At This Time of Year

These days there is more experiencing things that writing about them. After reading about journeying, I am finally journeying, traveling into the Perilous Castle, and that is more a matter of private experience than article writing. The autumn is a time of transition, and not transition into apparent and glorious green life, but transition from heat to cold, from green to brown, from leaves in bloom to leaves drying and dying. The grasses, browned by summer, have their flush of deep green again, but often the dying of the year looks like dying. What is ahead of us is the winter, and we are already dealing with the many hardships and disappointments of life. Autumn can be nearly as difficult as the winter.

As I write this it is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. When I was in a Jewish community, I experienced several Yom Kippurs. The Jewish calendar is a lunar one, and Yom Kippur takes place a set number of days after Rosh Hoshanah, the New Year, or rather the first New Moon of the New Year.  The autumn is a time of beginning again, because it is a time of ending. Biblical evidence, as well as the evidence of the Jewish calendar is that the year originally started in the spring with Passover, and Christianity even has a variation of the that tension, what with Advent in winter being the beginning of the Church year, but the candle which marks every Church year being lit on Easter several months later in the spring.

            So it’s not strange at all that the witchly life would be marked by something like this. At this time of year, personally, I feel the need for beginning again, or a sort of turning around, which is what repentance means. I do see the dual nature of beginning again. It was in high summer, many years ago, I was initiated, but it was at Samhain that I took the first of my degrees and resolutely set out on the path I have not turned from. This time of the year has meant so many things.  When I was younger it was a vague time to think about eery things and shiver. When I was older it was a time when I turned my mind to the magic I ignored most of the year. Later this was the time to seriously think about being initiated and taking up a different life and then later a time when I wondered if I was any good at it and could still do it. These days it is a time to return to the heart of things, dig down and get rid of what isn’t essential before dedicating for another year.