Finding Peace in the Dark
Yule marks the return of the light, but is the dark necessarily that bad? I recently caught up with a friend whose religious background is in Irish Paganism and star worship. They pointed out that we don't know much about how historical Irish Pagans felt about the Winter Solstice and there are good things about the dark and stillness.
I confess I know less than I should about how Yule was viewed by the pre-Christian Germanic peoples; I seem to recall some clues from the Icelandic Sagas and I know I've been told what modern authors think - but if you don't cite your sources, how do I know what you're telling me is historical?
So I think I know that, for the pre-Christian Norse, Yule was a time for taking stock whether there were enough supplies to last until spring, implying that there was some focus on the dangers of limited resources. But was that all? And considering that practices varied from region to region and household to household, wouldn’t people’s personal opinions about the season have had some influence?
There would have been no viking going on in the winter; raiders would have been home with their families. Then as now, the cold and dark would have made folx sleepy and inclined to stay indoors when they could.
Here and now, one of the biggest lessons I learned this year was to rest and not to fight my body's need for down time. When you're Autistic, have ADHD, or both, resting before and after stressful experiences reduces the chance of going into distress as a result, especially if you lie down to rest. After I started lying down during my lunch breaks (I work from home most of the time) and after my day job, I've been more emotionally stable and able to do what I want once I'm done with my rest.
I have my own paradigm of energy work including a calendar and holidays; I'm working on fiction based on it too. I made mid-December through mid-January a time of liminality and chaos. There's some of that to it in modern-day reality, but there's also community, quiet, and turning inward. I think it's time to reevaluate my ideas before sharing them here.
My other big lesson for the year was to work with cycles - not specifically with light and dark until I had this realization, but having ADHD, I tend to have too many ideas and start lots of projects. I've found it's okay to have multiple projects and leave some of them idle until they catch my interest again, as long as I'm passionate about all of them in the long term.
It's better for me to rotate between projects as I feel motivated to work on specific ones; I never get bored and stop creating because I don't want to finish the latest thing I started. I can grab something older and work on that instead.
We can’t make the weather change, and I can’t change my brain.
What will my day-to-day life look like now that I have this understanding? Probably more introspection during the dark half of the year, and observing my natural cycles so that I can tailor my activities to them.
What about you? Do you deliberately make any changes between the dark half of the year and the light half? Would you start? Feel free to share with me at alleywitch17@gmail.com.