Folletto: ☾ Imbolc, Snow Moon, and my crystal collection! ☽

As a heads up, this blog post is heavy on spiritual aspects of my life!

All photos are mine. (Except for pixels!!)

Imbolc (also called Candlemas and Brigid's Day) is a celebration of the end of winter, where the sun returns to warm the earth. ☀

Imbolc may be celebrated many ways. As it originates as a Celtic five festival, many use the tradition to praise the Celtic goddess Brighid, but it's not uncommon for others to instead celebrate nature itself, in all it's beautiful cycles. This year it was on February 3rd!

"The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves within."

- William C. Bryant ⛅

This is my first year celebrating it, and as such, I wanted to test the waters; see how I felt about such holiday. I'm happy to say I really enjoyed it. Next year I plan to make a feast of appropriate foods and partake in rituals. (Some of my plans come from this great post!)

I tried to capture some evidence of the seasons changing, but living in a tropical environment... it's not such an evident change. [emoji]

Our greenery seems like fall more than anything!

My holiday alter consisted of:

❄ white candles

/ to symbolize the blankets of snow of winter

❄ sage and rose marry

❄ crystals

/ spirit quartz, lemurian quartz, opalite, clear quartz, moss agate, pyrite, banded amethyst, selenite

❄ faerie star

/ Brighid is the sister of the Fae

/ also I personally feel connected to fae and like to incorporate it into most of my spiritual rituals

For other decorating ideas I recommend looking here or other online resources.

This is my alter as a whole. It was nearly my favorite Christmas gift; originally an antique magazine rack with a cigar compartment, my family repainted it become my personal alter.

"A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan."

- Zitkala-Sa

The night following Imbolc (Feb 3rd) held a full moon, called the "Snow Moon".

I put my crystals outside for the night for a charging-soak.

This is about 95% of my crystal collection. I forgot a little container I left inside.

My larger (and favorite, probably) pieces are on the right. The bottom left is the group of most prized little pieces.

The top left corner is the larger group of raw and polished minerals I've collected for jewelry making purposes, bought in bulk!