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I. A
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Of Groundhogs, Shadows  

and Very Small Gods

If Candlemas be fair and bright, /
Come, Winter, have another
flight; / If Candlemas brings
clouds and rain, / Go Winter, and
come not again.

— Old English Folk Song

sessed anyone to come up
with the concept of

Groundhog’s Day. Poor
Punxatawny Phil, harassed and
prodded out of deep sleep, forced
into the waiting glare of hundreds
of bizarre humans popping flash-
bulbs (check out www.ground-
hog.org if you don’t believe me).
These humans must seem crazed
to poor Phil, as they scream and
cheer, desperately hoping for a
cloudy day that might provide
them with some sort of anthropo-
morphized illusion ofa Very
Small Animal proclaiming
Spring. Why do we have this
strange idea that a cloudy day in
western Pennsylvania on
February 2nd will assure us of an
early spring? »

When I was a child
learning about this strange cus-
tom, I didn’t get it. I suspect this
had something to do with my
provenance as a native
Vermonter. We never get spring
until May, regardless of rodent
behavior in Pennsylvania.

, It wasn’t until many
years later that I really started to
appreciate Groundhog’s Day. For
Americans, the holiday is the last
remnant of the worship of an
ancient Goddess. Novelist Terry
Prachett writes “There are bil-
lions of gods in the world 

lnever understoodwhat pos-

. They are the small gods — the

spirits of places where two ant
trails cross, the gods of 'microcli-
mates down between the grass
roots. And most of them stay that
way. Because what they lack is
belief.” Prachett argues that
“belief” is the operative factor in
making small gods into big gods.

Writer Neil Gaiman
takes up the theme as well, argu-
ing in several stories that old
gods die slowly, dwindling from
the height of their power into sad
reflections of their former selves
as those who once believed, who
offered prayers and reverence,
also dwindle to nothing. One of
Gaiman’s stories depicts Ishtar,
the ancient Sumerian goddess of
love, as an exotic dancer, strip-
ping for dollars in a lonely club
on a barren strip of American
highway.

.So we come to
Groundhog’s day. Certainly
Punxatawny Phil is a Very Small
God. But is he a new god just
beginning to create believers or
an old god whose believers
slipped slowly away?

Celebrated on February
2nd, Groundhog’s day is one of '
the last remnants of an ancient
celebration in honor of the Celtic
Goddess Brigid. Known as

 

Imbolc, it is perhaps the least
understood of the four great festi-
vals ofthe Celtic world. The
other three, Beltaine (May Day),
Lammas (the festival of the first
fruits in August) and Samhain
(the day ofthe dead or
Halloween) remain present in
many of our seasonal rituals dur-
ing their times of the year. B-ut of
Brigid and her Imbolc festival,
little remains but the hope of
spring and a startled groundhog
in Pennsylvania.

At one time Brigid was
one of the most powerful incama-
tions of the triple goddess of
Celtic spirituality. She was wor-
shiped widely throughout.pre-
Roman Europe, but especially in
Ireland and Wales. As a triple

goddess, she was the patroness of

poetry, smithcraft, and healing.
Brigid’s festival is associated
with the return of the light after
the darkness of the Winter A
Solstice. Imbolc is a fire festival
and celebrates the returning light
as the days begin to get notice-
ably longer and signs of the com-
ing spring begin to manifest.
While it is virtually

impossible to perceive signs of
spring in Vermont’s landscape in
February, it is the time when the
seed catalogues begin to crowd
our mailboxes. But if we go to
the source of Imbolc, the signs of

- spring are manifest. In Britain six

weeks from February 2nd, one
might see the blossoming of cro-
cus and daffodil. One of Brigid’s
symbols is the lamb, and her fes-
tival celebrates the ewe’s cycle of
pregnancy, birth and lactation.
Traveling through rural Britain in
February and March, there are
lambs and their mothers every-
where.

Much of what we know
of Brigid and the festival of
Imbolc survives because of her 1
assimilation into" the Christian
tradition. As happened for many
of the ancient goddesses, Brigid
had to pass for Christian or head
for the hills. Saint Brigid (or ‘
Saint Bride) of Kildare was, as
legend has it, the daughter of a
Druid and a contemporary of St.
Patrick. Her shrine was watched
over by virgin women and her
sacred fire was always kept bum-
ing. She is the patron saint of
spring and new growth. Her sym-
bol is the new-bom lamb. Her
feast is celebrated on February
2nd and known as Candlemas.
Candlemas celebrations invoking

Brigid’s sacred flame and the
return of the light have been cele-
brated right up until modern
times.

Part of the ritual
involves lighting candles and
bringing them to all of the dark
places of the church and the
home to drive away the shadows
and celebrate the returning light
of spring. While the worship of
Saint Bride suffered a blow dur-
ing the Reformation, when her
rituals were banned due to their
“magical” associations, remnants
of the Candlemas celebration still
exist in many parts of the Celtic
World and in America. Through
some bizarre transcontinental
transmogrification. the worship
of Brigid, the poet, smith, and
healer, has been transformed into
a celebration of the lowly
groundhog.

While groundhogs might "

be the most common form of

-Brigid worship in today’s world,

Starhawk, a priestess of the
Reclaiming Community based in
San Francisco, writes this about

Of Brigid and
her Imbolc
festival, little
remains but
the hope of
spring and a
-startled
groundhog in

Pennsylvania.

Brigid’s feast day:

“This is the feast of the
waxing light. What was born at
the Solstice begins to manifest,
and we who were midwives to
the infant year now see the Child
Sun grow strong as the days grow
visibly longer. This is the time of
individuation: within the meas-

.ures of the spiral, we each light

our own light, and become
uniquely ourselves. It is the time I
of initiation, of beginning, when
seeds that will later sprout and
grow begin to stir from their dark
sleep. We meet at Imbolc‘ to share
the light of inspiration, which‘
will grow with the growing year-”
And, while my heart

aches for the tragic romance of
Neil Gaiman’s stripper Ishtar, I
would prefer to imagine Brigid
laughing and celebrating the rem-
nants of her worship through

__4'