You’d think that we humans would be used to it, this dark time of Winter. It happens every year, with greater intensity the farther north you live. It is almost a ritual in my own home to remark on how dark it is and how early the darkness comes, how the light of the morning feels delayed.
Consciously, we know the light will return. Beneath that conscious thought, though, don’t we all have a moment of uneasiness, wondering if that is really true?
At the end of January 2021, I remember this “feeling of the Dark” being intensified by the Pandemic. It felt like spring would never come. Masks and isolation defined so much of our world. It was dark and it seemed like it was going to stay that way!
A little more than a year before, on the day the national lockdown was imposed, I was supposed to give a workshop on chant and song, encouraging folks to use music to connect to Spirit. Instead, I found myself live on the Internet with EnCHANTica for the first time. In the hope of giving people something to connect with and ease the fear and loneliness the virus imposed, I sang every Pagan chant and song I could find!
There were many listeners that first Wednesday, and even more in the days after! The more I sang the older pagan music, the more the Muse would send new chants and songs. But those are stories for another time…
Covid still controlled our lives a year later, and January 2021 was traumatic in more ways than just illness! I truly “felt” the Dark that year – and I know I was not the only one. But that month came to its appointed end and the time of Imbolc was suddenly here with its promise of light and healing!
Just as I really “felt” the Dark, I was given a beautiful experience of what Imbolc brings to each person and to the world.
I remember working on what chants and songs I wanted to bring for EnCHANTica. In a moment, I was pulled into a place that was old and not here, as it were. It was some cottage with a group of people. The fire was mostly out and I could feel the cold urged in by the wailing wind outside. Then, from that dark place, I heard a quavering voice of a grandmother start singing:
“Candle, Candle, thee I light to brighten up this winter night…”
A single candle came to light from the dying embers in the hearth and made its way to those gathered together.
Younger voices joined her and sang as other tapers were lit. Gradually, the room and the people it sheltered was revealed in the new light of Imbolc.
“Lift the darkness… Bring the Light…”
Then the whole room was chanting, sharing the flame and the light. Faces glowed, filled with hope and joy as darkness left them. The Wheel was turning! The Wheel had turned!
“We pray thee on this Imbolc Night!”
I was pulled back to my here and now with these voices still ringing in my head, reaching for my instrument and some paper to gather this beautiful Imbolc lesson to share. I’d been given the melody and chant. The chords came easy and I played it over and over with vestiges of the old place I had seen in the background.
Just as I was starting to set my autoharp aside, I was given a few last words to end the moment:
“Now the winter dreams take flight.
Spring is coming with the Light!”
As with many of the pieces of music that bear my name, this Imbolc Candle Chant was a gift from the Muse. Chants like this always come when there is a need and in that dark time of 2021, we all needed to hear that the Light would return!
For more information about Ginger Ackley, including her collected articles here on Pagan Song, her bio, and links to Ginger’s sites on the web, check out Ginger’s page on Pagan Song.
For more articles about Imbolc, check out the Imbolc page within the Pagan Song Book of Shadows
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thank you for the article