 Oh dear. I've got something on me. When did that happen? When did that happen? Hello people! I'm Ginny Matherall. I'm a fourth generation witch. Today we're going to look at that amazing witch's sabbat that is coming up on the first of February and we call EMOG. Now what I want to do is just sort of give you a general background information to this actual festival what it is, why it's there, who it's about and then we're going to look at a couple of the traditional ways that you might worship on EMOG, the celebrations and the crafts. So hopefully by the end of this video you will have all the information that you need to celebrate EMOG in your own way. With that said let's get into the detail of EMOG and find out actually what it is. It is one of the cross quarter day sabbats of the neo-pagan faith. Now what that actually means it is the day that marks the change from one season to the next. So we are marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring. So it's a really joyous sabbat in my opinion. A last spring is around the corner. Now you might think oh well spring doesn't happen until March, April but actually this is following the old ways and spring happens around now. Even though it's snowing there is shoots coming up out of the ground. The daffodils are poking their heads up on my lawn and actually today there was a couple of ravens flirting overhead with me. So nature's fully on board with spring. These quarter days were normally fire festivals and in fact most sabbats aren't as fire festivals. So one of the best things you can do is to go and have a bonfire. I'm always saying this have a bonfire, have a bonfire, have a bonfire. However if you can't have a bonfire and let's face it it's a bit cold. I don't do bonfires in the cold. Then you can just light a candle like I've got in here. My beautiful oil burner which is helping me purify my room as we speak. The first of February is also the feast day of Bridget who's also named as Breed, Bridget, Bridget, the bride. I mean depending on where your faith, tradition or culture takes you. So you can call her anything. The Christians like to call her Saint Bridget. Down in these parts we call her Bridget. And so that is how I'm going to refer to her. Bridget is the one who brings the greenery to this world. Her and the green man go hand in hand together. But whatever she is this is very much a feminine festival. Bridget as the goddess is one of the ancient gods of Ireland. And she's associated with being a smith, being a poet and a healer. She also is the four ringer of spring and has everything to do with fertility. She's a triple goddess. So there is the young goddess, there's the mother goddess and there's the elderly crone goddess. And she's a goddess of the moon. She has a lot of animals that come to her. The most common known is probably the snake, but the most favoured is possibly the hare. I mean who doesn't love a hare after all? And who is scared of snakes? Well not me, but she does bring forth the snake from her womb to make the earth green. The Christians of course as soon as they went to Ireland took over Bridget as their great patron saint. And so her order of nuns held the sacred flame burning throughout the year in honour of Saint Bridget. Very very similar to pretty much what was happening before they took over her where the maidens kept her sacred flame burning throughout the year in honour of Bridget. So you know she's part and parcel pretty much the same person. She's worshipped on this day with the Saint Bridget's cross which looks like this, it's a swastika essentially which is one of the oldest pagan symbols, far far older than Germany from the 1930s and the 1940s would have you believe. As Bridget has a sacred fire, she therefore is worshipped by burning candles and pagan and witches with burned candles are plenty in her honour on this day. And this was again taken over by the Christians who would celebrate candle mass where all the candles for the year were taken to the church and blessed. It's pretty much the same ritual that us witches would use which I'll show you later. Bridget herself is a very favoured pagan goddess. She's a triple goddess as I have mentioned. She's daughter of the great earth mother and brings divine knowledge and mystical power and therefore she's worshipped pretty heavily by the pagan community. She's also the person who brings forth milk from the use at this time of year and so she is given an altar with milk on it and that's something that I would recommend you do at this time in her honour. She also brings the gift of fertility and so her shrines were tended in the very olden days by sacred harlots as they were known. She would pay to mate with the harlot and she would be given the gift of pregnancy by the goddess. She is a goddess of pregnancy and fertility and so should you be looking to become pregnant in the near future she's a goddess that you might want to have on your side. Although Bridget is a goddess of the moon she worships the sun and her Bridget's cross is actually a sun cross like the rays of the sun coming out. Bridget is connected to the sun and the moon and she also as the daughter of the great earth goddess she's connected to the earth so it gets better. The earth and the sun and the moon have a dance together which lasts 19 years so Bridget favours the number 19. You will find ancient sites in this world which are dedicated to Bridget because they have 19 stones surrounding them. Likewise her cross represents the rotation of the earth around the sun and it is showing you the sun's rays. It's a beautiful cross actually but I do like a Bridget's cross. I make these crosses every single year and give them out to my friends. Bridget was also a patroness of sacred wells they believed in the ancient times that the well or the spring was the entrance to this great goddess's womb and because life flows from water as the water came out it was her spreading her fertility through this water across the land. Should you wish to honour the goddess Bridget then go and visit a sacred well and you can put one of those clouties which is the cloth strips that you tie around the branches with your wish upon it of the sacred tree that is next to it. So how do you go about celebrating the Sabbath of Imel? Well this celebration you have to do a bit of work beforehand. It's a spring celebration of purification and cleanliness. So before you do anything you need to clean everything. Now one of the main things that you're going to clean is your hearth. As you can see here I've got a very dirty hearth and I'm now going to clean it. Cleaning the hearth means preparing your home to last for the next year because you would take the fire to light your hearth once you cleaned it out from the sacred flame of Bridget which is what we're going to do. Not only do you purify your home but you also purify yourself. In fact I was purifying myself earlier with some rose incense and I found that I needed to purify myself because I was carrying a little baggage of something that wasn't quite right. If you want to know more about how to take these not quite right things off you go and have a look at my Patreon page. Come and join us and we'll do it in the cover meetings so you will learn all about this how to remove the bad jujus that might be attached to you. So if this is of interest to you do go to www.patreon.com and have a look at what is there. There'll be something for you I promise. One of the other great things to do on this day is to create an altar. You can either create it to Bridget or just to the day. Now on this altar it's pretty good to have a sacred flame and by that I mean take your candle place it upon your altar using all the elements that you need to bring into that altar that will make this special and sacred for you. Then you can light the flame in honour of the day and from this flame this is what you take to light your half. There are so many thousands of other traditional ways to celebrate this festival and when it is a festival of fertility so procreations always a must. It is also a festival of milk bizarrely because they use the goats and sometimes the cows their udders are full and milk is flowing so having a little bit of milk on your altar will be all to the good. I would be so interested to hear and so any traditions that you might have do put them down in the comments below because I love reading them and I do try and respond to as many comments as I can before I go a couple of notices so in order to make a living as we all have to do I have to accept sponsorship from various companies and I do appreciate that the sponsorship is slightly dull sometimes to get your way through. So this year I've decided to do something a bit different I'm going to try and do sponsorship deals that give me goods with which I can use them for giveaways for you and so each video I think that I'm going to do that has a sponsorship element in it do bear with me whatever I'm sponsoring will be available for you and I'm trying to make them very in this niche so I've got a lot of witchcraft sponsors coming up I've got a lot of witchy elements coming up just follow the instructions on each video in order to qualify for the prize. So that said don't forget to like and subscribe and turn the notification bell on because otherwise you won't be able to know the videos that I've got coming up or where there is sponsorship and I think the next video I've got coming up you could win the most beautiful crystal all. So make sure you turn that notification bell on like and subscribe and I will see you I very much hope so anyway bye