February Esbat // Lammas & Imbolc
Happy snap of my treasured astrological barometer, always stuck on Change
Before mankind invented time as we know it in order to correct the pesky lag between equinoxes and the maths that couldn't keep up, there was the wheel of the year. This is nature's time determined by the uncalculated movements of our luminaries, the sun and his lover the moon.
Today is the cross quarter, the middle point between solstice and equinox. This is marked by the sun sitting at 15 degrees of Aquaria, an esbat often observed on the first of the month because it's more convenient and easier to remember.
It is the alignment and reorientation that is the key to this day's place. Depending which half of the world you live in, today marks a distinct seasonal tipping point.
In the north, buried beneath snowdrift and bitter cold, the earth is waking from its wintery slumber. Imbolc shakes us from hibernation and the fire in our belly leaps to life once more. This change is a quickening, felt rather than seen and promising verdant growth ahead.
In the south, as the heat peaks and so too our outward directed energy, we begin to harvest all we have grown during these fertile months. Lammas is gratitude for the bounty we have enjoyed and acknowledgement that we reap what we have sown. We celebrate the fruit of our high season labours and store them for leaner darker times ahead.
Both herald a change of season we cannot yet touch. They mark the passage of time through our lives. They nod to our past and future simultaneously as the wheel eternally creaks our way. As it was and as it always will be, for those less guided by clocks and alarms and led by sun and soil and sky, travelling with moon and stars.
In the Coven Electric we have been observing the sabbat and fresh year energies through a series of musing, rites and rituals since Aquarius arrived. Join us if you would like to align more deeply to the true cycles of nature, your body and your world always walking with one foot in shadow and the other in light.
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Sabbat readings all this week to scry the next turn of the wheel, darklings // Wednesdays at Ecotopia and Fridays at Thistle & Co., or en lounge to suit you.
Words & pic c. Kerrie Basha 2025