The festival of Imbolc is halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, a journey from the lowest point of the light towards the doorway of equal day and night.

Other religions and commercial organisations have their own related celebrations.The Christian Candlemass festival is the lighting of a candle to light up the path to spring. St Brigit is celebrated on the same day as Imbolc and is the brightening radiation from the sun to wake up the seeds to the pathway before them. St Valentine’s Day is a time when we can choose to commit our love to another individual, or we may also feel the need to make some new year resolutions for the coming year.

The word Religion means to RE-LIGHT-the ION.

In the Ancient Greek play by Euripides called “Ion”, the story follows the orphan Ion in the discovery

of his origins. The Druid Order is an initiatory group meaning we initiate people into the light, not the group. They are orphans seeking their real parents, or a personality seeking the light that is the cause of their birth. A seed is a synthesis of

its past in the present waiting to express its future potential.  An Egyptian mummy is a seed planted in a mound, or pyramid; a memory is a seed planted in the womb of our mind. A triangle is

a symbol for a seed that contains a light within it. The Indian God Shiva (shining Eve) sits in the shape of a triangle and wears one on his forehead, he is the destroyer of illusion.

It is easy for us to see a seed being planted in the earth and being initiated into the light causing it to wake up and develop its potential. All growth is stimulated by a call to action. At the Winter Solstice we form a link with that which is infinite, at Imbolc we answer the call to wake up: quit the night and seek the day.

There is another kind of seed that is planted into our heart/hearth or earth. A hearth is the place that supports the fire in a house and our heart is the fireplace in our body. H-Earther or He-Arthur is the seed buried in the heart that is destined to die into and be born out from the tomb or womb. A silver triangle can be seen as a symbol for the Moon,

a seed egg waiting to be married to the Sun. To be or not to be, to wake up or not to wake up, to grow up or not to grow up.

When a seed has been created or a memory has been stored in our mind, it is dormant, asleep until the call to action wakes it up. One aspect of this we call memory. The seed dreams of what it was, is and could be.

A seed is a believer in its own future, but some seeds do not find good earth to facilitate their growth. Religious, government and commercial organisations are waiting to represent you.Those who think they know how we should be living our lives will try to hold us back in a vain attempt to protect their privileged position. To keep the seed in a suspended state of belief they will need to provide it with material comfort, to convince you that without their expert help it cannot be done; that you cannot do it by yourself. Material gratification on all levels must be provided along with assurances that they have your best interests at heart. If you are allowed to grow up into an adult, you may challenge their imaginary right to have control over the supply of food, money, love, reward and punishment according to their rules. They will try to keep you in the darkness, asleep.

Our potential is within us, and not on an external altar or shopping centre counter or any other institution that claims responsibility for our welfare. Our heart has a light in it, It does not belong to us or anyone else, we actually belong to it, in order to express its potential. Imbolc is a call to rise up and unfold our hidden potential. It is a call to rise from our bed and prepare ourselves for the coming Sunrise: a declaration to love life through action;

to go to work to manifest that which is in us; to blossom and produce the fruit bearing seeds that will provide the roots of a mind that will eventually express the whole of everything and not just the material part.

It is not possible to marry a man to a women, marriage is between our personality and our soul, between our personality and the seed that is planted within us. Marriage is between the dot

and the circumference, joined together by a radius.  The Marriage of any two opposites has to be linked to a third point that is the source of their relationship. We must strive to restore the bridge between the infinite and the finite and never forget where we come from and where we are going to. The brightening light (Brigit) brings light to the matter. The circumference (nature) wakes up

and reflects the light back to the source of its existence. The whole of life is not all about nature: the present tense exists beyond nature.

The Welsh story of Taliesin and Ceridwen culminates in the story, “The Great Achievement” the liberation of Elphin when the gloom changes into light and the deformed son of Ceridwen will be regenerated and become the pride of his mother.

In the story of Sleeping Beauty, she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel. This wheel is a symbol for the clockwise path of the Sun, the illusory path of the material world. As a consequence she falls asleep for a hundred years, and is still waiting to be woken up.

Do not fall into the trap of blaming ‘them’ - the commercial, religious or government institutions - for our condition. Our personality provides the basic pattern for all institutions and we volunteer to give our responsibility away to those institutions we have created externally as reflections of ourselves. Blaming any external influences for our own situation is the same as the dot blaming the circumference, the edge blaming the centre,

or trying to change our reflection in the mirror.

Real Revolution includes everyone, it has no need to blame, get rid of, or ignore anyone. The seed is unity with diversity within it, and diversity with unity within it.

© 2020 The Druid Order an druidh uileach braithreachas