dharmatalks

Throughout the history of the Catholic Church, festivals were created to coincide with more ancient traditions, because the leaders of the Church realised that these traditions would always be part of the fabric of the people’s lives. Christmas was celebrated on December 25th to coincide with the festival of Saturnalia, Easter would coincide with the festivals surrounding the Spring Equinox.

And so it was that the cross-quarter day — the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox — which had long been celebrated as Imbolc and the Festival of the Goddess Brigid, would be Christianised in the fifth century, so that another part of the Christian midrash could be tied into the ancient traditions of the people. This tying-in would prove useful in developing the mythos of a movement that would become an institutional religion.

The word imbolc literally means “in the womb” or “in the belly of the Mother”. In the ancient traditions, it celebrated the reality that hidden within the womb of Mother Earth, the stirrings of new life had begun, so that by the feast of Beltane, the seed of new life, planted in the Mother’s womb at the solstice will have bloomed into the richness and beauty of Spring. Imbolc marks the “quickening”, when nights will become shorter, and the light of day will lengthen into Summer.

In the Celtic tradition, the holiday was called Brigid’s Day, honouring the goddess of fire, at whose temple in Kildare, a perpetual fire was kept lit. Brigid was the patroness of healing and midwifery. Since the Roman Church could not extinguish the “fire” of the people’s devotion to the goddess, they created a mythical “saint” by the same name, and in Ireland, created an entire mythos around her allegedly being the foster mother of Jesus, whom they alleged came to Ireland with His family to avoid the mythical “slaughter of the holy innocents” (neither of which is actually likely to have ever occurred).

During Imbolc, the celebration was chiefly marked by the kindling and blessing of sacred fires. These fires represented the fire of birth, the fire of poetry, the fire of healing and the fire of love. And it was from the ancient belief that the goddess purified the womb of the new mother that the Roman Church developed the day of Candlemas as the blessing of candles to be used in the coming year, and the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Mother Mary. In the ancient tradition of the Jewish people, a mother was “unclean” for six weeks after giving birth, and would come to the temple to be “purified” through the offer of sacrifice and prayers.

The mystical tradition surrounding the birth of Jesus and the festivals of the Early Church honoured and integrated these ancient traditions, and so it would be that they commemorated His birth on the Winter Solstice and 40-days later, on February 2nd, the purification of His Mother’s womb. In the ancient traditions, this day would also be when the Great Mother (Divine Feminine Principle) becomes the Young Maiden Goddess once more.

Imagine how beautiful it must have been to see, in the windows of every home, newly made and blessed candles placed in the window of every house from sunset until sunrise, welcoming in the quickening of spring!

For the early Jesus Movement, the symbolism was clear. From the womb of the Blessed Mother, new life… a new way of living… was born. It was for them a new spiritual springtime. From the womb of Mary, the embodiment of the Divine Feminine Principle, the Sacred Flame of the Christ was incarnate and made real for us.

The midwinter festival, marking the “return of the Sol Invictus” (the sun-god) had become symbolic of the return of the “Son of God” to reinvigorate the world with new life.

I’ll close with the opening meditation I will use tonight, as we begin our sacred celebration of Candlemas, wishing each of you the dawning new light of love, compassion, healing and inspiration in all that you do. The first signs of a spiritual springtime are stirring in the tabernacle of our hearts… soon they will bloom into signs of wonder and service, tolerance and reconciliation, love and peace!

Night of white lit candles,
of darkness turned to light,
Incarnate flame of healing love
whose sacred womb burns bright

Mother of the Universe
and Lady of the Snows,
let everything You touch be changed
through whom all wisdom flows

From your womb came our freedom
Enfleshed from You came Love
Enjoined to that One Source tonight
as here, so up above

Bless the lights enkindled here
and that enduring flame
which burns within us evermore
and heals our pain and shame

Let us become the candles
of Christ’s eternal light
And where there’s sorrow
let us bring joy
Where darkness, only light

Let us reveal the light of peace
where tensions now divide
So that our Eucharistic Feast
reveals the Light Inside

One Source of Perfect Life exists
One Healing Flame that gives
One Christ, One Mother and Many Paths
to One Love
So it is.

May the Light which Brigid bears to the world, be enkindled in the temples of our hearts for one another. Peace. One. Namast