Winter Magic 1

Winter's Magic

{ Winter Magic is a five lesson mini course of seasonal prompts and creative inspiration.}

Every season has its magic.

Winter's magic emerges from darkness.

Winter is often seen to represent loneliness, despair or an ending. But although this is the darkest season of the year, the winter solstice last month marked the gradual return of the light — the rebirth of the sun. Winter can be a time for regeneration — often associated with planning and resolutions— and it may also offer us space for gentle introspection. Winter is the year’s slow pause — a season of quiet and of dormancy.

At midwinter we gather, and bring the outside in — foraging for holly to adorn pictures and mantels, hanging bunches of mistletoe, winding wreaths and decorating boughs, we welcome nature into our homes. In the depths of dark, evergreens represent hope, life and the promise of spring — the magic of renewal.

Winter weather is untamed and unpredictable. It can be wild, with lashing rain and unruly storms, but it also brings startling beauty with the mystery of foggy mornings and swirling magic of frost patterns. Snow has a cinematic, otherworldly quality, transforming everyday scenes into picture postcards, stilling villages and towns with a muffling blanket of white, making the familiar seem sparkling and new.

Walking under pale winter skies, through a monochrome landscape of skeletal trees and barbed wire fences, it may be difficult to imagine that below the hard ground, seeds slumber. But there is magic even in winter’s decay — leaf litter crumbling, becoming absorbed into black earth, rotting logs adorned with glowing moss, animal bones bleached pale. Emptiness, stillness, peace.

We pause in these twilight days, gradually guiding ourselves back to the light.