Imbolc, Oimelc, Imbolcu, are ancient names for the ceremony that was dedicated to the Goddess Brighid.

In Ireland there were Women Druids (Ban Draoithe) who tended a sacred flame in her name at a sacred place in Co. Kildare. This Goddess was later Christianised to become St. Brighid of Kildare whose nuns kept the perpetual flame burning. The many prayers, blessings, and invocations to Brighid are mostly related to this Christian saint.

Brighid, saint and Goddess, is much loved in Ireland, Scotland and other Celtic lands where she is known as Bride, Bridge, Brigantia and Riganta. She is Goddess of smith craft, of fire, of the hearth, a midwife and carer of mothers and children; she is patroness of poets and a goddess of the threshold.

In earlier times Imbolc was a festival and ceremony related to the Goddess Brighid marking the very first stirrings of life after the dark and barren winter. The quickening of the earth has become noticeable in the appearance of the first snowdrops and the coming of the milk in pregnant ewes just before the birth of their lambs.

Very often we have a foretaste of spring in these early days of February, mild weather and sunshine cheer us with the promise of the approach of winters end. This usually last only a few days and winter returns with gales and snow before it finally gives way to the rising sun and the return of spring.

Brighid is one aspect of the primal Goddess Danu who is the great Mother Goddess of the Celts and bears the triple aspects of maiden, mother and crone or wise woman. Brighid is the maiden and bringer of new life. Danu is the mother in her fullness and the cailleach or the Morrigan (Great Queen) is the wise woman or crone. The Morrigan has been feared as a harbinger of death, and war however she is the one guides us across the threshold into the other world when it is time for us to leave off our earthly bodies.

At Imbolc the Cailleach or woman of winter gives way to Brighid bringer of spring. In some traditions Brighid is portrayed as having one side of her face fresh and clear as a maiden and the other side is wrinkled and old like a crone. This indicates that these two Goddesses are really one and the same but showing different aspects or attributes.