Liminal Veils
Happy new year, one and all. If you are reading this, then you have successfully made it into 2021 (high five, high five) - congratulations!
I was recently commissioned to write a piece about the transition of Autumn into winter, for a new magazine called Belles Misadventures. You can purchase the magazine here (digital or physical,) but I'm sharing the piece that I wrote with you here. If you're feeling a bit 'January', then hopefully this might help to warm you up.
As 2020 steadily spins its way towards the winter months, our global neighbourhood of humanity faces the kind of uncertainty that none of us will have ever experienced before. With communities fractured by social distancing measures and familiar routines overturned by the ambiguous, dark threat of the virus, many of us will have been clutching at fragments of reassurance and comfort.
The balm of September's Indian Summer drew me out into the countryside, which is where I found some shining threads of serenity. It seems that nature — even with all of her fierce might and storms — will always whisper to us the answers we are looking for if we become still enough to listen. Despite the discordant din of Covid-19, I discovered that nature was still turning over each new day with quiet assurance. The sun continued to rise and set amid blazing blushes of pink skies. Shadows grew shorter throughout the mornings and drew long again into the afternoons, just as they always have done. The trees were peeling back the lush robes of the green summer months with russet, scarlet, and amber colours while shoals of starlings swooped around the rooftops.
As the flowers and leaves around us curl and wither away at this time year, I always feel that they are ushering in a new energy, and 2020 has been no different. Many of us feel it – a sense of easing out from the bright, impulsive drive of summer as we move towards something altogether more languid, more gentle. More... sensual. The rich, heady smells of ripe apples and cool mornings will soon give way to bone-bare branches, sparkling frosts, and evenings cloaked in starry darkness. And during these winter months while the earth is apparently sleeping, I like to turn myself over to dreaming. To unshackle myself, as much as I can, from the relentless march of busy productiveness that has most of us collared, and tune into the rhythms of nature as they slow down. The short, glimmering days and long nights of winter feel like the right time to drop into a liminal space of harvesting inspiration, nurturing ideas, and engaging with the imagination.
The winter festivals seem designed to help us towards these exact ends. All Hallows' Eve is a Christian celebration that was superimposed over the Pagan festival of Samhain, the original New Year's Eve. New beginnings were thought to start with planting seeds into the dark earth, where they will germinate throughout the winter, dreaming in the shadows. Samhain was seen as a time when the veils between this world and the Otherworld became thin, which meant that the Gods, nature spirits, and souls of our departed ancestors could more easily come into our world. It was traditional to leave offerings of food and drink outside for them, or to set a place at the table for the visiting souls of the dead. Even today, when gaudy green plastic witch masks nestle amid pumpkins and gingerbread in the supermarket aisles, I feel excited that people are acknowledging magic on some level, albeit a ghoulish, mischievous kind.
And then there is Christmas. Despite the garish commercial pageantry that it can sometimes become, the beating heart of Christmas is still that special sense of magic and wonder, igniting luminous childhood memories.
So it seems to me that these months of diminished light are the time for allowing yourself to fall back into the arms of your daydreams and fantasies, and weave your own fairytales.
Here are some ideas to help you get started:
Burn candles and incense
Gather up some old magazines and create a vision board
Make your favourite hot drinks and add spices
Invest in a cosy throw blanket
Meet with friends to sit (socially distanced, of course) around a crackling fire and tell stories
Watch nostalgic movies
Listen to beautiful music that uplifts you
Give yourself permission to rest
Mashed potatoes
Listen to the robins who sing at night this time of year
Have a hot bath with essential oils
Go for walks during the brightest time of the day
Appreciate winter sunrises on sunny mornings
Spend more time in your PJs (not so difficult in lockdown)
Take time with your journal to record your dreams, ideas or notions of inspiration
And practice gratitude, to remind yourself that magic really is real…
