Imbolc, also known as Brigid’s Day, marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. This ancient Celtic festival, celebrated on February 1st or 2nd, welcomes the first signs of spring. Imbolc is a time to honor the Celtic goddess Brigid, associated with fire, healing, and fertility.
As the earth begins to awaken from its winter slumber, Imbolc is a celebration of new beginnings and the promise of life returning to the land. Traditionally, it involves rituals such as lighting candles to represent the growing light, and making offerings to Brigid to seek her blessings for the coming season.
In many cultures, Imbolc is a time for spring cleaning and preparing for the agricultural year ahead. It’s a moment to set intentions, renew commitments, and embrace the energy of transformation. Many people create Bridgid’s crosses, woven from reeds or straw, as a symbol of protection and blessings.
Imbolc reminds us to connect with nature and the cycles of the seasons. It encourages reflection on personal growth and the potential for renewal in our lives. Whether through simple rituals or more elaborate ceremonies, embracing the spirit of Imbolc can bring a sense of hope and anticipation for the brighter days that lie ahead.
what do you mean elon musk did a nazi salute on live tv at the united states presidential inauguration twice and is now erasing the evidence off the internet by replacing the footage with the crowd cheering instead?
would be a shame if people reblogged this, wouldn’t it?
For some reason the versions of this where he gives two salutes is being deleted and replaced with a version with a quick cut to a cheering crowd so I’ll just share it here 🙃
the boring advice is still the best advice — look after yourself, look after your people, find some good work to do & do it gladly, feel your feelings but don’t dwell, don’t let the bastards take your peace — but every single day brings some new fuckery that wastes my time & skill & effort.
at which point I am once again overwhelmed with bitterness towards every worthless motherfucking MAGA and fence-sitting coward who did this to me. can’t run around screaming, can’t bite people, so I have to settle for screaming quietly on my blog & just trying to get thru the fucking day.
people who couldn’t cast a ballot for the coalition sure do feel entitled to FOUR FUCKING YEARS of my time & labor. incredible. just fucking incredible.
“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”
This week was the first “Winter Wonders” lunchtime talk at the Oxford Botanic Garden for the year. The timing couldn’t be better as I have exactly one hour for lunch between classes and the talks happen in just the right spacing to allow me to get there, enjoy the 20 minute wellbeing talk focused on one plant in the garden each week, then make it back to college in time to wolf something down and get back to class again. This week the talk was on snowdrops, which are mythologically associated with Imbolc and Candlemas, so a timely way to connect with nature as well as to enjoy the beautiful architecture of the garden. The rain was encroaching, but I stayed dry and had a lovely time.
I’m a pretty huge Apple Fanboy and and have been deep in the Apple ecosystem for many, many years. I realise that Apple is first and foremost a business, but deep inside I think I always sort of thought that Apple were on the side of the “good guys”. Sure, I was probably brainwashed into thinking this since I first saw the Apple “1984” Superbowl ad… it’s how they marketed themselves for many years.
As a gay man, I guess I’ve also liked that Apple promotes itself as promoting diversity, inclusion, and equality. Hell, Tim Cook came out over a decade ago. So, why the Fuck is he personally donating a million dollars to the Insurrectionist in Chief?
Now, looking at that ad again, all I can think of is.. “Apple.. why 2025 will be just like “1984” ”.
Wow, this was quite a trip… but an amazingly enjoyable one. So grateful to have access to such thought-provoking, passionate, and fascinating conversations. Accidental Gods is becoming my favourite podcast.
Willem Arondeus (1894-1943) led a gay resistance group in Amsterdam which was responsible for bombing the Amsterdam Population Registry offices. The attack was carried out on 27 March 1943 in an effort to destroy government records of Jews and others sought by the Nazis. As a result of the act, Arondeus was executed in 1943. His rescue efforts have been recognized by by Yad Vashem and the USHMM. Willem was openly gay before the war and defiantly asserted his sexual orientation before his execution. His last words were: “Tell people that homosexuals are not cowards”. In 1945, after the liberation of the Netherlands, Arondéus’s family was awarded a posthumous medal by the Dutch government in his honour.
Heinz Dormer with his faded blue eyes that would take on a terrified, faraway look as he remembered an awful place called “the singing forest.” As a young man, he was arrested under the Nazi’s anti-gay laws and incarcerated in a camp where homosexuals were tortured in a forest clearing. “It gave us all goosebumps,” he said of the distant screams of homosexuals hoisted onto hooks in the woods. “The howling and the screaming were inhuman.” Heinz Dörmer (1912 – 1998) was a German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for homosexuality under Paragraph 175. He was repeatedly released and rearrested, spending more than ten years in a variety of concentration camps and prisons.
Born in Berlin, Germany, he was involved with church youth groups as a child, by age fifteen, he was frequenting Berlin’s gay bars. Dörmer was 10 years old when he joined the German Youth Movement (Wandervogel) in 1922. In 1929, he founded his own youth group, called the “Wolfsring” (I"ring of wolves"), which combined amateur theater performances, and travel. In 1932, he was promoted to youth leader and worked in the scout movement at a national level. He and his group tried to stay independent, but in October 1933 they were forced to join the Hitler Youth. In April 1935, Dormer was accused of homosexual activities with members of his troop, and from 1941 to 1944 he was imprisoned, for corrupting the youth, at Neuengamme concentration camp, a “holding tank for homosexuals, politicals, and non-German aliens.” After the war, Dormer spent another eight years in prison on various charges. After his final release in 1963, he returned to Berlin to live with his father, who died in 1970. His 1982 application for reparations from the German government was rejected. He died in 1998, but made an appearance in the 2000 documentary film Paragraph 175, which portrays survivors of persecution then-authorized under the German anti-male homosexuality law of the same name. (Source: The Jewish Journal/ Elise Rolle Queer Lives
This is why we must never forget, this is why we must resist.
ALT
