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Imbolc Spell for a Burning World

Imbolc Spell for a Burning World

Last updated on: January 31, 2026 at 6:55 pm by Heron Michelle

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Imbolc Spell for a Burning World 2026-01-31T18:55:39-04:00 Heron Michelle

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Ten years ago, 2016, was the last time we celebrated Imbolc in the BTT – Before Trump Times. Imbolc was always my favorite Sabbat. So joyful. So comforting. During some of the darkest years of my life, I would steel my courage with the mantra, “Spring always follows Winter.” Celebrating these neo-pagan ideals felt noble, restorative, as though we were recovering something wholesome and ancient that had quietly endured since antiquity.

But time, study, and lived experience have a way of refining our perspectives. I would teach that class very differently today.

The season itself has not changed. Winter is still cold and demanding. The light still grows within the Aquarian tide. But we have changed — as witches, as a society, and as a culture. I am no longer the same teacher, witch or priestess that I was then. In the post-menopausal “Queen” stage of my life, I carry a more seasoned, sober perspective now.

What we believe to be possible has shifted. We practice witchcraft in a world that is visibly unstable: ecologically, politically, and socially. The collapse of familiar systems is no longer theoretical. It is daily news. The cards we’re drawing these days land as the Tower, Adjustment and the Devil…over and over again. It has become harder to speak of “hope” without sounding naïve.

So this year, I want to talk about what Imbolc has had to become.

Imbolc Then and Now

Ten years ago, my Imbolc lessons centered on optimism. We cleaned the house to make room for what was coming. We lit candles as a gesture of faith. We spoke easily about spring as an inevitability, trusting that light would return simply because it always had.

Now, my Imbolc teaching carries a different weight. We still clean the house, but we do so because clarity matters when fear is loud and confusion collects like dust-bunnies. We still light candles, but now because “darkness” is way more than symbolic; darkness and despair ride shotgun through every day of this modern life. And when we say that America’s figurative “spring” is coming, we understand that it will not arrive on hope alone. It will require attention, labor, and care.

I remind myself daily that we cannot simply succumb to despair, but we can pivot toward maturity. Witchcraft has never been a religion for times of comfort; it developed as a practical response to instability. We practice not because the world feels safe, but because it does not. In this way, Imbolc must offer more than seasonal poetry. It arrives as a moral imperative, teaching us how to tend what is fragile, how to prepare for what must grow, and how to remain awake to responsibility while the light of hope is still faint.

Imbolc Spell for Burning Times, Art and Poetry for restoration of justice in America, inspired by Goddess Brigid - By Heron Michelle

Imbolc Spell for Burning Times, Art and Poetry for restoration of justice in America, inspired by Goddess Brigid – By Heron Michelle

Hope as a Discipline

This is why the old divinities of the season still matter. Brigid and the Green Lad didn’t “save us” from winter, nor “solve” its problems for us. They were invoked to help us live mindfully and well within the necessary season of darkness. Brigid governs hearth and forge, healing and poetry — the skills that keep people alive and cultures intact. The Green Lad personifies life’s vigor, persistence, and endurance, no matter the conditions.

Together, they describe a theology suited to hard seasons. Hope is not something we wait to feel. It is something we cultivate through practice. It takes shape in tending what is small, in protecting what is vulnerable, in preparing the ground for what will grow later, and in refusing to surrender the future to fear simply because the present is difficult.

Imbolc does not promise that everything will be fine. It reminds us that some small seed of better times is already alive, even now. That truth is harder than comfort, but it is stronger. It teaches us that endurance itself is sacred work, and that tending the flame — whether in a candle, a household, or a community — is how “spring” is made possible.

So this weekend, when we prepare for Imbolc, our actions matter more than our metaphors. When we cleanse the house, we are not pretending chaos has vanished; we are choosing clarity within it. When we weave Brigid’s cross, we are not reenacting folklore for nostalgia’s sake; we are marking the home as a place where care, skill, and protection are practiced deliberately. When we light candles beneath the Quickening Moon, we are training ourselves to notice light while it is still small and fragile. These gestures may look simple, even domestic, but they carry real spiritual weight. They teach us how to live responsibly inside uncertain times, and how to tend what is vulnerable, bless what must endure, and to keep faith with the future through ordinary, repeatable acts. These are spiritual technologies for hard seasons.

Imbolc Spell with the Tarot

I’ve crafted the following Invocation Spell this Imbolc Eve, to accompany the original artwork I created above. In them, I reference these tarot cards (Thoth deck specifically):

The Tower: I name the collapse of false structures

The Devil: release the chains of fear and domination

Adjustment (Justice): and restore balance through truth and conscience

The Star: so that the seed of renewal may be guided by hope and right action.

For a rhyming charm, try this intention charm:

I name what must fall,
unbind what enslaves,
restore what is just,
to keep hope’s bright flame.
SO MOTE IT BE!

I manifest this change for America by art and poetry, inspired by, and as an Imbolc offering to Goddess Brigid and the Green Lad. Please join me in this magick!

If you’d like a high-resolution printable .pdf of this artwork and invocation, it is available for download on my author website, here: https://www.heronmichelle.com/shop/p/imbolc-2026-tarot-spell-justice

My Imbolc Invocation for 2026

Brigid of the Hearth and Forge,
healer of bodies, shaper of tools,
we call to you for comfort and courage
in the work of hands, heart, and dreams.
Teach us the skills that keep our families fed,
the fires that warm without destroying,
and the language of truth without cruelty.

Green Lad of the growing Sun,
wild one rising through frost,
run with us through this season of dearth.
Stir beneath the frozen soil.
Light in us your will to grow.
Restore what fear has worn thin.

We stand at the Imbolc threshold,
beneath the Quickening Moon,
where Leo’s fire meets Aquarius’ vision,
and we name the world as it is:

the lightning-struck Tower,
justice crying for Adjustment,
a people bound by Devils of our making,
a nation afraid.

Freedoms in question.
Homes and health uncertain.
Food, work, shelter, and care
no longer promised.

Guide us through these broken days.
Teach us how to hold the Star
with steady hands and steady nerve.

Brigid, shape our fear into skill.
Green Lad, turn our grief into motion.
Brigid, keep the hearth-fires of cooperation lit.
Green Lad, keep the seeds of tomorrow growing.

Let our hope be practical.
Let our courage be ordinary.
Let our care become effective.

Teach us to clear what must be released,
to strengthen what must be preserved,
to tend what must endure.

Remind your witches how spring is made—
and by all the Gods,
make it a good one.

So mote it be.

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About Heron Michelle

Heron Michelle is a practicing witch, artist, author, and founder of the Pentacle Path of Modern Witchcraft. She teaches practical, heart-centered Hermetic Witchcraft through her books, courses, Substack, and Witch on Fire blog. Learn more at HeronMichelle.com. You can read more about the author here.

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