Makes me think of the value of hibernation...
WINTER: JOURNEY TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE HAG
by Patricia Monaghan
Finally comes the time of withdrawal, the hidden time.
It is as though the world sleeps under a gray cloak. Everything is still and
silent. It is though the world sleeps under a gray veil.
Look to the massive tree whose branches lift towards pearl-gray skies. It
fingers the low clouds. Its branches break and fall in heavy winds. They
droop and break in heavy snows. Cut them: no sap runs. the tree seems empty,
dead.
Look for the bear and its friends: they are gone. The Earth, its rocks, hide
the sleeping bear, the hibernating frog, the coiled immobile snake. Stillness
settles over the forests of the north as birds skein away, taking song
southwards. Rabbit fur drifts into whiteness. Grouse feathers drift into the
whiteness
Life has moved to the center, to its hidden darknesses. Bulbs rest, roots
sleep, trees go dormant. Stillness settles over the world.
Yes, this is darkness before dawn. Yes, it is rest before new growth. But
who---watching a few brown birds light in empty branches and pull at wizened
berries---who can believe how close life lies to the wintery surface?
Yet it is there. A warm spell brings out pussywillows. Tiny crocuses and
hyacinth brave the snow to bloom, color against winter's gray. Witch-hazel
bursts into frayed blossoms. Life rests; it has not ended.
Winter's woman too is gray, but floods color at a moment's warmth.
Winter's woman is a still pond, mirroring the world from her calm eyes.
Winter's woman is rooted, coiled, full of potential.
There is wisdom in winter. Each season has its own wisdom, but winter's
includes all. What is invisible in growing times becomes plain in the dry cold
of winter. From winter, one can remember spring, summer, fall, and see all
their patterns. This is the time when all seems clear.
And all seems complete. There is not yet a call to begin again, for beginnings
will come soon enough. This is the fallow time. This is the time of rest.
This is also the time of visions. For as the world sleeps, as the woman's
energies withdraw into a coiled serpent at the base of her spine, the inner eye
widens. There is so much to see beyond the world of appearances! Knowledge
bestows its miraculous kaleidoscope. Spirits call from beyond time. What had
been a glass wall between the mind and the world dissolves into a shimmering
veil that blows open---often, then more often---to reveal new powers.
There is magic in all seasons, but winter's magic is most concise, most dense,
most crystalline. It is diamond magic, cool and brilliant, not the fiery magic
of coal. It is laser fineness, it is precise direction.
When winter comes to a woman's soul, she withdraws into her inner self, her
deepest spaces. She refuses all connection, refutes all arguments that she
should engage in the world. She may say she is resting, but she is more than
resting: she is creating a new universe within herself, examining and breaking
old patterns, destroying what should not be revived, feeding in secret what
needs to thrive.
Winter women are those who bring into the next cycle what should be saved.
They are the deep conservators of knowledge and of power. Not for nothing did
ancient people honor the grandmothers. In her calm deliberateness, she winters
over truth, she freezes out falseheartedness.
Look into her eyes, this winter woman. In their gray spaciousness you see the
future. Look out of your own winter eyes. You too can see the future. Look
carefully, for you will see yourself there, you will see it in yourself.
___
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