2022 Imbolc

Imbolc, Sun Ingress 15° 00’ Aquarius

Times for Sun at 15° Aquarius (seconds rounded up).

Thursday, February 3, 2022

UTC
20:51 (rounded from 20:50:39)

London, United Kingdom
GMT (UTC +0)
8:51 pm

Washington DC, DC, USA
EST (UTC -5)
3:51 pm

Chicago, IL, USA
CST (UTC -6)
2:51 pm

Santa Fe, NM, USA
MST (UTC -7)
1:51 pm

Seattle, WA, USA
PST (UTC -8)
12:51 pm

Honolulu, HI, USA
HST (UTC -10)
10:51 am

A long, long time ago, people noted the year's seasons, recognizing changing life processes on earth. The date of Imbolc is thought to have been significant in Ireland since the Neolithic period. This is based on the alignment of some Megalithic monuments. At the Mound of the Hostages on the Hill of Tara, the inner chamber is aligned with the rising Sun on the dates of Imbolc and Samhain. [caeraustralis.com.au/southernfire.htm]

Mound of the Hostages on the Hill of Tara
via worldhistory.org /image/4028/mound-of-the-hostages-hill-of-tara/ 

Peoples' very survival was reflected in changes of growing and living things. Certain plants became available, animals migrated or had calving times, different foods and activities entered life. People learned and oriented their behavior to integrate their lives to the rhythms of the seasons of the year.

While being attuned to seasonal change is not as much a life and death matter as it might have been thousands of years ago, the processes that mark the seasons are still with us. Some celebrations and holidays are with us as well. The seasons depend on the earth's orientation to the Sun that gives solstices (Winter and Summer) and equinoxes (Spring and Autumn). There are holidays and holy days around these eight earth-sun determined times. Four fire festivals and rituals are marked midway between solstices and equinoxes. Recognize these times as a reflection of thousands of years of human history, where people celebrated the changes and the seasonal changes for survival.

Celtic year wheel via glastonburydragons

Midway between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox is a holiday with the Celtic name Imbolc. It is one of the four fire festivals with the general outline of having a bonfire on a high place on the preceding night of the day and a night-long celebration to recognize the importance of the season's change (that might have been house parties in wintry times).

Winter is winding down as the Sun's path reaches the midway point between the solar points of Winter and Spring. In snowy regions, the earliest spring blooms push through the snow. The feminine nature and goddess sense of the time is dominant. The ruminants calving and loaded with milk is reflected in the Celtic term, Oimelc, in which etymology is Oi for ewe and melc for milk. Imbolc was the standard form of the name, derived from imb + folc "wash all-around" - making Imbolc a festival of purification, such as we see in many other cultures in the spring. It is the feast day honoring the goddess of pre-Christian Ireland, Brigit, Brigid, or Bríg (there are several variants), where brigit is the Irish word for goddess. In later times the fire feast was transformed by Christianity into Féil Brighde Saint Brigit, the Feast of St Brigit (452-525 AD). She was a nun at Kildare in the year 467 (her birth is said to have been some twenty years after the death of Patrick). The Church neatly scheduled a holy day to honor Saint Brigit, similarly to adopting Christmas for Saturnalia. The popular day, also celebrated as Candlemas, Ground Hog Day, and the Feast of the Purification, became the Feast of St. Brigit in what remains of the Celtic world.
st-brigits-well-kildare
"To taste of every food in order,

This is proper at Imbulc,

Washing of hand and foot and head;

It is to you thus I relate"

- 16th century - based on Kuno Meyer's translation in Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry (p.169).

2021 WINTER SOLSTICE

TIMING THE 2021 WINTER SOLSTICE

Southward Solstice
Capricorn Ingress

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

 

UTC
(Time Zone)
3:59:00 pm GMT/Zulu

London
(United Kingdom – England)
3:59:00 pm GMT UTC

Washington DC
(District of Columbia)
10:59:00 am EST UTC-5 hours

New Orleans
(Louisiana)
9:59:00 am CST UTC-6 hours

Denver
(Colorado)
8:59:00 am MST UTC-7 hours

Seattle
(Washington)
7:59:00 am PST UTC-8 hours

Wailuku
(Hawaii)
5:59:00 am HST UTC-10 hours


“The days have decreased in length as much as they ever will [or increased that much south of the equator]. Life surges once more with the Sun from its southern decline. The Sun moves northward, its daily arc of light becomes slowly tauter and more radiant. The promise of spring spreads like a mystic fire over the earth to tell ‘men of good will’ that the New Life has begun to win over arrested death.”
-- Dane Rudhyar, The Pulse of Life, 1963

By the awesome Francis Donald Grabau. starpath visions dot com

 

 

At Winter Solstice, the realm of the night has reached its maximum. The day begins increasing in length. Sol comes his furthest south and has his shortest period in the day sky, while the night is the longest of the year. From the point of the Solstice onward to the Summer Solstice, there is an increase of light.

The Sun and Moon are the basis for most calendars. Astronomical events keyed to the Sun (a few include the Moon) determine many holidays and holy days. The Winter Solstice marks the Sun’s entry into the sign, Capricorn ruled by the planet Saturn. It is also known as the Capricorn ingress. Winter celebrations include Saturnalia, a week-long Roman festival of the god Saturn. While the precise solstice time is given here for the Sun’s standstill moment, it seems to rise and set from the same point for three days or so. There is a more extended festival of Germanic people called by the Norse word for wheel, “Yule,” and of course, Christmas Eve and Day, and New Year’s Eve and Day. Karolina Markovic offers the feast day of St. Nicholas (Nikoljdan, December 19).

NASA

Donna Henes has a poetic take on the still moment that eruptions may punctuate from the depths of undifferentiated potential. On the day of the Solstice, and aware of the precise timing, one may take some time to meditate and reflect.

“The year is a wheel with eight spokes. Each circuit is comparable to the cycle of a human life. The Winter Solstice is the time before we were born, the great dark uterine void from which all is formed. The vast black ring around all possibility, its perimeter bulging with promise. Light is conceived in the cold dark at the time of the Winter Solstice. The smallest spark, the most tentative hint of a glow, is imagined in the dense ambiance of its absence. The Sun is a mere gleam in the eye of eternity. Light, no matter how tiny, equals life.”

-- Donna Henes, Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles & Celebrations. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1966, p. 5. Thanks to Astrolabe.

When does the year begin?

“...in very ancient times, the most important yearly turning points were considered to be the summer and winter solstices. Later, in the 4th century AD, Emperor Julian opted for the Winter Solstice in particular, “when King Helios returns to us again, and leaving the region furthest south and rounding Capricorn as though it were a goal-post, advances from the south to the north to give us our share of blessings of the year.”
--- Quoted by Charles Harvey in Michael Baigent, Nicholas Campion, and Charles Harvey, Mundane Astrology, 2nd ed. London, Aquarian Press, 1992.

“In the 20th century, Charles Carter in England, and Alfred Witte in Germany, both echoed Emperor Julian’s sentiments and made a persuasive case for the Capricorn ingress to be regarded as the beginning, or the start of the year. The consensus among most “Western” astrologers is that the Vernal Equinox (Spring) begins the astrological year. Witte saw the Capricorn ingress as the beginning of the solar cycle. In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the time when the old Sun dies, and a new one is born, and, as Chinese astrologers saw it, increasing yin switches over to increasing yang. Like the New Moon, which most astrologers acknowledge as the beginning of the lunar cycle, the Winter Solstice marks the end of the waning half of the cycle and the beginning of a new waxing half.

“In Northern latitudes, Capricorn is probably the most emotionally laden of the four Cardinal ingresses – the one that brings up primal fears of darkness, cold, hunger, and the cessation of all life. Will the light return? Will the round of life continue? For peoples who routinely experienced cold, famine, and nights lit only by firelight, seeing the waning of the Sun’s strength finally reverse itself must have genuinely seemed like a rebirth and must have been an occasion for heartfelt rejoicing.

“Today, around the time of the Winter Solstice we still compensate for the withdrawal of the Sun’s light and heat by cozily nesting indoors, stoking the fire, festooning trees with lights, and warming ourselves with food, strong spirits and the company of others. To counter nature’s threat of scarcity, we invoke a great-bellied saint clad in the color of fire, whose pack brims with human-made abundance. Our thoughts turn from fresh-picked food toward what is preserved and stored, from the vanished lushness of the natural world toward the human-created social order with its own ingenious methods for sustaining life and hope.”
--- https://alabe.com/AUG2.htm (TR edited)

The idea that the Sun does not move from rising at the same point for three days is an observed one, not a factual reality. One may calculate the precise standstill moment to the second. Astrologers use the timing of solstices and equinoxes for mundane appraisal of the period to follow. Gary Christen, a well-known practitioner of Uranian Astrology (now referred to as Symmetrical Astrology), does a mind-bendingly good job of using the ingress chart to forecast world events and trends. For Christen’s annual report, go to alabe .com. I use the precision personally and privately to honor the moment.

Samhain 2021

2021 Samhain Sun 15° Scorpio

Here, in a few time zones are the cross-quarter moments for Samhain 2021, based on an astronomical midpoint; the Sun at the first breath of the still point between equinox and solstice.

UTC Sun, Nov 7, 2021, 04:58:37 am

GMT (UTC +0) London, United Kingdom
Sun, Nov 7, 2021, 04:58:37 am

EDT (UTC -4) New York, NY, USA
Sun, Nov 7, 2021, 12:58:37 am

CDT (UTC -5) Chicago, IL, USA*
Sat, Nov 6, 2021, 11:58:37 pm

MDT (UTC -6) Denver, CO, USA*
Sat, Nov 6, 2021, 10:58:37 pm

PDT (UTC -7) San Francisco, CA, USA*
Sat, Nov 6, 2021, 9:58:37 pm

HST (UTC -10) Honolulu, HI, USA
Sat, Nov 6, 2021, 6:58:37 pm

   

Reuters

"Samhain is the seed returned to earth, the quiescent dark beginning that will lead, in time, to renewed life."

"Samhain" (pronounced "so-wen" because the "mh" in the middle of an Irish word is the "w" sound. [Other Celtic groups have variations on pronunciation]). It marked the end of the agricultural year and the time to take stock of supplies. It was a time when the community began to fold in upon itself to prepare for the long, hard winter ahead. In actuality, Samhain was also the beginning of the Celtic year, which follows the cycle of planting."

from "The Samhain Harvest Celebration" by Moyra

A short article dealing with Druid mythology comes via the University of Chicago. https://ecuip.lib.uchicago.edu/diglib/science/cultural_astronomy/cultures_druids-3.html

The celebrations of Earth religions (especially of Celts and Pagans) often or usually involve fire ceremonies. They built bonfires on high hills, and the night would enfold with traditions that might move to dance, feast, various forms of Earth worship, and revelry.


With most of the points in the eight-fold year*, there is a cluster of holidays and holy days. We get All Hallows Eve or Halloween from "Samhain," the cross-quarter day midway between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice. Here are a few other "Days":

Oct. (last Sun.): Día de Cristo Rey, especially in Ixtlán del Río, Nayarit (Day of Christ the King, with “Quetzal y Azteca” and “La Pluma” indígena dances, horse races, processions, and food)
Nov 1: Día de Todos Santos (All Souls' Day, in honor of the souls of children; the departed descend from Heaven to eat sugar skeletons, skulls, and treats on family altars)
Nov 2: Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead, in honor of ancestors; families visit cemeteries and decorate graves with flowers and favorite food of the deceased)

*The Seasons expressed by the Sun's passage to the exact peak of a season, midway in space/time between Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Fall Equinox, or Winter Solstice

America Magazine

Buddhism offers that "instead of regretting and lamenting their loss we can contemplate on what aspirations they had and we can continue to realize it for them. This is one way we continue them." https://plumvillage.org/library/dharma-talks/the-five-remembrances-sr-thuan-nghiem-spring-retreat-2018-05-17/


Do you know of other holidays and holy days about this Samhain cross-quarter or zone of the calendar? startalker.tim@gmail.com

Daylight Saving Time Ends

Sunday, Nov 7, 2021, 2:00 AM, clocks back to 1:00:00 am local standard time in most U.S. zones. Arizona, Hawaii, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico do not use DST, Daylight Saving Time and are customarily in Standard Time: AST, EST, CST, MST, PST, AHST.