Candlemas – The Artist in Studio Hundy

Candlemas on 2nd February occurs between the mid-winter solstice and the spring equinox. Imbolc in the celtic calender. North East on the medicine wheel it is the “gate of birth”; between Earth and Air and between love for others and spiritual love. As with all these “in-between” gateways, within the cycle of the year, it holds a sense of great mystery.

Looking to nature we see the flowering of snowdrops at this time of year. Like jewels of light covering the darkened ground, they bring a sense of hope for the year to come; an uplifting contrast to the often dreary, grey days we frequently experience throughout January.

I am enjoying reading a beautiful book I chanced upon late last year: Nature’s Calendar The British Year in 72 Seasons.

Inspired by a traditional Japanese calendar which divides the year into segments of four to five days, this book guides you through a year of 72 seasons as they manifest in the British Isles.
From Sleeve notes

In a facinating entry for the micro-season 15th-19th January one of the authors, Rebecca Warren, links the emerging snowdrop to the festival of Candlemas. In Italian the plant is named fiore della purificazione (flower of purification) and in French it is sometimes know as violettes de la Chandeleur (Candlemas violets).

I thoroughly recommend this wonderful book. It can be picked up every 4-5 days for a topical, often thought provoking essay by one of the 4 authors, capturing some aspect of the natural phenomenon we can experience through observation in our immediate surroundings.

Although we may well not have seen the last of the snow this winter, the emerging snowdrops aways remind me of this lovely poem I discovered many years ago:

Last Snow

Although the snow still lingers
Heaped on the ivy's blunt webbed fingers
And painting tree-trunks on one side,
Here in this sunlit ride
The fresh unchristened things appear,
Leaf, spathe and stem,
With crumbs of earth clinging to them
To show the way they came,
But no flower yet to tell their name,
And one green spear
Stabbing a dead leaf from below
Kills winter at a blow.

Andrew Young 
_{born Elgin 1885}

In the mid-point of Winter, when the ground is often under a layer of frost, there is a very gradual stirring of nature’s activity. Snowdrops appear, greeting us with their bright white petals; a promise of the new light of Spring to come.

On Saturday evening (2^nd February) we celebrated Candlemas in our garden, bringing forward some of that promised light to the apparently dormant earth. A spiral of candles, laid on the crisp ground, symbolised the potential that the earth has to offer as winter gradually fades into spring.

Our fire bowl kept us warm, heated a delicious squash & chestnut soup and created the link that Candlemas has to the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc – the first fire festival of the year.

A clear dark sky was flooded with stars. Sirius, bright and clearly visible below Orion’s “belt”, twinkling in colours ranging from blue to red.