For this holiday I put on my patchwork pants, and get out the glitter cloth and the sacred armadillo candles. The meaning of this holiday has been revealed to me by remarks that others have made. My friend Beverly gave me the armadillo candles. She’d found them in the dollar store and couldn’t resist (could you resist armadillo candles?) She told me they were for the altar at Imbolc. Naturally I followed her instructions.
I think I already had the glitter fabric. Imbolc occurs in the astrological sign of Aquarius, so I’d already associated some zaniness with it. It was the one holiday whose meaning wasn’t really clear to me at first. Beltane, when we wind the maypole and celebrate the coming of spring, the bare trees clothing themselves in colorful leaves and flowers, spirit fleshing itself out in a body. Lammas is a harvest festival, Samhain is the release of spirit from Matter. But Imbolc?
The first Imbolc I had ever celebrated happened at the Women’s Counseling Service in Bath Maine in February 1977. I had just joined this group of somewhat fierce scary feminists, and this was my second meeting. The first half was a workshop (usually in some counseling technique) and the second half was our business meeting. It was February 2, and as I left my house I saw a big gibbous moon in the sky. I went back and got a candle and an earthenware goblet. When the meeting was over and we were still sitting in a circle, I said “It’s Candlemas and I want to do a ritual.” I lit the candle, filled the goblet with water, and said the words of the Prophet Odo (from Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.) “You cannot buy the revolution, you cannot make the revolution, you can only BE the revolution… It is in your spirit or it is nowhere. It is for all or it is nothing. If it is thought of as having any end, it will never truly begin.” I passed the goblet and each woman took a sip. One woman sighed deeply and said “This is what was missing” and another said “Blessed Be.” I had never heard those words before and only much later realized I had just come out as a witch. I hadn’t even read The Spiral Dance at that point. I used the word of the Prophet Odo (who, by the way, is female) because we were in Aquarius, which is about revolution among other things. This group of women continued to celebrate the cross-quarter days, the equinoxes and solstices, the new and full moons. The women’s enthusiastic reception of my ideas sent me out filled with inspiration to write a book about the sun and the moon, the two hemispheres of the brain, megalithic monuments, science fiction and Atlantis. It’s working title was The Feminine of His-story is Ms-story, and I never found a better one. And only now, as I’m writing all this, do I connect it with my eventual understanding of Imbolc as a celebration of inspiration. That story is told on the Sacred Calendar page on the Neskaya website. Update: the website was updated and that page disappeared. Alas.
Another clue to the meaning of the holiday came when I overheard someone say “Hex is the perfect dance for Imbolc.” I puzzled about this and then saw it: Hex starts with movements of breaking through something hard and rigid (the frozen crust of the earth), then pushing obstacles out of the way while moving to the center. In the center we “listen to the earth” — listen to the seeds/new potentials waking up deep under/behind the frozen crust. The final movement is backwards to the outer circle, moving hands in sweeping circles which could be calling the energy out and smoothing the way for it.
Another piece of serendipity — a friend brought some young women from South America to dance with us. We put together a program of dances from South America, and put in the center two carved and painted armadillos from Oaxaca. One of the dances was a lively one with shouts and claps, called “Quir Quincas de Corazon.” After the dance one of the young women pointed to the armadillos and said “Quirquinchos! Quirquinchos!” Armadillos of the heart! Whatever that means…. But there’s the armor and the softness inside.
So this year we danced Quirquinchos de Corazon as part of our Imbolc celebration around this centerpiece:
Dances we did at Neskaya on Sunday, January 30:
Kos – our usual opening/greeting dance
Lulla Loel – crystalline sounds
Kitka – russian evocation of winter
Hex – Breakthrough!
Cantus Iteratus – Aquarius
Bright Fire – a Jan Mulreany concoction: Armenian folk Dance “Sweet Girl” put to fast Celtic music.
Quirquinchos de Corazon – celebration
The Awakening – The Quickening of the year
Shaman’s Dance – the gates open between the worlds
Bleak Midwinter – cold frozen winter
Bells of Norwich – the daffodil tells us “All shall be well”
Midwives – our usual closing dance.