I love this time of year. Outside our usual woodland paths are frozen iron hard, everything dusted in a light crystal white coating giving the everyday a kind of magical appearance, like seeing it through a different lens or maybe even a new unfamiliar doorway. The sound in the wood is different too; the snow makes sounds muffled, deeper, quieter. I’m pretty still and quiet inside as a walk, my mood catching the feel, the spell of the woods and the land.
In these dark nights I love wakening into complete darkness, I fumble my way in the pitch black to the bathroom knowing somehow turning on the light would break the spell. I drink in the dark, savour it as I know it’s beginning to disappear as the wheel of the year turns towards Spring and awakening. Long evenings have been spent at home reading or being quiet, resting. Now however I’m beginning to rouse to wake up to get ready for the earth to wake up. I’m beginning to open, to imagine, to dream up a map, a direction for the coming year.
My first degree was in Comparative Religion and Ethics and since then I’ve been fascinated in ancient ways of worship. The Pagan festival of Imbolc happens in early February.

This festival celebrates the reawakening Earth and the potential of manifestation inherent at this time…….an opportunity for us to use the developing energy of a new season. Here it is important to use our intuitive unconscious energy. Kindred p84

Growing up on a farm our lives revolved around the Seasons of the Year, it brought a structure a connection. It makes sense to me to be aware of the changing seasons and to apply this to personal growth. Winter then being an obvious time to rest making space for quiet introspection and stillness; ending with space to begin to imagine plans for the year ahead. There’s the obvious ways of planning with the New Year resolutions everyday things do more exercise, write more etc but what I’m really interested in is on a much deeper level I’m searching for what’s been growing in the dark. So this is a time to be open to our dreams ,our intuition our feelings. Dreams don’t talk to us in everyday language, they talk to us in images and metaphors so to interpret is often to lose the depth of the message . I was recently recommended a beautiful book Belonging by Toko Pa Turner. She says

‘When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and steps into in’ Turner p 114

She’s taking about dreams how they can show you the way forward even if you don’t yet realise what the dream means. It’s made me think maybe there are things I want to do with my remaining life that I don’t even realise yet that are much more exciting that the usual New Years resolutions that usually are abandoned as the light returns and life gets busier.
This is a perfect time to keep your dream journal close at hand to record your dreams as soon as you wake. To examine and witness and notice the images even if you don’t yet know what they mean.
Maybe there is a message for you in your dreams as the earth stirs and begins to wake from her Winter sleep. Can you make the space to receive it?

Glennie Kindred, Sacred Celebrations, Gothic Image Publications. 2001
Toko–pa Turner, Belonging ,Remembering Ourselves Home, Her Own Room Press. 2017