Dark Time

What dark time is coming,
What dark time is here?
- “Dark Time” by October Project (lyric by Julie Flanders)

Samhain has passed and the days grow darker and darker. Now that daylight savings has started ending later in the fall, the shortening of the days has become even more obvious. For most (but certainly not all) modern Pagans, especially those who follow a Celtic path, Samhain is the turning of the sacred year. For those who acknowledge a God, it is often seen as the time time of his death or passing into the underworld. And I fall into both categories.

Like many modern Pagans, I find myself in something of a dilemma. Samhain, with all its traditional death imagery and its importance to my Celtic ancestors as both the turning of the year and the beginning of winter, feels so appropriate as the time to honor the Dying God, the vegetation aspect of male Divinity, whose death with harvest allows all to survive the coming winter. But the Winter Solstice, with its strong images of rebirth and new light seems to be the perfect time for the birth of the God of Light, whose infant or youth form begins the God’s cycle again. And if I am to follow my inclination, to celebrate both holidays as what they are, Death and Rebirth, what do I do with the time in between?

The trouble really goes back to Pre-Christian Britain. The Insular Celtic peoples, whose descendants are the Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Scots and Manx, lived largely by a lunar calendar. Their holidays, which Modern Pagans refer to as the the Cross Quarter days (and call by their Irish Gaelic names), were tied to the lunar cycles. From what we know the Insular Celts divided their year into three season: winter, summer and harvest. Samhain was the turning of the year and the beginning of winter. Beltane (May 1st) was the beginning of summer and Lughnasadh (August 1st) was the beginning of the harvest time. To round out their year, they celebrated Imbolc, a holiday marking the lactation of the ewes, at the beginning of February. These holidays were great cultural celebrations with bonfires, herd blessings, games and great gatherings.

On the other hand, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, as Germanic tribes, were strongly solar-oriented. They placed their holidays on the solstices and equinoxes. Today Modern Pagans celebrate those holidays as Yule (Winter Solstice), Eostre (Spring Equinox), Litha (Summer Solstice) and Mabon (Fall Equinox). On the British Isles, the two cultures ran right up against each other. Accommodations were made but there was still a discrepancy. As Christianity swept through, the Roman church chose to adopt the Germanic holidays, putting Christmas close to the winter solstice and Easter close to the spring equinox, while the Celtic church maintained the old Celtic holidays (Imbolc became Candlemas and Lughnasadh became Lammas). Time passed, the two churches merged and the Catholic/Germanic view came out on top, with the Celtic holidays taken as second place or dying out altogether. And it was that strange amalgamation that, thanks to Gerald Gardener, the Modern Pagan Movement inherited.

There are plenty of Pagans who don’t celebrate all of the holidays. And there are plenty of Reconstructionist groups that don’t celebrate any of them. Beltane has very little hold on a Hellenic Reconstructionist, especially when they have wonderful holidays like the Thesmophoria. But for those of us who rose out of a Wiccan or Eclectic background, the strange little gap between the Celtic and Anglic sides of our heritage is still there.

As an Anglo-Celitc Pagan, this gap looms very large for me. I want to follow the feeling of the seasons and the pull of my ancestors. And the empty stretch of time, almost two months’ worth, that lies between the solemnity of Samhain and open joy of Yule needs to be acknowledged and honored. It has weight and purpose. The earth is slowly falling asleep, becoming fallow. The nights are longer and colder and the frosts are heavier. In northern climes, there is already snow on the ground. It’s as if this time is an expectant inhaling of breath, waiting for the joyous exhaling of the Sun’s rebirth on Solstice Morning.

I think we need this time to turn inward. Winter is the season of introspection, but the Holiday Season, with its bright lights and big parties, interrupts that with its deliberate demand of extroversion. I often find it hard to return to the quiet of the Fallow Time after Yule. So I want to turn this time into a moment of interior growth, of dream journeys and path seeking.

My Witch’s Calendar refers to the Full Moon of November as the Mourning Moon. So that is what I will do. I will follow the path of the mourning Goddess, seeking Her Son in the dark places. My rituals will be solitary and my path, the lonely one. I will turn my face from company and seek the Light in quiet contemplation.

The churches are empty
The priest has gone home
And we are left standing
Together, alone.
- “Dark Time” by October Project (lyric by Julie Flanders)