Samain Closing Moon
On my circular calendar the large egg yolk in the center has begun to pull further and further away from the inner circle that counts the days in the year. What that means is that the daylight hours have receded considerably since Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox. The season of Samain, now two weeks old, runs from October 31st to the Winter Solstice, falling this year on December 21st.
Over Samain the air grows colder, plants go fully dormant, and the skies become gray, gravid with snow. By the Winter Solstice, the bleak midwinter, cold has come in earnest and the sun spends most of its time in other climes. These are the seasons for those of us acquainted with the night.
No wonder the brave lights of Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Years try to push back against the darkness. Some find it intolerable, oppressive. Long. In ancient times there was the fear that the sun, once hidden for too long, might forget to rise again, or, even if it did rise again, that it might stay on this diminished course. Fear of darkness lies deep in the human psyche, probably literally at the base of the brain.
Yet some of us welcome the coming of the darkness. Some of us know that underneath the barren fields some plants and animals do not wink out, but merely slumber, gathering themselves for the spring, preserving the hard one fruits of the growing season in roots or through hibernation. Some of us remember that the womb is a dark and liquid place, that in it we were once swimmers, beings of fluid grace and that the light is a surprise, an alien medium to us then. Some of us know that darkness is the realm of the heart and the place where creative acts take place.
Some of us watch the receding yellow on the circular calendar and count down toward our favorite holiday, the Winter Solstice.
Woolly brother Mark Odegard has suggested that we devote the next year (me in absentia) to documenting our process, our history, our way of being Woolly Mammoths. The premise is a good one. We’ve done something that worked since we’ve now been together over 25 years. An unstated premise is also a good one. We’re in the third phase of our life now and what moving vans don’t disrupt, illness and death will.