We have passed through the Solstice portal, welcoming back the light as well as a new age. We sat through the stillness of the 12 Holy Nights and came out the other side in a new year. Winter has laid her blanket all around the landscape, stripping life bare to its core, back to its essence and she has invited us to join her…
While the 21st of December in our Western Culture is marked as the beginning of Winter, for our ancestors it actually marked the depth of winter – that’s why it’s also called ‘Mid-Winter’. The Celts and Druids celebrate on the 31st of October Samhain, which is the last of the three harvest feasts and marks the end of the Celtic year. In Scotland there is an old tradition in which a group formation of stone figures is brought into a simple stone shelter – in which they will remain till they are brought back out on Beltane, the feast that marks the beginning of spring. The story goes that as long as these figures are taken care for during winter, the land will remain fertile.
These stone figures are the Cailleach and her family. The Cailleach is the Old, Wise Woman who cares for the land and all the living things on it. She rules over winter and it is said that on Beltane she transforms into a beautiful, young woman – to transform into the old Cailleach again during Samhain. In this she symbolises the Earth, the cycles of life and therefor also the cycles that are present within us all: the cycles of fertilization, birth, growth, fruition, of death and decay.
The Cailleach is the archetype of the Crone, the Hag or Witch – which nowadays is often depicted by an image of an old, wicked woman. While actually those used to be all names to describe women with wisdom. Crone actually comes from ‘crown’, Hag comes from ‘hagio’ which means ‘holy’ – and Witch comes from the word ‘wit’, meaning ‘wise’. They were the keepers of the ancient ways. They had a deep comprehension of the ways of nature and knew how to deeply listen to the messages coming from the natural world.
The Crone Woman is one of the archetypes of the Triple Goddess. She is the older woman. One who has passed through menopause and carries the deep wisdom that comes from passing through many moon cycles. She is the witty wise woman, who has learned to overcome her fear of judgements of others and unflinchingly speaks her truth. She is the archetype that knows how to be with chaos, uncertainty, with death and transformation and the grief that accompanies it.
It is the deep wisdom of the Crone Woman, of the Cailleach, of Winter herself which teaches us the strength and discernment of what may die and pass away, whether these are certain thought and/or behavioural patterns within ourselves, relationships, ideas or anything else which is keeping us from embracing and embodying our deepest truths.
But apart from being associated with death, the Cailleach or Crone Woman is also the one who knows the deep waters of our own being – and how to navigate them. She sits with us through the darkness of winter, teaching us how to cultivate the trust and strength to step forward into uncertainty and when witnessed within our deepest despairs, she offers us a mysterious smile. That kind of smile that knows the mysteries of the Universe and knows that this too shall pass.
Instead she invites us to rest into the stillness, peace and calm the darkness offers us. To welcome the liberation that death can bring to us, as well as honouring our grief. To feel all that wants to be felt and allow those deep feeling waters to move us and welcome us into our inner well from which dreams and vision spring.
During winter, life on the surface seems to have come to a stillness. It is the quality of slowing down, while deep within the soil lay already the seeds of new life. There they are nurtured by our imagination of how our dreams and visions, of how a new world may come into being. The Crone woman knows that it is the act of dreaming itself, that wakes up the inner child within all of us, that opens us up to possibility, to miracle and magic and that offers us a northern star to guide our walk through the season of death and renewal. Here we learn the patience, the strength and the trust to sit with the mysteries of uncertainty, of not-knowing and break through any confusion about who we are.
It is by being with the dark, that the light within grows stronger. It is winter, that offers us a deeper wisdom of living through the different seasons of what it means to be human. So that when Spring arrives, we welcome the coming of new life replenished, renewed, reborn…
“There is always that edge of doubt.
Trust it, that's where the new things come from.
If you can't live with it, get out,
Because when it's gone, you're on Automatic,
Repeating something you've learned.
Let your prayer be:
Save me from that tempting certainty that
Leads me back from the Edge,
That dark edge where the first light breaks.”
- "The Edge of Doubt" by Albert Huffstickler
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