Imbolc Thoughts on Dates

Blessed Imbolc! If your local climate is anything like ours, you may have recently sensed a change in Winter. It remains cold, and yet it has started feeling… different. The Winter bulbs coming up in our garden certainly seem to be enjoying this time of year.

We’d like to use this post to discuss dates for celebrating Sabbats! We celebrated Imbolc on the 1st of August, as this lines up with the traditional date for the celebration. However, if you’re looking to be more correct from an astronomical point of view (i.e finding the true midway date and time between the recent solstice and upcoming equinox, including accounting for Earth’s elliptical orbit), you may have celebrated it on the 7th of August instead. This certainly raises an interesting point – should you be aiming for celebrating on the traditional date, or the astronomically correct date?

There are many different answers to this question, and they’re all potentially just as valid as each other. On one hand, if you’re aiming for celebrating traditionally, then the traditional date may make more sense at first glance. However, there’s nothing stopping you from having traditional celebrations on the “astronomically correct” date. And likewise, if you have more modern celebrations in mind, you could still perform them equally well on either date.

Our approach tends to stride a middle line. Our celebrations take place on the night of the traditional date. Likewise any communing and magics – with the exception being any spells or rituals that are focused on the midway of the Winter solstice to the Spring equinox. We play these by ear, for if we feel the essence of the spell or ritual is tied more to the astronomical timing of the midway between the solstice and equinox than to the essence of the Sabbat, it makes more sense for us to perform them at the “astronomically correct” time. These may include spells or rituals focused on the waxing of the Sun’s strength.

However, we’re nothing if not flexible, and there have been occasions of us celebrating Sabbats on their “astronomically correct” date. This tends to occur if, in trusting our gut and/or our spiritual connections, it just seems to feel more “right” to go by that date for a particular Sabbat.

More food for thought, at least!