By K D Grace

I really wasn’t going to do this. I really wasn’t going to
write an end of the year post for ERWA because there are probably a gazillion
of them out there. And yet the fact that there are so many indicates to me that
there’s something so intriguing about the last few weeks of the year that even
when we tell ourselves it’s no big deal, it really kind of is …

As I was walking along the canal the other day between rain
showers, watching the moorhens leave water con trails across the surface, I was
thinking about why this time of year is such a big deal. It’s dark, it’s
dreary, it’s seemingly dead. Really, it seems like something we should just
want to skip right through as much as possible, and yet we celebrate this time
of year more than any other.  For several
years I celebrated the seasons of the year with a Wiccan coven, and one of the
best parts of that time in my life was the effort made to understand and live
in sync with the changing seasons of the year. That I’ve held onto long after I
left the coven. That ebb and flow remains an important part of who I am and how
I celebrate.

Then, as now, the magic of this time of year intrigued me
the most. In the Pagan cycle of the year, the winter months are represented by
the direction of north, the cold, dark direction, the place where everything
seems dead and silent. The days are short and the nights are long and it’s a
temptation to go to bed early and sleep late. In the darkest days it’s even a
temptation to follow the example of our bear cousins and sleep the whole dreary
time away until the spring returns. The holidays aside, by the time January
gets here it’s all about the return of the light. We’ve all had enough dark
days, and we want sunshine.

So what’s so magical about that? Of course we want the
sunshine. Who doesn’t? But the magic comes in the waiting. The dark powers of
the north, the dark earth energy of the pagan wheel of the year is dream magic.
It’s the time before beginnings. It’s the time when we sit with a cup of tea
clenched in our hands and reflect on what has been, while everything in us
looks forward to what lies ahead. On the one hand we dream of the past and we
say our good-byes to this turning of the year, on the other hand, we dream and
scheme and anticipate the future that will begin, just like new life, in the
dark place. And we wait for the end that has to happen before the beginning.
The time before beginnings. It’s a phrase that has no meaning if we don’t have
a past to reflect upon. It’s a phrase that has no meaning if we don’t have a
future to anticipate and to dream and scheme for.

This time of year the sun, when we do get it, is never very
high in the sky, and it’s often a cold anemic sun. This time of year when
everything seems so dead, there are already buds fattening on the trees — the
beginnings of the leaves that will shelter the birds and shade us from the sun when
it’s at its most powerful. This time of year even the winter visitors, the waxwings
and the fieldfares, are anticipating new beginnings, feeding up for their
return to the north and for the raising of the next generation.

It’s in these dark days, in this space in between when it’s
not quite the end, but it’s not yet the beginning either, it’s in this liminal
space that we experience a magic that’s different from any other time of the
year, a magic of stillness, a magic of holding ourselves tightly and inhaling
deeply just before the sun returns and we’re off once again, running forward
into the headroom and the creative momentum that this time before beginnings
has afforded us.

Happy Time Before Beginnings!

http://kdgrace.co.uk/