Tag: yule

The Dark Half of the Year

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Traditionally, the dark half of the year begins at or around Samhain and ends at or around Beltane. These are the two points where “the veil between the worlds” is at its thinnest and spirits can be reached. People have argued for years that this veil has been shredded or at least exceptionally porous lately, more so than it has been in the past.

I don’t know about any of that, but I do know that this year, I’ve been highly sensitive to the porousness of the physical world. It started, to me, somewhere two weeks before Samhain. I know that I was gradually being consumed by thoughts of ghosts and spirits. And then, three days before Halloween, I saw a black dog running across the street, in direct line of sight from where I work. I’m unsure if this was a sign, but it felt like enough of a thing for me to take notice.

I’m not sure what it meant.

Then there’s the persistent quest this year for something to Yule and Christmas that isn’t the usual cheery nonsense. Something deeper and scarier. This is the realm of Krampus, Berchta/Perchta, the Wild Hunt (in all of its forms), and, believe it or not, A Christmas Carol. This is the world of blizzards and bitter cold and the struggle for survival and the impulse to huddle together with loved ones (note: the key phrase is “loved ones”, and there are people I am biologically close to that I do not love). Part of me craves that atmosphere, as though the blizzard will contain the numinous.

Based on all the folklore, I think I’m on the right track with that one.

I’m Still Confused by the Buttwipe

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What a lovely month it’s shaped up to be. Coronavirus has swept the globe, going from a faint abstraction a month ago to literally the next county over as of last week. If you aren’t under a shelter-in-place order, all the public spaces are closed, which is basically the same. Gloves, masks, hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, Lysol spray. It’s. Everywhere.

And people did as people do: panic, and behave strangely (the hoarding of toilet paper, of all things), or pretend it’s all a government hoax caused by the Democrats because “they couldn’t impeach Trump” (even though last I checked that was held up due to the fact that Republicans refused to cooperate with Democrats under any circumstances but the ones that would allow them to throw out the evidence).

We’re still out of toilet paper, by the way. Distilleries are making hand sanitizer. People I work with are still trying to downplay the very serious pandemic going on all around us. One day I was deeply overcome with anxiety over the whole situation. Ever since, I’ve put more feeling into appealing to the Gods for health.

Thankfully, I haven’t had a crisis of faith yet. Those all seemed to happen before I knew who the Gods were, the ones I’m specifically talking to and praying to right now, and who are also making sure I eat something resembling health food every morning. I’m not sure if They saw all this coming, or if this is part of everything else which is going on, between the election (#hidinbiden) and the environment and who knows what else. Perhaps They did, and They know that small routines are good for times like these. Where would I be otherwise?

But, I don’t think about it tremendously much. I try not to panic. I avoid the news. I wait it out. I read other things, on other topics. I’ve been keeping myself sane for the most part. And, I’ve noticed very little change in my actual habits. I’m an introvert, after all. It just feels weird that the rest of the world is with me on that. (And, in the mean time, my Christmas decorations are still up, and a little off-season Holly Jolly never killed anyone, far as we know.)

Rabbit Rabbit – Dec. 1 (Dec. 4)

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The Christmas season is now upon us, and I’ve done something peculiar with it. I know a lot of Pagans choose to eschew Christmas altogether for its religious connotations, choosing Yule or another winter holiday instead. But I’ve decided that if a lot of Christmas symbolism is Yule related, then I can nix any talk of the Nativity without much trouble and throw up the lights, wreaths, and trees, and put on some eggnog or cider and hope February is not abysmally cold. That seems to be about the only thing humans in the northern hemisphere have agreed on, after all: that winter is a bitch and it’s best to hunker down, put on as much food as possible, welcome guests you see out in the cold, and try not to starve to death.

I have generally given Christmas over to Ra as a means of honoring Him and it makes logical sense based on my geographic location. But there is also an element of Andred there. She is not particularly a hearth goddess, but there is something to be said for being home during the winter, for having an “off season” from war. (This was, I should note, a convention historically for quite a long time. Nobody had any mind to go out fighting or raiding or so on after the harvest was over, and that carried over into the customs of war until WWI, if I recall correctly.) And there is definitely that feeling in the air this month and through most of the worst part of winter. You just want to hunker down by the fire with people you like and some hot chocolate, with some nice warm lights up perhaps. It’s a good time, and I don’t see why that should just cut off at the start of a new year (arbitrarily setting the new year in the middle of winter is another matter entirely but we’ll get there).

I look to this season for a sense of warmth and happiness, that home is an OK place to be and not some backdrop for the horrifying nightmare surely brewing. Christmas especially was the time of year my parents didn’t try to kill each other or myself, and even though I was probably the only one that did any decorating nine years out of ten, it was still OK. It was warm and pleasant and that was never a feeling I wanted to lose. In fact I’ve been able to hang onto it more and more after moving into my own place and shifting away from preferring Halloween (although the collection of free candy is pretty sweet, if I’m not too sick and exhausted to go out for it). As the song goes, Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful.