Pagan festivals and sabbats - Imbolc and Ostara


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the celtic year 1 2 3 4

The Celtic year is traditionally divided into quarter and cross-quarter days, all marked by a major celebration. For an overview, see the Wheel of the Year page.

Samhain - Yule - Imbolc - Ostara - Beltane - Litha - Lughnasadh - Mabon

February 2 - Imbolc

imbolc Imbolc is a festival of waxing light and purification, heralding the potential of spring. It is associated with the Celtic goddess Brid (also called Bride, Bridhe, Brigid or Bridget). In terms of the Goddess cycle, Imbolc is the point at which the old, winter aspect of the Goddess, the Crone, is transformed into the Maiden, the Virgin Goddess, Brid).

Colours associated with Imbolc are white, silver, lilac and pale yellow. Appropriate herbs are basil, bay, celandine and benzoin. Yellow and white flowers may be used as altar decorations or offerings.

Brid was the Goddess of poetry, healing (particularly midwifery) and smithcraft. Imbolc traditions center around light and purification. Candles may be lit in each room of a house to honor the returning sun, or in each window from sundown on Candlemas Eve (February 1st) until dawn. This is an appropriate time to cleanse or bless your house, to seek inspiration, and to purify yourself of limiting thoughts and negative attitudes. Dairy foods are particular appropriate to eat on this festival of calving and lambing. Imbolc is thought to mean 'in the belly', a reference to the seeds of life ready to stir again in the cold earth, and to the purification of the Maiden so that she may conceive the divine child at the following festival, Ostara.

21 March - Ostara

ostara Ostara is the solar festival that marks the transition from the dark to the light half of the year: day and night are of equal length. By Ostara, life is returning to the land in noticeable ways, and so nature demonstrates the festival's associations with revival and the ascendancy of light.

Appropriate herbs are celandine, cinquefoil, jasmine, rue, tansy, and violets. Acorns, crocuses, daffodils, dogwood, honeysuckle, irises and lilies can be used as decorations.

Ostara is a celebration of conception, regeneration and the triumph of light over darkness. In terms of the Goddess cycle, it is the time when the Maiden of Imbolc conceives the child that will be born at Yule. The Christian Church celebrates both aspects of Ostara as the day of the Annunciation (when Mary conceives Christ) and the day of the Resurrection (when Christ returns triumphant from the darkness of death).

Ostara is a Germanic goddess of spring and fertility, and the name of her Anglo-Saxon equivalent, Eostre, was used to derive the term Easter by the Venerable Bede in the 8th century. Eostre is a lunar goddess, and her symbols include the egg and the rabbit, both of which are obvious fertility symbols. Just as Ostara is a time to sow the seed that will be harvested later in the year, it is also a time to act on new ideas and begin new ventures that will grow as the year proceeds.

Samhain - Yule - Beltane - Midsummer - Lughnasadh - Mabon