Winter: Between Life and Death

Winter - a season where just about everything is reduced and barren, bitten down to the bone. Belonging to the Crone, the season’s energy speaks with ruthless honesty; the once flattering light of Summer no longer seduces, the excuses we make due to being too comfortable no longer hold up. Much like Jupiter is Spring/Summer because we say “yes” freely, indiscriminately, Fall/Winter is Saturn embodied, as we learn the fruits of unchecked expenditures. 

During the Winter, the Crone disassembles— ideals, plans, myths, unexamined conventions, and even bullshit (especially bullshit)— piercing through facades and helping us prioritize what is real, and what matters most to us. She calls us to decay to the point that we may no longer recognize ourselves as we are programmed to think we are, and coaxes us to re-know (re-cognize) ourselves in a profoundly pure and wonderfully straightforward way.

As I feel my descent to Winter, I know it’s a death of sorts, but this watery Yin season is more than ordinary liquids. I yield at the liminal space between ocean and land, full of loss and arrival, and know that there is no real ending nor beginning as the ebb and flows are perpetual. It is in the arms of the Crone that I can dissolve and soften, hearing the waves breaking on me, and maybe even simply breaking me. 

There is a horror to losing myself.

But there is an ecstasy in losing myself, too.

And descending to Winter, to the Yin of Yins, I go.

Will you join me? THE HIDDEN VALLEY OF REST: A WINTER SOLSTICE E-GATHERING on December 21

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