Don't stop at the first sign of victory!

 When we look at what is going on in the world today, there is a lot of cause for celebration.  Many people feel as if we have had a big win, and a collective sigh was released.  It's like that moment when you first see progress on the work you've been doing, and you want to celebrate!

And there is nothing wrong with celebrating...as long as you keep perspective of the greater goals.  Often, the first progress we see isn't lasting or permanent.  This isn't to say it can't become lasting or permanent, just that if you stop doing the work, the progress fades away.  It's like when you plant a seed, you spend all that time waiting, you water it every day and make sure it has sun and all it's nutrients...and when you see that first hint of green poking through the earth you know that your efforts haven't been in vain.  But if you stop watering it, if you don't keep giving it access to the light, the tender new growth will wither.

This is something we always need to keep in mind.  We need to be willing to stay the course, to keep working, even when we are seeing things start to change, we need to continue to push until we reach where we want to be.

I think this is especially true when we are working towards some long-term goal.  Maybe we want to be more financially secure, so we do spells and rituals geared at getting us in a better place, money wise.  And then we get a new job (with better pay) or a raise.  The temptation is to think the spells have worked, and to stop.  But it's actually still at the start of the venture!  You need to stay the course until you are actually secure, where you want to be and able to maintain it.

Think of it this way:  it's often easier to keep a fire burning than it is to have to keep relighting it.  Sure, if you stop working, you can always start it up again, but you really have to start over.  You can't just jump back in where you were at (especially if you've tidied up or disposed of your spell working bits).  Even if everything in is in place, think about what must have happened for you to realize that you weren't where you want to be.

Often our path to progress is a very windy road, with lots of ups and downs.  We make a little progress forward, but then we start to backslide.  It's when we are moving backwards that we most often feel called to get back to working, but even when we are moving forward, we can use our work to help create stable momentum.  Then, when we would start to move backwards, we already have energy moving us forward and it is harder to fall prey to those slumps!

Now, I'm making a distinction here between extended, continual workings and regular fire and forget type work.  A lot of spells are one-offs.  We do the spell, we send the energy out into the world, and we trust that it will do what is needed.  In fact, a lot of spells can suffer from continued poking...because every time you go back to them, you need to keep the same intense focus as the first time, and if you let your thoughts become muddied or start wandering down the 'what if' rabbit hole, you start sending energy towards different outcomes and everything just gets messy.

In between one-off spells and continual workings we have set-time work.  This would be stuff like 7 day candles or working on something for a full moon cycle.  You know how long you are going to be working with the thing when you start, it's not dependent on your results.  These give you a little bit of the benefits and drawbacks of both one-off and continual workings.  You need to keep your focus tight for a specific period of time...that is what makes these types of spells more powerful.  But, they are more like one-off spells in the sense that it is like taking a single spell and breaking it into bits, and each time you work, you do one of the bits.  This can make harder things more manageable.

When I think of continual or long-term magic, I tend to think of healing and global issues.  With healing, you don't know exactly how long it will take to finish the healing, because everyone heals at their own rate.  We often keep a healing going until a person is fully recovered, using their base-line health as a measure of what 'well' means to them.  I think of weight issues as being a form of healing...because you are wanting to return to a healthy weight.  But because healing is such a tricky thing, with many issues that can come up, you really want to keep working at it until the final result is achieved, not just the first signs of healing.

With global issues, I think the people like to get caught up in the big causes when they are at their worst.  When things are looking the darkest, we band together and make a magical stand against what we feel can't be tolerated.  But we often then don't follow up.  We try to approach these huge issues with one-off spells, and even if you get thousands of people working together from around the world...one time is often not enough!  

I almost always think of any type of energy work as trying to swim with currents in a river.  With group work, you are all in a boat together....rowing.  But still, the river and it's currents are not only the natural flow of energy in the world...but also every other person who is thinking, acting or working towards a different goal than the people in your boat.  Some of them might not be pushing directly against you, but they may be pushing you to the side.  And some will be crashing right towards you, wanting nothing more than to shove you as far back as they can.

The problem is that no matter how big a push you give...when you stop working, when you stop rowing, the current still pushes back.  Until you have reached your destination, until the world has accepted whatever change you are trying to enact...you have to keep rowing.

While this idea isn't completely centered around what is going on in the world today, I do want to finish with a bit of a thought.  If things have been going on over the past years (or decades...or centuries) that you don't agree with...things you are willing to work against....don't stop when a small victory is gained!  Even though we might be moving in the right direction right now...if we stop, we will be pushed back and we will loose what we have gained.  And in the smaller sphere, if you are doing personal work, and you hit that first big win (but aren't quite where you want to end)...keep working!  

It is tempting to want to take a break, to stop the work for a while, and to coast on the victory, but that can be harder in the long run.  Instead, think of it as rounding that corner to where you can see the finish line.  This is the time to push, the time to keep working and keep moving forward!  There is plenty of time to celebrate and rest when the work is done.

Reboot

Practice is something that implies continual growth, but also returning to familiar things and refining our knowledge.  Going 'back to basics' is something that many people do, returning to things they learned early in their practice, and restudying them.  There is great value in doing this, as you have learned so much since you first experienced the thing, and now you can look on it with all your accrued knowledge and experience.  Revisiting grounding for the tenth time brings layers of understanding that you just couldn't grasp the first time through.

Returning to a subject is a necessary thing, but it is also a building thing.  When we go back to a basic practice, we take with us all that we have learned before.  We aren't coming at it from the same place as a new student.  This is how almost all higher education works, you keep coming back to simple things, and adding to your stores of knowledge.  This is how we build up such elaborate libraries of information.

Rebooting is something else entirely.  Rebooting doesn't draw as much from your experiences...because the point is to completely clear the slate.  It's like working with an AI program that learns your preferences over time...and reverting it to factory settings.  You have to start over, from the very start, and build it all up again.

Now, of course we aren't devices and we can't achieve a full and proper reboot.  There is no way (short of developing amnesia, which I don't recommend lol) to actually separate what we have learned and truly start over.  But we can get close.  And the way to do that is to focus on learning 'as if it were your first time.'

This is a kind of subtle distinction, and it involves a bit of stepping outside yourself.  But the benefits are often worth it.  The downside of just going back to basics is there is always the temptation to keep stuff you know works.  You are already doing daily practice, so why not just keep doing it?  The problem is that if you just keep adding onto what you are already doing, you tend to overlook things that could be even better.  It's like when you have a favorite flavor of ice cream, and you only ever order that one flavor...because you know you love it.  You will still enjoy eating the ice cream, but you may miss a whole world of other choices, and you may never realize that you are slightly bored of only eating the same thing...because you don't know any different.

Now a spiritual reboot is kind of scary.  Clearing your slate and starting over can feel intimidating.  You have to face the demons of "Am I giving up?" and "Have I even made any progress?"  The thing about rebooting is that you often don't see the results until a long time after.

It reminds me a lot of getting a new phone, something I both look forward to and dread.  Every time we've gotten a new phone, I've gone into it with the expectation that I will have to do a full wipe.  I kind of forget that they can often transfer over things like phone numbers and contacts.  But even when it comes to apps and other settings, you have to start from the ground up, and often the things you relied upon just aren't there.

But, being forced to start from nothing means that all those things I rarely used...are just gone.  I don't have to choose to set them aside, they simply aren't there.  When I make a list of the apps I want to load to my new phone, I always notice that some just don't make the list.  I may never have deleted them off my old phone, but they won't be put on the new one.

The struggle is that sometimes the new system just doesn't let you do the things you want to.  I am continually surprised by how un-user friendly a lot of tech is...how many options that I feel are simple and basic, that just aren't offered.  Or how older devices give you more options, and your newer one just doesn't let you customize as much.

When you are faced with not having something you've always done as an option, it forces you to find a new way.  Sometimes this means settling or compromising with something that isn't quite as good...but eventually you get used to it.  It's like when your absolute favorite incense blend stops being produced, and now you have to find another one to use.  Sometimes you will find something better, but sometimes you will be stuck using something that you don't quite like...but eventually you get used to it.

We naturally enter times of reboot when huge changes happen in our life, but they aren't full reboots.  When you move house, you may not be able to keep the same number of altars.  This can mean you have to completely reboot your sacred spaces.  If you take a new job, with new hours, you may have to reboot your observances, especially if your new job isn't flexible in allowing you time off.  These can create havoc in your spiritual life in the short term as you scramble to adjust to a new paradigm.

The more you embrace the reboot, the easier it is to handle.  And the more practice you get with rebooting in general, the easier it will be for you to take that deep breath, to let go of the familiar, to hit the reset button and step into the void.  It will never be easy, it will never feel safe, but it will be less daunting when you truly realize that you can find a way to adapt to whatever you end up facing.

I'm not sure how my year of reboot will go, but I do know that it is necessary.  I need to shake things up, I need to start over, and I need to see where this will take me.  I encourage you to see if there are areas in your life that need a reboot, and to be brave and see what happens when you take that step off the cliff...without knowing what waits for you below!

Anti-resolutions

 At the start of the year, everyone is talking about resolutions.  We talk about new habits we want to develop, or things that we want to let go of.  The ultimate goal is to 'be' a better person, we want to improve our life in some way.

Part of figuring out how we should change is doing a bit of reflection.  But when we look at our selves and our lives, we tend to look for what isn't working.  We look for the places where we feel a lacking or where we dislike something that is in our current life.  We look for the broken things and try to fix them.

What we often overlook is the 'good' habits we have.  We skim over the places in our lives where things are doing well.  We think 'this thing is okay, so I don't have to worry about it,' and we move on, searching for something to stand out as feeling wrong or inappropriate.  And we miss a huge opportunity!

Sometimes, we fall into habits that work, but maybe aren't as good as they could be.  You eat pretty well and don't binge on a lot of super sugary or fattening snacks.  Or maybe you just have grown complacent about a practice.  You have a daily routine, but you don't really think about it.  Because we aren't having big issues in these areas, we tend to gloss over them and things that are 'just okay' never become great.

On the other hand, sometimes we dismiss things out of hand because we feel they 'just aren't us'.  We really don't like the idea of logging our food intake, and running never looked fun.  We never give things a chance, a true chance, because we have an initial dislike for them (and no real reason to change the things that are already working okay for us).

But here's the thing.  Trying something, seriously trying it, teaches us SO much.  So does stopping doing something we think is important to us.  Both are forms of what we would traditionally call failure.  I mean, what's the point in trying something that makes us a bit miserable (especially when we have alternatives that are more appealing).

I'm a big fan of seeing things from as many perspectives as possible.  I got the idea of anti-resolutions from a story I was writing, and I think it's an interesting twist on self-improvement.  The idea is not to try something that you think you will like...exactly the opposite.  Try something you think you are going to hate (be reasonable of course, don't try dangerous diets or physical things that are so hard you risk getting hurt).  And treat it as if you were serious about making it a part of your life.

Pretty much every one agrees that it takes about a month to set a new habit.  So a month is a proper trial time for most things.  It's the perfect amount of time for an anti-resolution!  It's long enough to really let you get a taste for something, and even see some improvement in your ability to do it.  But it's short enough to not feel endless.  You can see the end and most people can do almost anything for a month (when they know that they only have to do it for a month).

So what's the point then?  Why bother to do something if you know you are just going to give it up at the end of the month?  Well firstly, sometimes initial impressions are just wrong.  You may have thought you hated something at first try, but once you smoothed out some of the bumps, you might discover that you actually enjoy it.  Most likely you won't, our initial impressions often are pretty spot on.  Even if you don't like a thing and have no plans to continue on with it, trying and failing teaches us stuff.  You may learn some small things that you can then incorporate into other things you do want to do.  At the very least, you will gain an appreciation for the people who do the thing, and an understanding of what they do.  This can be really helpful when you are interacting with people who are into whatever the thing is that you don't like.  It's much easier to connect when you have some common ground!

I also think there is great value in taking a break from things you 'think you can't live without'.  It's sort of a life-cleanse.  Some things are easy to set aside for a bit.  If you have a favorite tarot deck that you always reach for, even though you own a dozen other decks that you also love, then challenging yourself to not use your 'go-to' deck for a month means you will be using other decks more...learning how to work with them.  

Other things are harder to set down.  If you have a daily prayer practice, that is very dear to you and a huge part of your path, it may feel traitorous to not do it.  Instead, try changing it up.  Pick a new way of honoring the same idea, but don't do it in your normal way.  This could be as simple as changing when you do something.  If you normally say your prayers at night, try them in the morning or before each meal (and don't say them at night).  If you have a regular offering you make (one you make without really thinking about what to offer...because it's what you've always offered), spend some time trying other offerings (you might check in with your deities first, and let them know what you are planning and see if they are open to it).  

Of course if you feel huge resistance to stopping a practice, you should listen to your inner voice.  If something is deeply meaningful to you, giving it up can be more harmful then beneficial, even in the short run.  Especially if you have a practice that is helping you cope with an issue or deal with a difficult situation!  But even then it can be helpful to spend some time thinking about if this is the only way you can do that particular thing.  You may decide that it is, but the fact that you considered alternatives can help you accept that this is the actual best path for you (and not just the path you ended up on).

I think we could all benefit from shaking things up, from time to time.  So maybe, instead of trying to come up with a new resolution, you may think of an anti-resolution to try.  Instead of trying to fix what is broken...try breaking what works.  You might be surprised at the new ideas that come from turning things on their head and breaking free from old habits!

Year of...

 It's sort of funny, if you think about it.  We put so much emphasis on one day of the year (New Year), as if it will magically turn us into a better person.  We talk about resolutions, and this year many people are also hoping that the world itself will shut the door on the previous year, as if all of the crazy that has been going on will suddenly disappear, just because we changed the number on the year we write down.

I am a big believer in goals and working towards improvement.  But I've never really liked resolutions.  I feel like we treat them like on/off switches.  We set a resolution, and it's push push push trying to 'achieve' it, but the second we hit a snag, it's like "oh well, guess that's not happening," and we give up.  Sure, some people manage to make resolutions work for them, and that's wonderful, but the vast majority of resolutions that seem shiny and worth it in the flash of New Year's celebrations turn dull and dim when we think about all that we have to do to actually get there.

I haven't done resolutions in years, but that doesn't mean I don't make plans and have goals.  I have found that setting particular goals (with specific outcomes I want to achieve) doesn't seem to work well for me.  Instead, what I do is pick a focus for the year.  I name my years.  I have had a Year of Moons, a Year of Divination, a Year of Magic, a Year of Wellness, a Year of Runes, and this year I am working through a Year of Rebooting.

There is a pretty popular practice of picking a word of the year, and picking a focus is sort of similar to that.  It's not really a goal, though often there are goals that hang out under the umbrella of the focus.  And a focus is more...well focused than a word.  I have found that looking for a word of the year normally leads me to a feeling or an emotion.  If I find a word, it is something I want to be, whereas a focus is what I want to do.

I'm someone with a lot of interests, and I always have more that I want to do than I will ever have time for.  Picking a focus for the year helps me narrow the field.  It's not an exclusivity thing, of course I will do things that don't fit in my focus for the year, but it does help me keep moving in one general direction.  Without a focus, I will drift all over the place, and I find that I end up starting a lot of projects but not finishing that many of them.

And it's not even about finishing everything.  Many of my years have had very ephemeral progress.  Take my Year of Runes.  I had lots of plans.  I was going to work through several books I own, I was going to do more castings and other rune related work.  I ended up doing almost none of that.  But I thought a lot about the runes, I read a fair amount, I continued with my daily rune draw, and at the end of the year, I felt strangely more connected than I had at the beginning of the year.

I often think of my Years as being either passive or active.  Even though the Year is a focus, some focuses require more outward work, and others are more in line with reflection or observance.  I tend to flip flop my Years, so if I have been working what I think is a more active year, I'll be drawn to something more passive for the next year.  

Keeping your focus for an entire year takes a bit of work.  I use my planner to help keep me on track, and like most projects, the start of the year involves the most preparation.  For me, the planner works because it is something I work with every day.  I always have my Year written down, and often have a few more pages devoted to it.

But I also use my Year as a lens through which I filter other things that I do regularly.  Take this year, the Year of Rebooting.  A few pages I like to have in my planner revolve around tracking:  keeping track of stuff that I feel might be important.  When I built my trackers for this year, I thought about what it meant to Reboot my personal life, and what things I needed to track to give myself the feedback I needed (on whether the Rebooting was working or needed adjusting).  In fact, all the pages I have done in my planner so far have passed through that question:  how does this fit with my Reboot?

Depending on what focus you pick, that determines how much planning you may want to do.  When I was doing the Year of Moons, I knew I wanted to work each moon phase, so that was a lot of little steps.  For my Year of Magic, I wanted to make sure I was doing Sabbat observances, so that meant taking a bit of a broader view.  This year, I know that regular check-ins are vital, so I'll be doing reflections at the end of each month.  Whatever plans you feel fit your focus, keep them somewhere that you will be reminded of them, whether that means using a planner, programing them into your phone or putting sticky notes on your mirror.

One wonderful side effect is that keeping a Year's focus draws things that fit your focus towards you.  It's like when a friend tells you they love flamingos, and now every time you go to a store, you notice flamingo products....and you swear you never saw them before!  This is why picking your focus for the year is something you should take your time with....make sure it's something you want to be surrounded with (and, of course, make sure it's something you actually want to work on for a whole year).

We all want that feeling of a fresh start, that the New Year heralds shutting one book and starting a brand new one.  We want to feel like we can have a better year, make better choices, be a better person.  If you are finding that resolutions aren't working for you, why not try a focus instead?  Think about what you want to do, in the coming year, and make this your Year of....

New Year, clean slate...

 The new year is just around the corner, and everyone is focused on how this year is going to be 'better' than the last...for a whole lot of reasons.  This is nothing new, and nothing really specific to the year we've had.  We tend to approach every year as if it is going to be 'different', and by different we normally mean "it will be like the past year, without all the bad stuff..."

It is natural to want to build upon what we've already started.  We put in the work, we want to get the results.  We want to think that we can take all that we have done, learn from it, and move forward in a way that filters out the less desirable things...after all we've learned from our mistakes, haven't we?

But one problem with this way of thinking is we are constantly referencing the bad stuff that has happened.  We are repeatedly thinking about what we don't want to happen.  Now whether you practice (or even acknowledge) the many 'law of abundance' ideologies, the fact remains you are putting a lot of your attention on what you don't want, on what you've already done that hasn't worked.

Sometimes, what we really need is just to wipe the slate clean.  To start over.  Toss out everything and begin fresh.  This can be very daunting, and it can sometimes feel like giving up.  But it can also be amazingly freeing.  It can open up doors you never imagined, because you are looking in a new direction.

So how do you do this?  The first step is to literally clear away the old.  You have to make space for the new stuff.  You have to be ready to let go of what isn't working.  This doesn't mean you have to drop everything you are in the middle of.  But spend some time really thinking about what is working...and what isn't.  A lot of the times we know the difference between something that's hard but seeing progress and something that's just us beating our head against the wall...we just don't want to admit that something isn't working.  

One way to do this is to put it on paper.  Whether you are analytical and want to do a pros and cons list, or perhaps laying out a timeline of advances and setbacks, you can literally weigh each side against the other and see where you stand (don't forget to add in the less obvious things, like how your emotional state is or how it's effecting your relationships).  If you lean towards more artistic approaches, you can draw your project out.  This might be as simple as getting out some supplies and putting color and shapes on a page, making a picture of how you feel about the project, or it might be more involved, clipping pictures that represent your progress, adding words and symbols, drawing the connections and roadblocks.  Looking at the resulting art will give you an emotional feedback that will shine a light on things you may not even realize you were feeling.

After examining the things you are in the middle of, you should have a better idea of which ones you want to continue with...and which you want to scrap.  Remember, you can always store a project if you aren't ready to completely toss it.  Physically box everything related to it up (if you have computer files, put them all in one place, make a backup and put it in the box, and then put the digital files somewhere you won't see them easily).  You can always decide to come back to these stored projects later, perhaps with a new perspective and new energy!

Now comes the more difficult part...figuring out what new stuff you want to pursue!  Most often, we struggle with this in one of two ways:  we either feel like we have too many choices...or we feel like we have none.  

I tend to fall into the first category.  There are a million things I want to work on, things I am interested in and want to pursue...way more than I will ever have time to actually follow up on.  And this overabundance of options often leads to indecision and paralysis.  I can't block out the other appealing options, so I end up dithering about and not actually working on any one thing (or I keep swapping about, and adding new stuff, and eventually I am trying to juggle so many things none of them really get any attention).  

The key here is to sort out what level of interest you have in the various things.  There are lots of things that fall into the 'mildly curious' category for me.  I find them interesting, but it's an idle, intellectual interest.  I don't actually think I'll ever become a professional blacksmith, for example, but I am still fascinated by the art of blacksmithing, and every once in a while I'll find myself following that rabbit hole of information.  Strangely, these idle pursuits tend to hijack my brain more than things that I think would actually be a big part of my life.

When I sit down and just ask myself "do I really want to know about this thing," I get deceptive answers, because yes, I do actually want to know about all the things.  The more relevant question to ask is, "which of these two things do I feel want to have a bigger role in my life."  Keep it to two things at a time, and just keep comparing until you end up with one thing that you want to work on right now.  You can keep the rest in a list of stuff to look into at a later date, but if you allow yourself to focus on more than one thing...you won't actually focus on anything.

If, on the other hand, you find yourself on the side of not feeling drawn to anything in particular, it is time to go fishing.  When you go fishing, you might bait your hook trying to draw in a particular type of fish...but you really have no clue what's under the water.  You toss your line in, and wait to see what bites.  When you don't feel like you know what you want to do...cast a line!  Ask your friends what kinds of stuff they like doing.  Scroll through Instagram or Pinterest (or just Google random things...).  Start a list of anything that seems remotely interesting.  

Sometimes you will find yourself being drawn back to the same types of things, over and over, and it's obvious to you what you want to work on.  Other times you will end up with a list of stuff you might be interested in, but you're still not sure.  You can work through this list the same way as you would if you had a ton of things you were interested in....still asking what you would most want to add to your life.  Don't worry if you don't feel super attached to it from the start.  Often, as you start learning about something, you can tell if it is going to be a short term thing (where you learn enough to know it's not really for you), or if it starts to grow on you (becoming something you really want to devote yourself to).

The great thing about starting something new is you don't have to make it a huge commitment!  You can decide you want to work on something for a month...that's about long enough to know whether it's a good fit for you.  If it's not, well you crossed something off your list, and now you can try a different thing.  If it is, then you can decide how you want to further your studies and work with the topic.

Remember, just because you take something up, doesn't mean you can't put it back down again.  It doesn't matter how long you've worked, or how far you've gone....if something's not working for you, stop doing it!  Clean your slate, take some time to sort out what you'd rather be doing...and start fresh.

Finding light in the darkness

 Dark and light are entwined, both part of the same cycle, both different sides of the same coin.  We think of them as opposing forces, but they are nothing without the other.  And yet, when we are enveloped by one, it can be hard to perceive the other.

For many people, we are in a time of great darkness.  This year has be so hard on so many people, and that is just the topper!  Everything we have gone through this year is lumped on top of all the regular junk that we are trying to deal with.  And then the actual year has gone through it's darkness, so we are faced with the literal fading of the light.  It's layers upon layer upon layers of dark, so finding the light is like trying to see a candle burning in another room....with the door closed, your eyes shut and while wearing a blindfold.

Sometimes, when we are in the deepest darkness, the tiniest spark can be blinding.  And other times that same spark can be swallowed up by the dark to where we question if we saw anything at all.  Neither way is right or better than the other, and we may find that some things hit us one way while others hit us the other.  When you realize which way the light is hitting you, that is when you can adjust and embrace what is there!

Often, the way that we see the light is the opposite of what we feel like we need.  When the dark is pushing in on us and swallowing any light we may have found, we feel compelled to try to make that light shine brighter.  That is when we run around the house, turning on all the lights, lighting all the candles, making noise and being loud about how we aren't afraid or aren't sad or aren't being effected by the darkness at all.

And then when the smallest light seems too bright, we want to dim it even further.  We don't want the light to go out, but we wrap ourselves in the shadows it creates.  We find solace in that very darkness that threatened to consume us.  These are the times we have to go through something to come out the other side.  We need to open to the darkness, to allow it to run it's course, while keeping our eyes on that spark of light, just the barest brightness is all we need to sustain us.

But what do you do when you feel like you can't find the light at all?  Sometimes, when the whole world feels dark, we turn inward and we stoke up our own fires.  We become the light burning in the darkness and we shine our light so the world can see.  Just knowing that we might be someone else's light is what keeps us going, it's the fuel we throw on our fire and it's the guard against the cold wind that blows.

Then other times, we know our coals are completely burnt out.  And we have to reach out, to find someone else's light to bask in for a while.  There is a phenomenon where if you blow out a candle, then hold a lit match near it...but not touching it...the candle will catch fire again.  Sometimes, that is all we need, a little jump start so we can get burning again.  But other times, we need to rest, like wood that is wet, it doesn't burn well (if it will light at all), but if you lay it beside a fire, eventually it dries out and then it can be lit.

No matter where you are, be kind with yourself.  Dark times ebb and flow, and we all go through stuff.  Not only that, but we all have different levels of comfort.  For some, the desire is to live in the bright light, while others prefer to hug the edge of the shadows, and then there are those who are most comfortable hidden in the dark and watching the light from afar.  

 

And wherever you are comfortable, you may find yourself forced into another level...for a moment or for much, much longer.  It's okay if you need to borrow light from other people as you strive to cultivate your own.  

Whether you are searching for a spark, a candle or a bonfire, no matter how dark the night feels or how long it has been, the light is there.  Seek out the light you need, and sit with it.  Find the balance of light and dark that works best for you, and tend it whenever you can.  You will find the more you work with this interplay of light and dark, the more accustomed you will become to the levels that you thrive in, and the easier it is to return to them when the light shifts.

Winter Deities

 When considering the world from a pantheistic view, it seems natural that there would be deities that are strongly associated with particular seasons.  We honor deities for a huge variety of natural phenomenon, as well as the many and varied aspects of human interaction and experience.  To put it plainly....if a thing exists, there is probably at least one deity associated with it.

Winter deities fill a bit of a unique role.  When we talk of other seasonal deities, often they are deities of other things that are simply associated with a particular season.  Fertility deities become deities of spring, deities of play become deities of summer, and deities of harvest become deities of fall.  But many of these deities are also associated with multiple seasons, or the seasonal connection is a secondary one. 

When we talk about winter deities, these are often deities that have a singular focus.  They are the deity of snow or ice or winter nights.  They aren't ones we tend to work with year-round, and instead find their way into our practice only when the days grow short and the winter winds blow.

There is nothing wrong with working with seasonal deities, in fact in a lot of ways it makes sense that some deities will be more present at specific times during the year.  In some ways it reminds me of breaking out the holiday decorations.  The act of decorating can feel like work, and taking the time to honor a winter deity may feel strange or foreign at first (because we aren't as familiar with them as we are with more year-round deities we might work with).  But once you get the decorations hung, they make you smile when you see them.  Likewise, knowing that you will mostly be working with a particular deity 'only' in the winter, makes that time special, like having a beloved family member come for a visit...you want to make the most of it and enjoy them while they are present.

I feel like winter deities aren't as widely worked with because so many of the things we associate with winter aren't the most open of things.  Cold, inner work, solitude, quiet, storms, death...the list goes on, and isn't as inviting as many of the qualities that we associate with other seasons.  And yet, there are other, somewhat hidden qualities that go hand in hand with many of these qualities:  peace, tranquility, stillness, beauty, rest.  

Now, I am a good bit of an introvert, so winter qualities draw me in.  For me, working with winter deities feels a bit like spending time with another friend who is an introvert.  You might be in the same room, but you're each doing your own thing...and it's still nice to have them there.  You might not speak for weeks, but then you think of something to share with them, and you have a furious conversation about that one thing.  

But not all winter associations are solitary ones!  We also think of gathering together in the winter, of spending times with family and friends, of huddling together in the dark and cold to share what we have.  These may not be things we do out of necessity anymore, but there is still that connection to years past, where we gathered around the fire, sharing our hope for the future and hiding from the fears that knocked on our door.

Whether you love the cold and quiet or prefer to find company around a warm fire, winter brings a different energy from the rest of the year.  Finding ways to honor that energy, to work with winter deities and learn how you can best embrace this season will bring different benefits from those you get during the rest of the year.  Winter may stand on it's own, but that doesn't mean we should ignore it.  Open your heart, and see what the winter winds will bring to your life this year!