This week, Pagans and Witches, Celtic cultural observers and Druids and Christians recognize Imbolc or St Brigid's Day—one of many cultural celebrations around the world that notice the light, the widening of angles by tiny degrees, a time to tend fires and dance and chant and believe a new season into being.
We breathe in and recognize the strange space of time between solstice and equinox. The feel, however tenuous, of light returning.
With our coven’s help, and drawing from the Imbolc chapter in Missing Witches: Reclaiming True Histories of Feminist Magic, we made a page of Imbolc rituals and explored the meaning of Imbolc for witches and other nature-based practitioners.
But what matters most to my hope and nervous system right now is the reminder that we don't have to be perfect, and we aren't all the way anywhere yet. We just have to practice.
We tell our kiddo: great practicing.
We repeat it like a litany.
Because we are re-encoding the parts of ourselves that twist around perfection and production.
We don’t need to be good.
We need to practice.
Practice what we believe.
Practice ways of putting it into our bodies.
Notice where we fail.
Make small adjustments.
Practice some more.
Break new things, hard things into small pieces and practice those.
Practice believing in each other.
Practice pushing Nazis out of all our spaces.
Practice unlearning misogyny and white supremacy in our minds. Practice moving ableism out of our bodies and homes.
Practice bending our knees when we stand together and they push against us with their shields.
Practice not going down dead ends.
Practice not getting kettled.
Practice learning which friendly businesses will let us slip out back doors. Practice withdrawing our money energy from oppressors and returning it to our neighbours.
Fragment and reassemble.
Practice resting.
Practice brushing up on sign language so we can volunteer to support disabled people in illegal ICE detention.
Practice disobeying unjust laws.
Practice calling senators and congresspeople.
Practice writing letters of opinion that get published.
Practice listening.
Practice loving.
Practice like water, slowly carving canyons, breaking through to people who are hiding in the dark earth of their privilege. Someday they'll have to sit down with their shadows.
Practice repair.
If you need to, practice leaving, and when you are ready, leave.
Then practice dancing.
Practice cooking vegetarian food.
Practice singing songs of love.
Practice listening in the dark to the quiet and uncomfortable voice of who you really are, attuning to ancient knowledge about balance. About what justice really looks like, and where it comes from.
And then, practice rest again.
Prescription
One simple Imbolc ritual:
Each morning, look up when sunset is that day.
Then when it comes, breathe with it.
Turn your face toward it.
Let your body know the light returns.
We have to practice hope too.
Witchcraft is a practice of attunement.
In New Moon Magic: 13 Anti-Capitalist Tools for Resistance and Re-Enchantment we wrote:
"Witchcraft is a practice of attunement with the more than human world, with the spectrum of possibilities in the past as well as the future, within ourselves and our communities, in order to call forth our dreaming.
Many have been branded with the word Witch specifically to break us from that radical polyphony we sense is possible. And so we gather up — in our seed bags, cauldrons, web communities, and grimoires — practices to resist that breakage, tools with which we incant the re-enchantment.
We sense in the vice grip of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism a fear of decentralized communion. Kyriarchy fears the lack of control implicit in becoming-with the animacy in everything, including the digital, the lack of control that is inevitable when we are being sporulated by the sacredness that is everywhere. But Veronica Varlow’s Bohemian Witch grandmother taught us fear is Forgetting Everything is All Right. We are not afraid of what the collective needs, of where the most marginalized will lead us, or of what truths the Earth will tell. We are ready to walk through the sorrow caves of the present singing, knives bright and at the ready, offering our bodies to the Earth, together crafting rituals and ceremonies for what comes next. To tend our gardens, feed our circles, tell our stories, sing our songs, and in these ways, together, conjure the pre-utopia. Together we call it forth by refusing to forget that our magic is real, that flourishing is still possible.
This praxis calls for a shift in our understanding of resources. And so for us, there are practical, political implications to being a Witch.
Political witchcraft is a Land Back movement. The Earth’s remaining wildernesses and “crown” lands and fundamental resources must shift to being coordinated by communities of indigenous scientists and knowledge keepers who can lead us in re-establishing kinship with the more-then-human world.
Political Witchcraft is a reparations movement. The hoarded wealth of billionaires resting on centuries of slave trade accumulation must be distributed with guiding principles of reparations for communities and individuals brutalized by colonialism.
Political Witchcraft is a Basic Income Movement. The right to the pursuit of happiness, and the right to social security require that each person, regardless of immigration status or incarceration history, be guaranteed a livable income and healthy living environment. We need to stop using Earth’s resources to perpetuate planet murder and systemic injustice and start using them the end poverty for all.
Political Witchcraft goes to work. We find our roles in the revolution and support the decentralized activism that makes change in real-world networks like tenants' rights groups, food banks and community kitchens, lake associations, knitting circles, and covens.
Political Witchcraft is anarchic tech. We are an open source movement, we are in all the code. The re-enchanted world will be planned and improvised using collaboratively built and maintained open-source systems, sharing open data, guided by open governance.
Political Witchcraft is platform agnostic. We will use technology when it suits us, but we have no loyalty to brands or systems, only to each other, only to the living principle itself.
In The Energy of Slaves, Leonard Cohen wrote:
All that we disclose of ourselves forever
is this warning
Nothing that you built has stood
Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down."
Coven Invitation
IMBOLC: Shedding & Remembering
Monday, February 2 · 8:00–9:00 PM EST
Hosted by Risa + Amy
Step into the turning of the wheel as we connect this Irish Pagan celebration of Ewe’s Milk with other cultural recognitions of the first hints of returning light between solstice and spring. In this ritual, we’ll honour Brigid, lean into the weird vibes of the shedding time, move through what no longer serves, say goodbye to the Year of the Snake, and awaken the coming Fire Horse.
Wear something against your skin that represents your Fire Horse energy, then layer garments you’re ready to shed (and donate after). We’ll turn cameras off and dance—or imagine dancing—shedding layers as we move. You can receive this as a guided meditation with garments laid over you like blankets, or wear them all and remove them privately.
Bring yellow birthday candles, water, and an optional small offering (milk, honey, grain, or something meaningful). We’ll close by using the cloudy inner seeing of this between time—hearth time, cross-quarter days—to remember a Fire Horse future together.
Closing Blessing
May small repetitions carry us.
May the returning light find us practiced and together, calling in the dawn.
Any system you contrive without us will be brought down.
Blessed Fucking Be.
