Seasonal Celebration, Winter

The Slow Dark Enchantment



Real magic takes time… and a lot of it. Like crystals growing in the deep, the biggest miracles often form far beneath the surface, and need a long fertile stretch of darkness before they can come to light. When the possibility of magic is afoot we will often be asked to slow down so immensely that, like the sun pausing on the winter solstice horizon, it might even look as if we stop completely. But really, the ebbing is not an ending at all, but a pause before something magically radical can take place.

Lately I’ve been sleeping. Like, a lot. I get tired early in the night and don’t stir from my bed until long after the sun has risen. Honestly, most days I can only catch a few waning hours of milklight before the sun goes down, it feels as if I’m living in perpetual twilight. These days of darkness are an upside-down time, a slow dusky enchantment. A long dream that begs us to hibernate, rising only to drink from the well of the unseen. With all the electric lights and need for illumination in our culture we often forget that we are literally stepping into the darkest days of the year right now. And that this darkness is an invitation back into the evergreen mysticism of this season.

 

 

As we approach the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere (this thursday’s winter solstice) our inner psyches will ask us to do the very thing we are so trained to disregard in the days leading up to Christmas. To slow down, to sleep. To let the darkness be. To tap into what is still formless and court the inner mysteries. To sip from the small thimble of light that we are given, and be okay with what is not yet, what is slow growing, what is coming into being.

So let it happen and just embrace the mysticism.

Over the years I’ve talked a lot about how to tap into the deeper magics of this season. From handmade herbcraft to ritual elixirs. There are so many ways to reconnect to the enchantment of early winter. But when the holidays begin to fall particularly flat I usually journey to visit with the spirit guide who never fails to help me step back into the aurora borealis of miracle consciousness that pervades this time – Santa Claus. Skip on over to this all-time favorite post for a guide to undertaking your own shamanic journey to meet this wondrous teacher and magic keeper and refind the spark in this time of fertile darkness.