Greetings,

Today we have two very auspicious occasions occurring, and this gives us insight into what we can do with the year. To begin with we have the full moon in Aquarius, which is a wonderful time to focus on planning what to do with the year. We are at the threshold of a new energetic year, and thus we have an opportunity to decide how we want to bring our light into the world for the upcoming year. What is our agenda, and how do we actualize it? These and many related questions can be used to spur us further in the upcoming year.

The second event that we have occurring is the ancient festival of Imbolc, also known as Imbolg, also known as Candlemas or Candlemass. However you look at it, this is a time to celebrate the return of the first light to the earth after a cold hard winter. While the name of the festival and the basic features are Celtic, other parallels are found throughout the ancient lands, particularly in Egypt. There are two ways of looking at this festival. The first one is that it occurs February 2nd of every year, like clockwork. The second way to look at it is to consider the astrological side. You see, every time we have a season change, the Sun is entering into a cardinal sign in the zodiac; half are equinoxes and half are solstices. While we really don’t have the space to get into the differences between those two, it is enough to see the correlation between the seasons and the cardinal sign ingresses. If that is true, then the other four festivals of the eight spoked year occur when the Sun is at fifteen degrees of a fixed sign because this creates harmony and rhythm. However, this also means that those dates will fluctuate throughout the year, but they will always be at fifteen degrees. Fifteen degrees is halfway between each cardinal sign, or season, as it were. Thus fifteen degrees Aquarius (Imbolc), fifteen degrees Taurus (Walpurgisnacht/Beltane), fifteen degrees Leo (Lughnasadh), and fifteen degrees Scorpio (Samhain) all constitute the standard four part year plus their balances.

Deciding what to do is a very wise move to make during this time. However, please keep in mind that we are on a Mercury retrograde, which tells us that it would be wise to work with tying things up from last year, rather than embarking on new, uncharted territory. This is a fire festival that is known for candles, and thus it would be wise to light one up while contemplating how to bring your light into the world.

Cheers,