Light | Contemplative Inquiry

The year has moved on from its midwinter moment. I am just beginning to feel the pull of Imbolc (Candlemas in the Christian year). This feast marks the returning light and early signs of spring. I recently saw a local picture showing a newborn lamb.

In the Gaelic traditions Imbolc/Candlemas (1 February) is dedicated to Brigid/Bride. The lines below are from the Scottish Highlands and Islands. They seek protection and are not specifially seasonal.

“The genealogy of the holy maiden Bride

Radiant flame of gold, noble foster- mother of Christ.

Bride the daughter of Dugall the brown,

Son of Aodh, son of Art, son of Conn,

Son of Crearar, son of Cis, son of Carmac, son of Carruin.

Every day and every night

That I say the genealogy of Bride,

I shall not be killed, I shall not be harried,

I shall not be put in a cell, I shall not be wounded,

Neither shall Christ leave me in forgetfulness.

No fire, nor sun, nor moon shall burn me,

No lake, no water nor sea shall drown me,

No arrow of fay nor dart of fairy shall wound me,

And I under the protection of my Holy Mary,

And my gentle foster-mother is my beloved Bride.”

Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations collected by Alexander Carmichael. 1994 edition by Floris Books, Edinburgh, edited by C. J Moore.

The work is an anthology of poems and prayers from the Gaelic oral tradition in Scotland. They come from all over the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Alexander Carmichael compiled the collection in the second half of the nineteenth century, thereby creating a lasting record of a culture and way of life which has now largely disappeared.

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August 22, 2025

LATE AUGUST 2025: SETTLING INTO AUTUMN

It is evening and for me autumnal. The sky offers the water a soft light, seemingly pink and grey. The water reflects this back, adding its own hint of mist. It is a tranquil scene.

For the first time this year, I feel a tug towards the Equinox, just under a month away. These canal waters are gentle, but they are drawn from the River Severn, site of the Severn Bore (1). Perhaps the waters are nudging something – maybe the water – in me.

A little later, facing into the declining sun (below) I see the sunset and its effects. I notice the concentrated power of the orb as it appears to reach the earth, and the way in which this energy disperses into the sky. The colour coding shifts from intense white to yellow to red-orange to an orange becoming increasingly grey. I live at latitude 52 north, and the sunset is getting earlier every day, now 8.15pm. Another autumnal feature.

Autumn is also the season of the fruit harvest. This year, many people are commenting that the fruit harvest is arriving early. Below, against the background of a clear blue daytime sky, an apple tree is fruiting. The tree is close to Gloucester Cathedral and may belong to it. Medieval Gloucester was a place of churches and priories. It was also a place of orchards, many of them cultivated by monks and friars. The picture points to natural and cultural continuity, though the fruit are early this year. I am no longer at a point tension between seasons. I am already settled in autumn.

(1) The Severn Bore is a natural tide phenomenon occurring in the River Severn in England, where a large wave surges upstream. It’s caused by the Atlantic tide pushing into the Bristol Channel and funneling it into the narrowing Severn Estuary, creating a more powerful wave that can be up to two meters high and a speed of up to 21 km/h. The Bore travels up the Severn Estuary, from Awre to Gloucester, a distance of 25 miles. It is strongest in the equinoxes (especially spring) and a popular challenge for surfers, kayakers and paddleboarders.

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June 19, 2025

BRIGHT MORNING

Early this morning I sat in contemplation of some geraniums in pots, for me a good Druid focus of attention. Purchased and tended by my wife Elaine, who is now mobile and active once more, they shone in the early morning light. This was about 6.45 am, some two hours after dawn, on 19 June. It is two days before the Solstice. Where did the time go?

I notice how my eye is drawn to plants and light effects. I find them nourishing and enabling. This has been a theme in my life for awhile. It is though sunlight and the plant world offer hope and reassurance in a bleak, shocking and disorienting historical moment. Life insists on flourishing. I can insist on flourishing too. I am not distracted from the wider world but resourced to engage with it.

On a convenient lamp post, the seagull seeks an opportunity. This midsummer world is alive.

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March 31, 2025

SPRING FORWARD

I’m on my first canal walk in a while. The picture above shows a small inlet into the bankside woods. It is Sunday 30 March, the first day of British Summer Time. I am encountering a long sunlit evening and feeling energised by the experience. I am drawing power from the clarity and strength of the light.

Sunset will be around 7.30 pm. The pictures above and below were taken a little before 6. I am glad to see blackthorn, a wood said to be used for wizard’s staffs, proclaiming the magic of spring.

A little later, I focus my attention on a vivid yet tranquil blue sky, presiding over the canal scene below. I have the same powerful sense of of clarity and strength in the light, and of drawing energy from it.

Later on, at about 6.45 pm, I find a softer, gentler quality of light as I walk homewards through the woods. Looking down, I see it on my path.

Looking up, I see soft light on slender branches and the foliage below them. It feels like celebration.

My final image is of sunlight reflected in Gloucester Docks, both on a warehouse window and on the water. The sun is low now and beginning to set. Rather than pointing at it, as it descends, I point away from it to honour and record its power in another way. This marks the completion of a rejuvenating and regenerative spring forward walk.

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February 26, 2025

WINTER’S END

4.30 pm, 25 February 2025. Sunrays are caught in willow branches. The sun is a little stronger today than it was in full winter. The willows have begun a tentative greening. But there is much shadow in this picture. The day has begun its decline.

The world retains a winter feel for me. I aware of the change in my local park, but I do not altogether trust this spring. In the moment of taking this picture, I see a world in shadow, softly darkened. This is partly because of where I have chosen to stand. It is the image I seem to want.

In the brighter picture below, I show daffodils growing among dead leaves. Daffodils are iconic harbingers of spring, yet not my sole focus. Both pictures were taken intuitively and without any mentally registered intent. It seems as if something in me wanted to make a statement.

I know and accept that I am in the winter of my life. In the wheel of my own life, I can’t quite see how my winter will move into spring, certainly in any personal sense. Dissolving into interbeing is easier to imagine.

My customised Druid liturgy names winter as the season of dying and regeneration. It has associations with law and faith. I understand law in a karmic or ‘natural law’ sense. But it can also be an acknowledgement of the nature we see around us. Faith, in part, concerns the willingness to accept dying and regeneration without knowing what they are like. In my last post, I discussed (1) ‘being nobody’. My current reflections take this suggestion a step further. Evidently, I still have much to learn.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/02/21/being-nobody

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December 6, 2024

LIGHTS IN DARKNESS

Stars in a night sky. Candles in a dark room. Cleverly crafted decorations for Yule. These, for me, are ideal images of light in winter. When I came into Druidry, I was moved by the liturgical use of the phrase ‘the illumination of lights’. In a reality of many lights, which can also be a reality of one light and many lamps, the light is not overwhelming.

Darkness makes light bearable when containing a plurality of lights. There is space for freedom here, and likewise space for relationship and connection. This winter, I am not energetically hibernating, as I sometimes do. I find myself going deeply into Innerworld landscapes and connections in a way I have become unused to in recent years. Yet I do not feel alone or self-absorbed. I feel like a little light in a field of lights, each contributing its own individual illumination to the field, whist nested in a nurturing dark. It feels like the right focus for the time of year, and the end of 2024.

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October 24, 2024

LIVING LIGHT

I am walking in woodland beside my local canal. These walks are infrequent now and all the more treasured. I notice how strong mid-afternoon light can be when the sky is clear, even on 22 October. Stepping energetically into its presence, I enter into a kind of communion. The light feels alive and I feel differently alive too – lifted, and touching into joy.

In the picture above, I feel as well as see the effects of the light on trees and water. In the picture below, I both feel and see the living light on leaves which themselves seem to greet me from their horizontal branch. I feel energised by this connection.

Looking up I see blue sky. I do not see the sun, but I can see its effects on the upper branches of trees. both subtle and magical. Looking down, I see a dance of light and shade, with the light present on a fence and on a pathway. A sense of the sacred pervades everything, and I feel blessed.

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August 24, 2024

SUNSET SKYSCAPE

After a grey and stormy day came a grey and calm sunset. Facing west, I looked up at the sky. I began to contemplate the clouds and the muted influence of the sun.

As this skyscape became my world, the solid earth became a distant rumour. Physical reality became porous, indefinite, and insubstantial. Dissolving into this space, I briefly became part of it, no longer an external observer. This experience was fleeting in time-bound reality but imprinted itself on my memory.

Then a seagull seemed to emerge out of nowhere, a dynamic edge of creative light shimmering about its newly-minted form. For me this moment was both grey and luminous, filled with subtle light.

The bird embodied a tremendous joy in flying, with an elegance not seen on the roof tops or the ground. It flew fast and I didn’t see it for long. After its disappearance I noticed how easy it was to enjoy a grey sunset that I might otherwise call gloomy.

Every year is unique and I wondered, then, whether the summer of 2024 was breaking up early in my neighbourhood. As I write, on a rainy morning two days later, this remains an open question.

The wheel continues to turn, and I find myself turning to the west, leaning into autumn, embracing this season for what it uniquely is. It is much more than a precursor to winter. Autumn has tended to be my favourite season and the one I find the most conducive to contemplative and visionary states.

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August 18, 2024

NOCTURNE: RADIANCE OF MOON

In recent days, I have felt, as much as seen, the retreat of daylight in the evenings. It comes earlier and seems more decisive as the year advances. Mostly, indoors, it has led to a soft and gradual increase of dimness and shadow. I often find this pleasurable and delay resorting to artificial light.

But on Friday 16 August I was caught unawares. I had not been paying attention and it felt as if Night had truly fallen for the first time in my waning year, suddenly and assertively. It wasn’t even fully dark, yet I sensed that Night now ruled.

I felt that I was mobilising for a different life. A nocturnal life. To an extent, a lunar life. Standing on an east-facing balcony, I found deep twilight presided over a by a waxing gibbous moon – a super moon, close to the earth, only three days before full.

In the picture above, a street lamp seems to compete in brightness. But as I stood in my balcony it was the moon that drew my eye. Its influence was so much greater. The moon persuaded me to take the picture. Indeed I took a second picture (below) of the moon as the only light source. I needed the “radiance of moon” (1) to stand out clearly, in full contrast to the “light of sun”.

Night isn’t just about darkness. It’s about the world that emerges when the sunlight withdraws. Just over a month before the autumn equinox, I have tasted the ‘dark’ half of the year.

(1) From the St. Patrick’s Prayer/Cry of the Deer: “I arise today through the strength of heaven, light of sun, radiance of moon, splendour of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth and firmness of rock”. I begin and end my regular morning practice with these words.

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July 17, 2024

HIGH SUMMER MORNING

8 am, 14 July. Local woods. A little after the year’s zenith, I am in strong morning sunshine and enjoying its patterns of light and shade. A green portal lures me forward. What will I find on the next part of my journey?

I am am often moved by the effects of light, and drawn to write about them. Each experience is unique. Today, sunlight on tree bark feels warm and playful.

Below, I find a clearly defined shadow shape on the ground, the effect of the sun passing through a fence. This feels playful too, high summer’s friendly face in this place at this time. Contemplation as simple delight.

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Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Light

January 23, 2026

GENEALOGY OF BRIDE

August 22, 2025

LATE AUGUST 2025: SETTLING INTO AUTUMN

June 19, 2025

BRIGHT MORNING

March 31, 2025

SPRING FORWARD

February 26, 2025

WINTER’S END

December 6, 2024

LIGHTS IN DARKNESS

October 24, 2024

LIVING LIGHT

August 24, 2024

SUNSET SKYSCAPE

August 18, 2024

NOCTURNE: RADIANCE OF MOON

July 17, 2024

HIGH SUMMER MORNING