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In the season of Imbolg, it is cold, it is snowy, but there's also clear signs that spring will be coming soon. There is more sunlight each day, which makes for signs of hope. But the snow and cold also keep you indoors, making this a good time for celebrating hearth and home. Which, conveniently, the Irish goddess Brighid absolutely is a present part of, so this is designated, at least in our local calendar, her birthday, a fitting time of in-gathering and preparation for the coming year.
It's the season of Yuletide once again, a time of darkness and dreary weather, but also a time when we look to the sun for hope that she'll survive another year's chase around the fire and thus signal that we'll also survive. Which, so far we have, but with pandemics striking people down it's good to remember how lucky we are.
The late fall season is upon us. The last bit of crops have been brought in, I've been busily winterizing my house in preparation for the deep cold of winter, and there is a sense of the world dying as it turns towards darkness. As is typical for modern pagan types, this leads to a focus in this season on our beloved dead, particularly those who have been lost in the last year, and hence the main idea of this song is our friends' souls heading off to join the others who have gone. In many mythologies, the place where they're headed is somewhere across the ocean or sea, and they are bringing with them all they learned in this life, and the song calls to them in the hopes that they can teach future people what they know.
Fall equinox is upon us, and this enters my favorite season of the year. It's not too hot, it's not too cold, it's just right for humans to live. And unlike spring, which certainly has its charms, there's newly harvested crop coming right from my garden so I can feast on fresh veggies. This year, as in many years' past, I'll be celebrating the season by focusing on Persephone and her journey to take up her throne in the Underworld at this time of the year, with some inspiration from the Eleusinian Mysteries of the past. But also quite notably, the theme of equinoxes is a point of balance, where you're not definitively on one side or the other.
As Lughnassadh arrives, it just so happens that the Summer Olympic Games conveniently coincide with the traditional time for sports in Ireland dating back to before written records. This inspired me, for better or worse, to start with a concept of some sort of grand march to honor the tradition of athletic competition in the style of modern opening ceremonies, albeit with a bit less pizazz due to the simple fact that I can't conjure up a full orchestra.