Winter and the Hag

The sacred Wheel of the Year has turned again and now Autumn has now given way to Winter. The hours of daylight are noticeably shorter and temperatures lower. The leaves are falling steadily from the trees, leaving them as bare skeletons. We have entered the time of the Death Hag, She who rules the barren earth. The following is an excerpt from The Gaia Tradition: Celebrating the Earth in Her Seasons by Kisma Stephanich that is most appropriate to share at this time of the year.

In the Winter, all life slows down, breathing is laboured, silence. Everywhere the stark land stretches. All is dormant, awaiting the rebirth of the Sun, awaiting the gentle touching fingertips of the solar rays when they reach down and caress the land, planting their essence of warmth to germinate the seeds burrowed deep in the Mother’s womb.

Dark and mysterious is the energy at this time of the year, drawing us deep into the centre of our own core to dwell quietly with our Shadow. During this time we taste the bile of our essence and eventually regurgitate it into the light. Until then, we quietly use our senses to listen and wait patiently for the Spring.

Now we stand still. We have no choice but to examine our mortality and dream of days filled with sunshine. Death and dreams. Both, if used during this season, will teach us much about our ego and our relationship to others, and, most importantly, our understanding of life.

Though it is important to work with death and dreams, it is also important to understand the correspondences associated with this season to become more intimate with it, allowing us to understand this phase of life. 

The correspondences of Winter are:

- Season of spirit, dreaming and death

- Repose, regeneration, midnight, dark Moon

- Mountains, rock, structure, soil, gnomes.

Earth is the body of the Mother, the life support system we live on. The Earth reflects strength, growth, nature, sustenance, mountains, forest groves, fields, rocks and sandy stones. It is the element of silence, birth and death.

Winter – we have entered the realm of the subconscious, the occult. The deep intensity of our desires is penetrated. We can learn how to be temperate with our emotions and aware of those feelings of vengefulness and sarcasm.

We have access to submerge our awareness deep into the core of our being. If we use the energy wisely, we can expose that which has been developed secretly and kept undercover from our own consciousness, and transmit those secrets of self by undergoing an arduous regeneration process which can end in either death (if the secrets be of a negative nature) or birth (if they are positive).

So in essence, this energy is pure for us to investigate through deep research those areas of our psyche that like to hide. It is a time for spiritual and physical regeneration, psychological rebirth and/or degeneration and death.