Worshipping the Sun

Hengist Journey #3

The third Nature’s Tribe book showcases the “8 Sabbats of the Sun,” following the pagan ceremonies which form the Wheel of the Year. The four “Quarter Days” are all about the position of the sun – the Solstices at Midwinter (Yule) and Midsummer (Litha) and the Equinoxes (equal night /day) at spring (Ostara) and autumn/fall (Herfest/Mabon). In between, the “Cross Quarter Days, sometimes known as the Fire Festivals are 1st February (Imbolc), 1st May (Beltane), 1st August (Lughnasadh) and 31st October (Samhain). Many of these have Christian equivalents, deliberately timed to coincide with their Pagan counterparts.
Most people have some concept of the celebrations and rituals at Easter, Mayday, Summer solstice, Harvest festivals and, of course, Halloween and Christmas.
But for some reason, Imbolc slips through the net – not many households do much for Candlemas.

For many years before becoming a Pagan, I left up my outside string of Christmas lights all the way to the end of January, reluctant to let go of the little piece of joy they gave me in the long dark nights. Now I have several strings of fairy lights in my living room, around shelves and woven into branches of Salix Tortuosa (curly willow) I rescued when we had to cut it down because the weight of its boughs threatened the greenhouse. One set is purple for the rest of the year, but I swap it to white lights on December 1st for a couple of months. Ditto, for the rest of the year I’ll burn candles of any colour, but for the whole of January, they are pure while and at least double the quantity as normal.

So one of my regular Imbolc activities is to take the stubs from the dozens of candles I’ve burnt throughout the winter, melt the (gallons of) wax and create a bunch of new ones. I always save the glass containers they come in. Last year, I actually did this in December, so I had a stack of homemade candles to give as Yule gifts – quite posh they were with different coloured/flavoured layers.

Apart from the light/candle aspect, Imbolc is often about initiations, and I had so much fun creating an awful initiation ceremony for poor Reagan in the third Hengist book. The poor adolescent lads were tormented with tales of willow whips and blood, but it turned out to be worse than anything they could ever have imagined.