A Festival of Light - Brigit's Day-February 1

As Bring, Spring, Bride, Bridget and Breed
 these Goddesses and this day are symbolic 
of the quickening 
of the year newly born at the Winter Solstice. 

It is when the mammals' first milk drops for their new babies.

 Imbolc is Gaelic for First Milk.

Imbolc is one of the cross quarter days, which function
like acupuncture meridian spots
 in the year. 

When you get near to one, you can sense it. 

We are rapidly approaching Imbolc on February 1 (later Christianized to into Candlemas)..

 Believe it or not, this is and has always been 
the gateway into Spring.

 The door cracks open here. 

The popular misconception 
is that the Solstices and Equinoxes are the first days of their respective seasons, while they are actually the peaks of their season. 

So Spring Equinox (March 20 this year), 
is more akin to the full Moon of Spring, 

rather than its first day.... 

Just notice and decide for yourself.

 Look around you, in the northern hemisphere, the traces of spring on the west coast are unmistakeable. I know that lots of the north is still frozen but perhaps you may encounter a hellebore, a snowdrop or a witchhazel blooming in a garden as you pass through.

"The fire which had so served Humanity at its nomad stage now took on far deeper significance to these new agriculturalists. In setting down roots, they embraced all that was significant to them from their Old Ways and, at the hearth it was the Fire Goddess who emerged from the distant past to the future way ahead. It was upon her fundament that great myths would be built, growing like a giant beanstalk, or World Tree, the backbone on which all of civilization would be hung. And over the passing millennia, even as her past became obscured, never did the Fire Goddess fall out of favor, for the fire would always be central to civilization."

"Sir James Frazier called St. Bridgit an old heathen goddess of fertility, disguised in a threadbare Christian cloak. In her biography it is told that she was born in a Druid's house and was brought up by a wizard. She turned water into beer and was the foster mother of Christ."

Julian Cope - The Modern Antiquarian

Names of Brigit:

Bree, Bring (the bringer of the seeds of harvest) (as Bring = Spring), Brig (as Brig = Sprig), Bridget, Bride, Freya, Frigg (the Norse Bree and Brig)

Vocabulary born from Brigit's names:

bride, breed, braid, pregnant, prick, praise, pretty, bright, sprig, spring, spirit