Candlemas, Fire Festival, Blessings & Corn Dollies
Sunday is Candlemas Day, a day of significance astronomically and religiously. Candlemas marks the moment in time (day) between winter solstice and spring equinox (cross-quarter day). It’s a festival of preparations for spring – setting up green houses, turning over the soil learning biodynamic gardening. We sort our seeds, call forth their life-force, thus securing our future food supply. The Light has returned. We feel hopeful once again.
February 1 & 2 are St. Brigid’s Days. We bake multi-grain breads, weave crosses out of wheat or oat stalks, hanging them in homes, barns, sheds and gardens. The crosses protect us from fires and lightning. Some make corn dollies from dried (soaked in water) corn sheaves, offering the dollies, dressed in gingham, as gifts.
In the Catholic Church, Candlemas, 40 days after Christmas, marks the end of Epiphany. On this day, the holy child and Mary are presented in the Temple. Mary enters into a “mikvah”, a bath (for purification) of sea water) and the holy child (Jesus) is recognized as the promised and long awaited one – the “Light of the world.” We, too, bathe ourselves in salt and sea water, herbs and pure oils. Disciples are called during Aquarius, to also be the “Light of the world” for thirsty humanity (Aquarian task).
Candlemas is a fire festival, reflecting the Sun’s rising light. In the plant kingdom a fire is rising in the sap. In the Catholic churches today, beeswax candles are blessed and used throughout the year for light & protection. These rituals anchor into our little world the Light of Life itself. They connect us to the earth and to the heavens. We come into balance on this cross-quarter day. We prepare always and first, through knowledge of these things. (read daily updates on Risa D’Angeles FB page)
ARIES: Experiences and thoughts, dreams and visions come quickly these days. It’s as if visions make up your daily reality. You’re being called to study and research, discover (or create) groups that support and belong to you, forging a template for community. You are to negotiate fear because you know it’s no longer useful. Wisdom’s coming. It would be good to study the art and science of astrology.
TAURUS: Your future is in front of you. It’s asking you to help create a large portion of everyone else’s future; to lead with others in partnership and cooperation; to discuss new era visions others can uphold and bring into form and matter. Careful if you carry too many responsibilities. You need to ask for help every now and then, something you never do. Take care of your health. Do you need someone by your side? Call them.
GEMINI: You might have the desire and aspiration to take up a new study, return to school, learn a new profession, travel far away and/or ask for an expanded job description. It seems as if you’ll travel to one or more communities in order to visit friends, assess living there and review their spiritual emphasis and orientation. Daily work strengthens your body. Consider your resources and finances. Pray over them each day with gratitude. Judge all that you have, including yourself, as deeply worthy.
CANCER: Great benefits, at first very subtly, begin to fall into your life. Later you realize a joy has quietly entered your life as if on little cat’s feet. You find your thinking is reshaping itself. You become a receiving, transmitting, intuitive, perceptive agent and visions become more and more available. Allow nothing to stress or impose demands upon you. Your fear could do this. Love neutralizes fear.
LEO: You become more and more aware that you’re working with powerful cosmic forces these days. You are a powerful force, too, to others. Notice that people around you may be acting these forces out in their behaviors. This is an extraordinary piece of information…to know that people in our environments act out planetary movements. Observe all work realities. Remember also that from loss comes a profound new life. It is a good time to be creative now.
VIRGO: Take hold of the family resources and begin to work carefully with them, restructuring, making changes, rearranging all financial comings and goings. Place more into savings; use the money for tangible goods. Use it also to prepare for the future when goods may not be as available. Who in your daily life, including your work world, would you consider your community? If no one, then begin visualizing one right where you live.
LIBRA: Some shift and/or transformation, something from the past or something deeply forgotten, something expansive, something important in your domestic world – all these are creating changes in your sense of self-identity. Something also, is creating more discipline in your life. Perhaps there is a distance or a withholding or an absence or a task needing to be completed that will bring a new depth of feeling (and forgiveness) to your personal world. Think good fortune, health and healing, order and structure. “Be of love, more careful than of anything.”
SCORPIO: Your personal seed thought is the word “creativity.” Study this word from all levels, and then list for yourself all the ways you are creative. Then list all the ways you wish to be creative. Then list all those you consider creative. Then define the word creative. From these exercises create an art piece that is an expression of your joys and sorrows, enjoyments, talents and abilities, hopes, wishes and dreams. The creative field is wide open now. Bring it down and in. Like a mudra.
SAGITTARIUS: Everything about you is of value. It’s also very personal, very inner and the nature of your potential opens in direct relation to your spiritual beliefs and endeavors. Venus is overseeing your domestic reality. You have the opportunity to make great things occur, especially if you work ceaselessly with the art of gratitude (for everything). Then you’re bestowed with great blessings and grace. Grace is an esoteric word for Initiation, a change in consciousness, which you’re going through. You laugh…
CAPRICORN: You’re inspired to study family and relatives seeking your history so you can have a realistic (building to compassionate) view of where you came from and who you are. This gives you stability and a sense of self within a cycle of history. Sometimes in families misunderstood communications occur and realities are lost. It’s a cross between political idealism and freedom. Family is more important than politics. There’s a mantram that is useful to recite daily. “Let reality govern my every thought and truth be the master of my life.”
AQUARIUS: Take extra care with personal resources, with what you consider of value. Realize that things in matter, although they have monetary value, are not the same as people with feelings, hopes and needs. Try not to overspend and know there are financial benefits coming your way. Also realize when you help others, your well-being and self-identity grow exponentially. It’s time for you to be in community. You’re needed there. In the meantime, careful with communication. Love more.
PISCES: You will, day by day, begin to experience a greater freedom of identity, much of which has been hidden in a cloud of unknowing for the past several years. You will experience a new destiny, a celebration, a bit of self-indulgence, horizons widening, opportunities appearing and expanding, projects initiated with beauty and the arts more and more incorporated in daily life. You had almost given up, yes? Life magically comes to your aid.
