Rowan is the second vowel in the ancient Druidic Beth-Luis-Nion Tree Alphabet, which is L for Luis, meaning Flame, one of her old names, alluding to her fruit and her fiery spirit.
Rowan owns the second month of the Celtic Tree Calendar (Jan.21 - Feb. 17).
This time of year embodies the essence of Rowan: Inspite of the harshness of the season, the life-force is quickening. It may still be very cold, it may be pouring down with rain and sleet, but something is stirring.
The days are slowly beginning to lengthen. Nature is attuning itself for another burst of life. It is harmonising the chaotic energies, resulting of the decay, which winter brought. There is an untouched newness in the air, delicate but with great inward strength. The soft power is stirring, waking everything up. There are catkins on the trees and the first snowdrops are pushing their leaves through the old grass.
On the 12th day of the Rowan month (Feb.1st) begins the first of the four Celtic cross-quarter festivals, called Imbolc (The others are Beltane which is the May-feast; Lammas, which is the festival celebrating the maturity of the summer; and Halloween, the festival of the two worlds touching. Together with the winter and summer solstices, the spring and autumn equinoxes, these festivals form the eight spokes of the wheel of the Year).
Imbolc celebrates the life force waking up from its winter slumber. Other names for it are: The festival of the stirring of the seed, the feast of the waxing light, Candlemas (Christianised version), Groundhog day (USA), or simply Brigid, after the Celtic Goddess to whom this feast was dedicated.
Brigid (or Brigantia in England) is the Celtic Goddess of Spring in its widest sense, as the renewing energy of Nature, which explains the wide range of powers attributed to her. She was a fire goddess, as well as patroness of wells and springs. She was the Goddess of Healing, Crafts, Poetry and Divine inspiration.
To the Celts of the hills, the Rowan tree embodied her spirit and it is appropriate that her festival should fall in the Rowan month
Brigid was one of the most influential Goddesses of the Celtic world and much beloved by her people. Whenever a woman, gets married, she becomes ‘the Bride’, the personification of the Goddess, birthgiver of life. With the event of Christianity, the reverence for her survived, both as Bride, the mother of St. Patrick and as St.Brigit, whom Irish legend, believed to be Mary’ s midwife and Jesus’ wetnurse and as such she was worshipped as ‘Mary, Queen of Heaven’. A perpetual fire is kept for St. Brigit in Kildare.
Brigid’s festival in the Rowan month celebrates the magic of new fire and the germinating life force. It nurtures inspiration, creativity and healing. Traditionally fires or candles are lit at midnight and people attune to the stirrings deep inside themselves. It is a good time to see visions of yourself reborn.
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