Everything starts in the darkness

Or, maybe we've been doing autumn all wrong

Photo by Paige Cody on Unsplash

I’ve started a new course. If you know me, you’ll know that I love nothing more than a new course. Even better, I’ve started a new witchy course, perfectly timed for this point in the year. This morning I used my dog walk to pick up fallen, sycamore leaves, in the way I would have done as a kid collecting examples of the season for a classroom show and tell. Last night I filled a bowl with water and placed it outside under the moon to… activate? I’m not 100% sure what is due to happen to it but you can’t make London tap water any worse than it already is so I’m sure I’ve changed it for the better in some way. I also wrote lists of people and things which have left my life this year and, more prosaically, took a little trip to Tesco to buy apples and hazelnuts - plastic-wrapped gifts for the ancestors.

In case you have no idea what I’m burbling on about, I am studying the Celtic Medicine Wheel, a traditional calendar used to represent the seasons and stages of nature. And this week is the celebration of Samhain, when all witchy goodness comes to the surface. Unlike our modern day calendar, the Medicine Wheel begins in autumn as the days get darker and we retreat indoors to hunker-down against the cold. Also, unlike our new year, the Medicine Wheel doesn’t begin with lots of promises for a new start and one hundred ideas of things you’re going to change in the coming twelve months. Instead it asks you to begin by looking back and reflecting on what you want to let go of in order to move forward.

This doesn’t mean that the year starts off on a sad note. In fact, the Celtic new year happens around the same time as our Halloween precisely because it’s all about bringing back the “ghosts” of the past year and celebrating them. It asks us to look at who we have lost from our lives and acknowledge all they gave us, to look at what we have brought in over the past twelve months and celebrate that, and to take a good look at who we are now and be proud of it. Rather than being something to be scared of, Halloween (or Samhain as it is known in the Celtic calendar) is a festival of celebration and thanks. It’s all treat, no tricks.

It’s also an acknowledgement that we are moving out of the very active, “masculine” side of the year, and into the more reflective “feminine” start of the year. To be clear, this isn’t about to descend into a trad-wife newsletter where I tell you that we should all be embracing this time of the year to bake cakes and make jam for the menfolk. Rather that inside all of us there is a mix of “doing” energy - which urges us forward, asks us to make decisions and take action - and “being” energy - which wants us to allow time and space for reflection and creation, to make way for beautiful but unexpected ideas to blossom. Traditionally this “doing” energy was seen as masculine and the “being” energy was seen as feminine. It’s why on the Celtic Wheel, Samhain celebrates The Cailleach, or the Crone, as the bringer of the new year.

(Side note: I am deeply into any tradition which says the person in charge of kicking off the celebrations and defining the year ahead is an old woman and that the payment she demands for bringing this energy is a kiss. My kind of crone.)

Once the celebrations are over, however, the vibe quietens and we’re asked to see this time of the year as a place to reflect and rest. It’s interesting how often we associate the autumn and winter seasons with depression or sadness. I wonder how much of this is due to our societal discomfort with slowing down. Rather than accept that things aren’t moving, we try to push them forward. We try to hang out in the masculine energy of doing all year round, and it’s why so many of us enter January feeling thoroughly burnt out. We’re not supposed to be using this time to push but to gestate instead. What do you want to nurture and quietly dream into being? Those are the things to give your attention to in this period of time. Rather than feeling like you have to present new ideas, new clients, new relationships with a “ta-dah!”, all complete and sparkly and defined, instead use this period to gently let them come to fruition.

We have all made the mistake of rushing into something, pushing for it all to be complete and perfect before it’s ready. The energy of this season is about asking us to accept that the darkness of not knowing isn’t a scary place to be, instead it’s a softer, more considered approach. It’s about giving ourselves time to be with the mysteries yet to unfold and be ok with that. What happens when we allow things to shift and move at their own pace, rather than forcing them to run at ours?

I had direct experience with this recently. Over the summer I found myself suffering from a bit of anxiety. It’s a new experience for me, I don’t consider myself an anxious person and had certainly never found myself waking up at 5am, heart racing, brain in overdrive. I instantly went into problem-solving mode. I read all the books and articles. I asked friends who I knew suffered from anxiety what they did to manage this. I researched and practised and researched and practised. Eventually I contacted a friend who specialises in anxiety management and asked if she could help. She was going through a particularly busy time so I knew I might have to wait before I could see her.

She replied instantly, offering me a spot and apologising it that it was a month or so away. However, she also pointed out that sometimes when we just accept that we’re in a stage of life where things feel difficult or scary, that can often be as helpful as trying to find a solution for it. Could I just accept that things didn’t feel great right now, knowing that help was on the horizon? Because if I could, she suggested, perhaps there would be something for me to learn here.

Nothing really changed when she said that. I wasn’t magically cured, the anxiety didn’t go away. But she gave me permission to accept that in that time, things weren’t good. Effectively she told me I could put down the big smile and instead answer the question, “how are you?” with a shrug and a, “a bit shit, to be honest”. And that relief freed up space in my body, and that space slowly allowed the anxiety to dissipate.

I’m not offering this as a cure for anyone else’s anxiety, I’m not sure it was even a cure for mine. But there is something in giving yourself space to just be with what is, without trying to change it that is incredibly freeing. And so for the next few months, as we frantically hasten towards the end of the year, trying to finish everything we need to get done while plotting for 2025, I want to offer you the idea that perhaps you are already done for this year. Perhaps no more needs to happen for it to be complete and instead, this period can just be about waiting with curiosity for what lies in the next turn of the wheel.

And, if you find being in this feminine, “being” energy difficult, then here is a last chance to spend a weekend getting really comfortable in it. We’re down to the final spaces for my three day workshop on Sovereignty & Seduction, which is all about getting comfortable embracing the softness, darkness and magic of that “being” energy. It’s three days of gentle joy and you can book your spot here (and do email me for an extra discount code). Happy Samhain all!