In the Northern Hemisphere, February first (or second) marks the ancient Celtic holiday of Imbolc. It's the beginning of the beginning of Spring. (In the Southern Hemisphere, it's the beginning of the beginning of Fall.)

In Celtic/Gaelic mythology, the goddess closely associated with Imbolc is Brigid (usually pronounced "Breed"). Brigid is associated, among other things, with blacksmithing, home and hearth, and poetry. On first glance, this seems like a motley assortment, but there's a common thread there in fire and creativity.

I'm not much of a blacksmith, but I love poetry and take pretty much any opportunity to celebrate it. I believe that poetry, like all art, has strong energetic properties, healing us and calling us to a higher vibration.

So today, February 1, I want to share a favorite poem. Written by the great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and translated by Stephen Mitchell, it describes an ancient Greek statue, deeply damaged but still holding its original energetic force. The poem defies a simple explanation, but I love its themes of the transformative power of art, wholeness despite superficial brokenness, the holographic nature of existence, the consciousness dwelling in everything. And of course, the breath-taking shift of the last line.

To me, the poem both describes and embodies creative fire, and it always gives me a visceral surge of energy. (The image above, by the way, is an archaic torso of Apollo, but not the one that Rilke was describing.)

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,


gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.


Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:


would not, from all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must change your life.

In this beautiful, wise season of early spring, more poignant than ever because of the pandemic, I hope you find poetry and art that heals you and calls you to a higher vibration. And I hope that you exercise some of your own creative fire as well. That is always a healing and life-affirming thing to do.— Nancy

You may also enjoy this page about the energetic properties of art on The Energy Healing Site.