival share many similar beliefs. Simple beliefs, because theories are of little use when your life depends on getting things right. Change is a gamble.
Without saints or priests, or even a full time preacher, your connection with the divine was direct. Without realizing it, they had reverted to a pagan way of worship.
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