Imbolc in a Snake Year + Elderberry
Hello friends~ we are so in it, aren’t we? I hope you are doing ok and coming back to center everyday in the ways that feed your unique soul. Thank you so much for being here in my happy place with me!
I received (mostly) resonate feedback about my ‘leaving Meta’ Substack post through emails, the comments and lots of personal conversations. Over the years, I would take breaks from social media, delete the app from my phone for periods of time, but to actually delete the account completely and make a commitment to stand behind my values regarding this medium has been significantly different in feel. An unforeseen relief and spaciousness.
I am excited to see where the forms of connection with the wide world will be birthed from here, and I know Substack is currently a big link in that way for me. So if you like what I am writing about, and you want to put some of your attention on weaving humanity with the natural world instead of (or in addition to) American politics, then please share about and forward this newsletter. I am not saying stick your head in the sand, but I am saying find balance in attending to the things you can do and really love. I am only here as long as you are and the more of us actually doing what we love instead of complaining about what we detest, the more likely we build a beautiful world. For we are wherever we put our attention.
Listen to Mary Morgaine read ‘Imbolc in a Snake Year’
On January 29th of this week, our very big yet very small world collectively experienced an Aquarian dark moon and, whether we observed it or not, none of us are immune to the influences of the cosmos. The Chinese were definitely in tune with something when they chose the second new moon after Winter Solstice to mark the beginning of the new year. It’s when I personally begin to feel a fresh start. I’ve been warming up to 2025 since January 1st, and now it feels like I can finally embrace it. BTW, why does January always feel so long, like way longer than any other month?? It just goes on and on and on. Anyway…
In the Chinese Zodiac and Taoist Astrology, this is the year of the Snake, the year my daughter was born 12 years ago, which marks her first cycle through the ancient system of 12 animal signs that foretell the kind of year ahead, and I celebrate that! A Snake year is known as a year for contemplation, rest and shedding what no longer serves, feeding our creativity to overcome challenges, being deliberate with our attention and finding resiliency in our intelligence and intuition. It’s a year for allowing deep introspection and making shifts inwardly as opposed to say a Dragon year, which we just experienced, which is a year for ‘acting out’ and taking risks, starting businesses and making other big decisions and long-term commitments.
With Snake year, we do well to ask ourselves “What am I contemplating shedding and how do I want to feel inside this new skin?’ The answers to these questions can be a compass for how to be and what to do in the year ahead.
Not coincidentally, the Chinese New Year is also the same day as Lunar Imbolc, or what I call true Imbolc, since the Celtic Holy Days were sun and moon based before they were boxed into a Gregorian calendar. I love love love this Holy Day and always prioritize taking the sacred pause to be with this sabbat in an intentional way. Last year, you may remember I wrote about how it was in learning about Imbolc that I was pulled out of decades of experiencing severe winter ‘funk.’ If we open up to it, Imbolc season can coax us out of our mental traps and connect us to the land’s needs, stories and gifts in the dark of winter and give us faith and excitement that a new dawn is just around the corner.
Like all shifts in seasons, Imbolc is a liminal space, a threshold that is made not just of one day but several, so you have plenty of opportunity to be with it in an intentional way even if you can’t do it right away. I had a little ceremony in the winter garden early Wednesday morning and during it one thing I practiced was expanding my imaginal cells into what it might be like to be a seed:
…….It’s pre-dawn, around 5:30 am, and I’ve built a fire in my garden. I lie down on a blanket and then cover myself up with another blanket and imagine I am a little seed just about to sprout out of the slumbering earth. I try to get inside the consciousness of a seed and suddenly become of those seeds that can take years to show any outwardly signs of growth even though it has been sending a taproot down for a while. I become so impatient, like ‘why is it taking me so long to sprout, grow, bloom, fruit…what am I still doing, being fully underground?’ Ugh! I want to get out of this dark hole but I can’t! Then I surrender and enjoy the imaginal process, and I swear I feel my tailbone sending down roots as I settle.
Next, I am a little seed that wants to germinate quickly, like a radish seed, and I beg to slow down. Stay in bed, I say to my seed self. Stay in this comfort of dark and surrounding soil where it is so Quiet and so Still. Rest in this peace, I plea with my seed coats. But just as I am about to burst out my cotyledon, I turn into another seed, one who is content and happy to be where it is.
I feel protected and held. I feel like I am in just the right place. Nowhere to go. Nothing to be except this seed, right now. I have arrived. I like it here. I am present with my seed self. And then slowly, I began to crack. In a good way, I totally break apart. The seed moves through my human body as it stretches, yawns, expands, fingers and toes wiggle. I peek through the covers and see the stars. This vast night sky may be the very first thing the seedling senses, it dawns on me! Or maybe its first ‘sight’ is the light it will eat for the rest of its life. Then I hear sounds, sounds of wind and owl and fire crackling. What is the first sound a seed experiences? I am fully overcome with the joy of being a seed, and I feel so so grateful to be alive.
Suddenly, I see a satellite moving across the sky, and then another. My seedy imagination is jolted into a sensation of the satellite falling to earth and crushing my tender new sprout. I am thwarted back into the Ugh of life! All the space trash-it’s going to harm so many things as it comes back down to earth- what a disaster waiting to happen!
I pause to regain composure again before returning to fully sprouting my first leaves. I am sitting back up now and have turned back into myself and immediately pray for grace. I then bless both the seeds I will sow and the seeds that will sow themselves, and before going out onto the land to make offerings for prosperity for the field and wood in the year ahead, I read aloud a apropos poem:
Out of the darkness is born the light of all possibility.
The child of promise sits upon the crone’s shoulders.
Standing in the pre-dawn looking out from my winter cave
Over the wheel of the year
The stars bright with Mystery
The sun not yet dimming their vastness of potential,
I breathe in the cold night air.
What possibility is coursing through my veins?
How am I an agent of Mystery?
What beauty will I weave in this turn around the sun?
This is the time we,
Like willows in moonlight,
Feet rooted in the sweet dark earth,
Are moved and breathed by the Muse.
Like a gentle wind she touches,
Seeing and loving
Our every bud of soul
Beauty and longing.
In this threshold,
Between potential and action,
What seed is swelling in your deep?
What has the Beloved sown in you
That is gestating,
Awaiting the irresistible
life force of spring to birth?
-Jonah Ruh Roberts
Shortly after coming back inside from this ceremony, I looked at my calendar to see just exactly what time lunar Imbolc was this year. I read that it was at 7:36 am EST. Then I turned and looked at my clock and it was exactly 7:36 am! That felt like a Snake year confirmation for sure- mysterious, deliberate and powerful. This is how I want to feel inside my new skin as I shed old ways of doubt and criticism. Welcome, Imbolc! Welcome, year of the Snake! Welcome, 2025! May we be oh so deliberate with our precious attention.
Mary Morgaine Squire
January 31, 2025
Under a sliver of a waxing moon
~Love Letters to Our Plant Allies~
Elder, Elderflower, Elderberry
Sambucus canadensis, nigra
Adoxaceae
Listen to Mary Plantwalker read her Love letter to Elder
Dear Elder,
It’s a dreary January day, and I sip on your dark purple infusion and pretend it’s grape juice or wine. It’s so deep in purple/red color that it’s not hard to do and since I love/hate your flavor, it helps me in getting it down. I am watching the birds at the feeder feasting on sunflower seeds and thinking about how in late summer, I can’t beat them to your fruit—they eat up each berry so quickly and I don’t want to net you just to get a harvest! The birds leave a little, but because of their passion for you, I have come to use your flower medicine more than your berry. Elder. What a name of honor.
But your name doesn’t actually mean what we use Elder for today. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word aeld meaning fire, because your hollow branches were blown through to start fires as well as blow smoke to keep away ‘evil’ spirits. I see this reference to evil often when I study plants of old and I don’t resonate with that concept, Elder. I like to think you were called upon to keep away bad vibes and negativity. Regardless, you are definitely adept at getting rid of the unwanted, so thank you!
Right now if I go outside and look at you, there are no berries which is why I prefer to call you Elder instead. I see your bare, grayish brown, warty branches with leaf buds opposite one another on up the stem. You don’t look like much this time of year, forgive me for saying so. I find it utterly amazing that the recipe for your large pinnate leaf and big cream-cluster of a flower is already inside of that stem, just waiting for the right timing to unfurl into your absolutely gorgeous self. Especially since your stem is so pithy- how do you fit all that magic in there?
Children have been hollowing out that soft pith and making whistles out of your branches for centuries. In fact, your botanical name Sambucus comes from the Greek word ‘sambuce,’ which means ‘wind instrument.’ We also love to use your twigs for making magical wands. The stories go that the King and Queen of the Fairies live in your Elder groves and we must ask permission for your wood, flower or fruit before taking, or else we may suffer ill. This is a reminder to honor all life and to not take anything for granted.
I had heard one could (with permission) take a cutting from your bush and just stick it in the ground and grow your own Elder patch. I first tried this (before internet searches) and stuck you on a dry, compacted bank during a drought and you promptly died. I am sorry. I later learned through observation that you liked to grow in moist locations. So next time, I stuck some of your cuttings in the ground in a seepy spot and you went wild! It is a problem, Elder, how happy you are where I planted you the second time. Not your problem, but mine. I really like you, but you pop up in my other garden beds and won’t back off no matter how many times I pull you out.
There are over two dozen species of Elders, and some of the medicinal varieties are hybrids of your canadensis and nigra species. I don’t know which one I have exactly, only that it’s beautiful and has made an excellent thicket for wildlife habitat and food. I have seen a huge black snake up in your tops in midsummer, eating the eggs from the cardinals’ nest, who still come back every year and build a nest in this hedge. The cardinals in particular love, love hanging out in your branches!
If we want to grow you for flower and fruit, I have found cutting you down to about one foot from the ground once every 3 years or when you become compacted and less fruitful will reinvigorate your yields. You are amazing- you will grow back and fruit within one season if we do this early on, like now, at Imbolc time!
For those of us who know you, we have seen how much dead wood you can produce in one year. Your shrub is a long-lived perennial, but your branches die back regularly. They remind me of a head of hair- dead hairs are falling out everyday yet more hair keeps growing. If I push on your shrub, invariably one or some dead branches crack and fall to the ground. It doesn’t mean your plants are unhealthy or dying, it is just part of your natural habit, it seems. Shedding the old. You teach us this like the snake.
If we don’t help you shed, your patch becomes full of dead wood which leads to lesser air flow, less light and less room for new growth. The Mother Elders, the ones of you originally planted, are stockier and cannot be cut back very easily. In Sicily, I met some of you who were 30 feet tall! You don’t seem to be so picky about needing fertilizers and thrive in a variety of pH soils as long as there is plenty of sunlight and water. Like Doug Elliott says, “Plants just eat dirt and drink light.”
Supposedly all parts of your plant are poisonous when raw (I have eaten many a raw elderberry but don’t tell anybody.) You contain cyanogenic glycosides that are removed with heat or drying so making tea or rehydrating berries or frying up flower fritters makes it all good. I know you are served well by these cyanogenic glycosides as they act as a transport for carbon and nitrogen and help form your leaf buds, among other things of which we have no idea this cyanide is doing, I am sure.
I have made you into Elderberry syrup and mead, dried your berries for tea and made Elderflower cordial. I even found a recipe for Peppermint- Elderberry cookies that was delicious! Elder, you are a medicine chest- a flu remedy par excellence, an anti-viral go to, a healer of chest/respiratory infections, a diaphoretic, a cooling herb when we are sweating in August and a digestive support (carminative).” Your sour taste is packed with nutrients. I thank you dearly for all of these gifts that you bestow upon the people.
You contain magical lore aplenty, so may we make wands communally with your twigs and cast spells for a healthy world. How white your flowers are yet how dark your berries become! I love this contrast, this yin/yan offering that helps us remember that nothing is every fully black or white, that coming back to center is where health resides. Thank you, Elder, you teach me so much about how to live well and in balance.
Love,
Mary Plantwalker
Weaving Community~
~Dolly’s song Light of a Clear Blue Morning has really been hitting the spot for me lately:-) I do so love Dolly Parton.
~Jonah Rhu Roberts, who wrote the beautiful poem I shared above, is offering a 13 Moons year-long Soul Journey for women wanting to step forward into sacred leadership. It’s an in-person immersion and based in New Hampshire.
~Hey Asheville peeps!! Plants for Everyone is back and having a big annual sale on March 1st. They provide affordable edible and ornamental plants/trees to the local community early each spring. Most of the plants are sold bare-root.
A note from Lucas and Emma of Plants for Everyone: “After Hurricane Helene, our region needs stream bank stabilization in a big way! We plan to do our part by donating native plants suited for stream banks and erosion control to our Plants for Everyone community. We will have extra plants of this nature available at the sale with no extra purchase necessary.”
~In his book Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, John Philip Newell writes an exquisite chapter on Brigid, patron saint and goddess of this Imbolc and Candlemas day. He reminds us that Brigid is derived from the Sanskrit word for ‘brightness.’ “The earth goddess was the shining or brightness deep in all things. She was described in terms of immanence rather than transcendence. There were no carved anthropomorphic images of the goddess Brigid. She was sought and reverenced in the rivers and streams, in the forests and mountains rather than in the heavens.”
~The 2025 Eat Something Wild Everyday Challenge
I was gathering greens for the chickens the other day when I stumbled upon a new plantain patch and had to whip out my phone and share it with you! I want to encourage all of these wild edible healing plants that show up freely to keep doing their thing by tending them and supporting their spread. The best hay we ever had for mulching the gardens was from a field of Plantain. The smell was heavenly! Read my piece on the Power of Plantain if you are wondering why I am so particularly excited about this ally.
Remember: This challenge doesn’t have to be every single day, so don’t get discouraged! You can start any day. The point is to turn ‘eating something wild’ into a habit which strengthens your relationship with the land and the seasons.
It’s my intention to share graphics from each week of 2025 of the wild plants I am finding to nibble in this region. And I’ve made an extra challenge for myself which is: Can I eat something different every single day of the year? Are there enough wild plants around me to do that? I don’t know! I imagine I will eat the same plant but different parts and count that as more than one. For example, a violet flower and a violet leaf are not the same, exactly...
Here are week 3 and 4 edibles!
~Whoever you are, you are welcome here. Bless your life.
Thank you for that beautiful meditation. As a senior, fears arise in the night. My old, conditioned memories want me to run out into the street yelling and raising my fists. This I know, challenges have arisen each decade of my adult life and I have learned from them all.
I know I am where I should be and I am so grateful for the lessons I have learned to assist me to birth a more resilient woman.