And so the seasons rise and fall, the wheel of the year turns, and the sacred circle of birth, death, and regeneration goes on...

In the Circle is a simple and beautiful guide that combines author Elen Hawke’s personal accounts of sabbats and moon rites with clear, commonsense instruction that makes Witchcraft accessible to anyone who wishes to enter the circle.

Journey through the moon’s phases and the eight seasonal festivals; gain an understanding of Goddess and God; learn how to build a shrine, perform rituals, and collect or make magical tools. Evocative and poetic, In the Circle will take you deeper into your inner core, the place where you can connect to the spirit of Nature and to your own innate knowledge.

The following excerpt provides a poetic, accessible description of this season’s pending fire festival, Imbolc:

Imbolc
The days are growing longer. The snow of January has melted, giving way to heavy but intermittent rain. In the small stone ring at the end of the garden, snowdrops are blooming, and the spears of crocuses are pushing through the brown debris of autumn. Although it is still cold, I sense that spring is drawing closer, and though we wake to bitter mornings when the pond is crackled over with a thin layer of ice, plants and animals are beginning to awaken. There is a dainty sprinkling of yellow where celandine stars the lawn beneath the lilac tree, and buds are forming on apple and rowan. The black starkness of the hawthorne is softened by swelling points of green.

At dusk, we all arrive at Sally’s house bearing milk, cakes, cheese, snowdrops, candles, and twigs of early catkins and pussy willow. In times gone by, every village would wait in darkness for a maiden of the community to rekindle their fires as she went from house to house with her rush taper, till the symbolic light of spring had been brought to every home. Now Mandy, Sophie, and Gemma, our own small maidens, come in from the kitchen, solemnly bearing their burning white candles, giggling a little as they push slipping crowns of greenery back onto their heads. We praise the girls, light our wish candles from the ones in their hands and push the wish candles into the earth-filled cauldron. We are welcoming Brighid, whose festival this is...

Imbolc (pronounced Immolc) is a cross-quarter fire festival that lasts from January 31 to February 2 and falls in Aquarius. It is sacred to Brighid, the Irish goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft. Imbolc should be celebrated in the early evening when the sun has recently set.

Although many groups call in the God as well, to me this is almost entirely a Goddess festival, the only one of eight in which the God is alluded to but not present.

In ancient times this festival was called Oimelc, which means ewe’s milk, as it was the traditional time for lambing. Because of this, Imbolc is a fertility festival linked with conception. This is further emphasised by the germination of seeds and the first glimpses of spring. The connection with lactation means that dairy foods are traditionally eaten now.

Imbolc is a time of deep cleansing and purification. The February rains wash the soil clean of the dross of winter, making them ready for spring sowing; and so we can also be cleansed of the old in preparation for new growth in our lives. This is a time of rebirth after the dark days of winter, and the light reborn at the Solstice now emerges and grows.

Symbolically, the Goddess is purified after the birth of the God at Yule. She is restored to virginity in the old sense of becoming her own person again. Candlemass, which falls on February 2, is the Christian version in which the Virgin Mary is purified following the birth of Jesus.

There is a second theme at this festival, that of the Corn Bride. At Lammas, the Corn Mother went into the burial mounds and entered her hag phase, becoming the Cailleagh in keeping with the darkness and cruelty of winter. Now she comes forth as the Corn Bride. Originally, the Corn Bride was made of corn or wheat at Lammas. She was dressed in white at Imbolc, then taken from house to house by the women of the community. On the first day of February she was laid in a rush basket, her marriage bed, with an acorn-tipped wand to represent the God’s phallus. She was attended by the women until the lights in the community had been doused and rekindled by the chosen maiden to represent the return of light after winter. After this the men were allowed to join in the ensuing feasting.

Snowdrops and white candles are used at Imbolc to represent purification. A white candle can also be burned as a wish candle to represent a seed to be germinated in one’s life that will grow through the waxing half of the year.