Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Epicycles

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

What does Winter dream of?

In observational astronomy, there's a phenomenon called an "epicycle," a cycle within a cycle.

If you watch a particular planet from night to night—Venus, say—you'll see her move along her regular path. Then she stops and goes backwards. She makes a widdershins loop in the sky, then resumes her regular course.

Of course it's all a matter of perspective and bodies in simultaneous motion. But what it looks like is time in reverse.

The Year is Earth's story. From youth she waxes into ripe maturity and wanes away into age.

And now the serpent catches its tail in its mouth, time runs backwards, and old woman becomes young girl.

The February cross-farthing marks the midpoint of winter, halfway from sunstead to evenday. But the second half of winter is different from the first.

The snow of early winter is light and dry, full of air.

But the snow that I brushed off the car the other morning was dense and wet, heavy with water: spring snow.

Old Lady Winter becomes Winter Bride.

And Winter dreams of Spring.

 



 



 

Last modified on
Tagged in: Imbolc Triple Goddess
Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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