With the dawning of December, this blog turned 1. One year of magic, learning to write about it and sharing it with a greater audience. This is something that my guides demanded of me, but also something that I knew that I needed to do for myself. As a photographer, a writer, and a witch – combining the three together was in inevitability. I just needed to learn how.
Last year at this time, I (like most of us), felt very isolated. We were just beginning our first winter in quarantine and even though I’m not the most social witch, being disconnected from the few with who I share my magical journey was so very, very hard. Still, I prevailed and celebrated my first Yule alone. The ritual was wonderful and set most of the tone for the year ahead – in many ways (though I do not personally celebrate 00 Capricorn as the beginning of the year), it felt more like a New Year’s ritual than what I did on the New Year.
This year has been somewhat kinder and on Tuesday I was able to meet with my two closest (all tested beforehand, of course) for a small ritual to celebrate the changing of the seasons.
This was a simple spell – consisting of an orange for happiness and cloves and cinnamon for good fortune. We each chose a candle with a color representation of what we wanted to bring into our lives for the coming year and then – we had fun! I love that each of us had such a different interpretation of the spell. That is one of my favorite parts of doing spellwork with others – each of us creates our own beautiful work of art. You get to see spellwork through another’s eyes. I am so grateful for that. So grateful for every moment that I get to spend inside with these two important humans.
As we sat with our spells, chit-chatting and catching up, I couldn’t help but reflect on the past year and my goals. One of them was to write a blog post for every week. At times it has been incredibly challenging – at times I’ve almost completely lost my voice to the sea of emotions and complexities of navigating life in this pandemic. But still, I persisted. I chose to show up again and again – even when it felt impossibly hard. Even when it felt insurmountable. I am proud of myself for that.
Like all true magic, each spell had a mind of its own. Gray’s candle, dedicated to peace and calm in 2022 was quiet and tranquil until the very end and then a bonfire as the cloves caught alight. Dora’s crackled and sang to let us know that it was getting to its end. Mine burned out last, almost at the point when we had to leave to go and light our Yuletide fire – but even it performed on time in the end. It was beautiful and poignant.
This year flew by (especially in contrast to the last), but I have a few favorite memories to re-share now.
- My Winter Walks Through the Frozen Woods
- The Winter Syrup I Made to Beat the Januart Blues
- The First Bulbs That Appeared in My Garden
- Making Evergreen Salve
- The Day That I Spent Wildharvesting on the Beach
Honestly, there were so many more adventures that I didn’t find time to write about! I will need to work on that and perhaps some of them will become blog entries as the Winter winds on and there is less going on.
Each year brings its own blessings and its own challenging and it’s important to acknowledge that. We realized as we went about our day that Gray hadn’t collected a Yule log from her place the year prior and so I volunteered a piece of birch that I’ve been saving since my wedding. It seemed like a lovely tribute to the Yule fire – a piece of myself and of the day that I remember so fondly. How can it not foretell a better year with better blessings yet to come?
Gray went to work engraving the log with sigils, runes, and kanji.
it came out so beautifully that I had to share. As they carved, Dora and I went to work creating a fire started out of old herbs that had been used as offerings and prior magics that we could give to fire – beautiful bits of our last year to fan the flames of tomorrow. In we packed bits of cinnamon and cloves from our magics, white cedar from our walks at the Cape, and tufts of Milkweed seeds from my garden (as well as many other things). We also wrote down all that we wanted to release (our coven’s Yuletide tradition).
By then it was time to meet with our nearest and dearest, a few close friends with whom we have shared many a Yuletide in the past. Sure, this time we were all outside and we shared smiles rather than hugs. But we were all together again after a year apart and that is, in the end, what matters the most. As the light returns, I want to let this memory warm my heart – with the light, hope is always possible and no Winter ever lasts forever.