he Wheel turns inexorably from Dark to Light and to Dark once more. We see the days grow short, as gentle breezes turn to stiffening gales. Day is weak and wan while night is strong, solid. The God is dead, and so for this interval the Goddess mourns the loss of her consort. We irresolute mortals feel alone, forsaken in a great cosmos filled with Cimmerian black and teeming with chaos. The veil that separates our world from the next is thin and rent in places, allowing those things which we fear to enter our lives and haunt the ever lengthening nights. As we behold the birth of an infant year, we seek refuge from the cold cruel night and the fell creatures harboured within the purpled shadows. It is a time of introspection, of solitude; a time to remember those whom we have lost, and to contemplate new direction for our coming year. As the Samhain fire burns, we toss into it all of our failures, our fears and our faults, expelling them from our lives even as the fire quells the dark, relegating shadows to the corners where they can no longer disturb us.

This is the third, the final harvest, the harvest of the soul, when we reap what we have sown. Hopefully, it has been a good year, and we have gathered enough to sustain us through the long dark, cold. We hold the laughter and love close for warmth, keeping the fear and trepidation at bay with the light of friends and family. If our harvest is meager, we are alone, huddled into ourselves to wait, hoping the light will be soon coming, and that the next harvest will be more abundant.

The time between Samhain and Yule is the time of the Crone, the Dagda, Calleach, Morrigu, powerful, dark and wise... imposing and compelling at once. The cycle remains faithful to nature's laws: to all that lives, comes death. While some threads are long seeming and others cut short, in the end, we all enter the eternal cauldron. Just when the dark seems all powerful, the Goddess begins life anew at Yule, with the rebirth of our fledgling Sun, God of light and warmth. The light grows in strength with each passing day and soon begins to warm us with His ever maturing presence. Hope is freshly kindled as we see that from the cauldron of death springs life over and again with every turning of the Wheel.

And so the Wheel turns back into Light, from Yule to Imbolc to Beltane, through Midsummer and back into the Harvest Time again. As we follow the Wheel, we can see clearly that from Dark springs Light in an eternal spiral of birth, death and rebirth.

From Death to Life
From Dark to Light
Erase my strife
Illumine my night
Warm my heart
Reduce my pain
The Wheel must start
To turn again.

Zyalia, the crone

©1998 by Trish Reynolds