Imbolc and more books!

Today we had our Imbolc celebrations, a little later than "normal" thanks to the weather in our parts. We figured it's a little bit of a downer celebrating the coming spring when all we've been getting recently has been really cold temperatures and an abundance of wintery weather, so to help make it a bit more meaningful for us, we wanted to wait for a little bit until the weather improved. For us it's all about celebrating the seasonal holidays around our environment and not necessarily the dates on the calendar. It just makes sense to do it that way, and it connects our practice to the land around us a bit more. Of course, we got a bit of weather today, but instead of snow it was rain, so at least that's more spring-like.

Anyway, we did a really fun and much needed casting-off-of-stuff kind of ritual. We got some eggs - the eggs themselves representing unfulfilled potential, since they're technically chickens that could-have-been-but-weren't - and wrote stuff on the eggs that we wanted to cast off. Things that we'd been carrying around with us that we needed to let go of. Then, we bound the eggs to ourselves, signifying that those things we were carrying around with us are burdening us, and then we cut the cords, and biffed those eggs as hard as we could against the frozen marsh, in an effort to rid ourselves of those things. It was a great release, and it felt really good to be getting rid of shit we no longer needed.

Then we came back inside and had some post-ritual brownies, imbued with good things we wanted to see in our lives, and drank some fairy milk. This portion of the celebration was more of a nod to the "St. Brigid's Day" kind of celebrations.

Following this we actually had a Blot, which was also really great. Since we all have drinking horns now, we each used our own horn. For some of us, it was the first time we'd used them, so it was a great way to break them in, so to speak.

So all said and done, we packed a lot of stuff in to our celebrations, but it all flowed nicely, and I think it went really well!

I've also been continuing to read through the Irish Witchcraft from an Irish Witch book, and I'm still enjoying it. The one criticism I have though, is that although she says she's going to give a pronunciation guide after each new gaelic word, she doesn't always do that. It's really frustrating to try to read something you have no idea how to pronounce, especially when you know that it's going to sound nothing like how you would expect it to sound. When this happens, I usually skip over the word altogether. The other thing I'm not a huge fan of is that she only gives the pronunciations once, which is annoying because you then have to flip back and forth to find it again, because there's no real guide, index, or glossary in the book. I've actually taken to writing the pronunciations down on a separate piece of paper and reading with that in-hand as well. I mean, if you see a word often enough, you'll remember how to say it, but the majority of the time you won't if it's pages, sometimes chapters, apart (which is normally is). I guess that's a few criticisms though...lol!

I also got a few new books to add to my growing collection...

These ones I don't imagine I'll get to very soon, only because I think I'll be a little longer reading my current book because of the pronunciation issues I've been having. Sorry the photo is a bit blurry - they're The Mabinogion by Sioned Davies and The Mist-Filled Path by Frank MacEowan. I'm continuing the celtic-y theme, in case you couldn't tell. The next few books I hope to get will also be along these lines, but I also still really want to read By Land, Sky, and Sea. I'll get to it eventually.

I guess that's it for now! Sorry I haven't been posting many updates lately...2015 is starting off more rocky than I'd have liked. Here's hoping that changes soon!