Winter

Well, then, there it was. The wheel of the year did what it always does -- it turned. The veil, although it is still thinner than it is in, say, Midsummer, is already beginning to thicken a bit. The dream images that I received this morning from the ancestors won't be coming so clearly,nor so forcefully, until the wheel winds all the way round again. From here on, it's darkness and cold and turning inward. It's introspection and waking up to the cold kitchen floor when it's still dark outside and worrying about slipping on the ice. It's the discipline part of achievement, where you just make yourself do what you've promised to do, even when it's too early to see results, when you really don't want to do what you promised, when your very own Shadow that you very carefully constructed all by yourself lunges up and suggests, in its iron voice, that you go back to sleep. Now. Just this once. Now. It will be like this through Yule, and on into Imbolc (my least favorite time of year), and it won't start to change for the better until Ostara, at the earliest. Every year, I want to love the winter, but every year I wind up longing for sun, for the Caymans, for fruit, for light, for fresh greens, for bare feet.

I've written down my goals for this new year, journaled about what I want to accomplish. I've remembered the honored dead, and recited my matrilineal line (child of a dysfunctional family, mine is simpler than my sisters': "I am Hecate, daughter of the Great Mother Goddess"), and released some things and people that I needed to release. And now it's time for me to hunker down inside my cozy cottage, cat on my lap and cup of tea in my hand, and think, reflect, plan, do magic. I'm looking at my calendar and longing for a few days in a row for an in-home retreat, time to rake leaves, think, walk, sit at my altar, listen to my own thoughts. Maybe in a few weeks, maybe when I crank this pleading out.

Winter is the time to plan a new garden, a new project, a new article, a new brief, a new way of living in the world. Will we or nill we, here we go.