Traipsing through the golden leaves covering the pocked pavement of my little shaded trailer court this morning, I inhaled the crisp air, as well as my own loneliness.
I am a communal creature who likes to be alone, and I am a witch without a coven.
Working magic, much like being human, is a living paradox. At the heart of the craft is a living practice--not a philosophy.
Rituals, no matter how big, have no power without the investment of our energy: emotions and beliefs. And in reverse rituals, no matter how small, can have tremendous weight when we imbue them with power.
Feet shuffling through the tree’s recently discarded garments, the gravity of my loneliness filled my heart; the weight of it was dense, physical, and grounding. Emotions are fodder for magic, in case you are wondering.
This is not an unknown “state” for me. There is a longing that rises in me this time of year that feels almost too big to carry. And yet carry it I do, right into the sapphire dawn, and golden filtered dusk. The light fades earlier in the evening and rises more sharply in the morning.
Fall is both filtered and sudden here, but this season it is lingering beautifully. Red, gold, yellow-green grace the streets, and litter the sidewalks.
The subtle then sudden changes in the environment reminds me of life's impermanence. No season lasts forever and if you, too, live in the northern hemisphere you get to witness and be part of these cyclical changes. This time of year begins to draw me inward. Granted, I spend a lot of time in the inner realms, my own and others. It is the nature of my work, but it is also the way I am wired.
It is quieter in my inner world than I can remember, maybe ever.
The screaming child in the other room that I fondly think of as “my anxiety” has been quiet for some time. And after several years of actively working with that energy and the underlying “part”, that silence is a relief. It’s just the leaves and me as I walk. There is a touch of melancholy that I can call loneliness, but I do not think that space is something that someone else can actually fill. There are places inside of us that need to remain empty—our own sacred, secret rooms.
These are liminal spaces such as in the external world are hallways, stairwells, airports, train stations, and even doorways. Our internal liminal spaces are where we dwell in the in-between. We may be in between jobs, relationships, phases or personal development or even physiological changes. The seasonal shifts can help us attune to our own internal shifts, and standing in the both the dawning or dwindling light can help us to remember these phases are natural as we help our bodies attune to their shifts. Naturally we may be finding ourselves called towards our cozy spaces, and sometimes it is just a wonderful magic to sit in front of a window and watch the world turn. Who has time for that, you ask? You do. if you prioritize it.
Loneliness and longing are not conditions that we need to fix, but states that are rife with potential and creative magic that we can learn to access.
If we rush to fill each lonely moment we may never pick up that paint brush and tickle a canvas with it. We may not get that idea for how to rearrange a physical space in a way that provides more comfort or openness, or land in the insight needed to soothe our heart about some discontent relationship. We may never find the stamina to sit and write, for the stamina it needs and quietude it requires.
When we race to fill every moment with busyness, we also skip moments in which we can be with our anxiety, our sadness, or our longing. We bypass memories that might tickle our heartstrings. We tend more and more to commodify our humanity in the name of “feeling good” all the time or always being “productive.”
Fall reminds me of the joy of slow magic, slow cooking, slowly made coffee enjoyed wrapped in a ruana while sitting on my porch, in the clear, blue-brisk sunshine. Fall lets me ruminate, just a little and with a soft heart.
The trees remind me it’s ok to shed what I can no longer wear, and I cannot cling to certain structures past their season. Yes, there may be a bit of grief in this. A tear or two may trickle slowly down my cheek toward a hand clasping a glass of dark, frothy, beer; a hand whose wrist is now nuzzled by a fuzzy sweater where only mere weeks ago bare freckled skin, and light libations met. I only drink dark beer once summer is gone. My tastes change with the season, too. And there is a lightness and joy in sifting through leaves, and pulling on cozy things, and packing away my gauzy dresses into my summer suitcase which lives under my bed until October if I am lucky.
It’s time for soup, which is a form of magic. It’s time to bake things in the oven, and make hearty stews, and maybe once again try my hand at making bread.
It’s time to draw my focus inward and learn to focus even more on my creativity and myself—a quiet, deep, interpersonal magic. And as excited as I am… I will admit, I am also a touch afraid. I don’t quite know how to do this in the way that now calls me. Maybe I need an elder? Maybe I need patience?
Yes, I will be patient with myself.
It will start with a breath and an unraveling of something that has been wound for a very long time, but it is now unfolding.
Thank you for joining me and for caring for yourselves.
~Justice
Beautifully written. I love this time too. I always thought school should start in late March, close July and August and rejoin late September, a time to shut down to restart in spring.
It's been a slow slide into Autumn's brilliant pallette in the Northern Rockies valley where we live. No abrupt visit from Coldmaker drove us to frantic harvesting of the garden's bounty. In fact a month ago, with Equinox approaching, a fellow gardener and I offered a casual prayer to the Old Gods, the Stormers, to grant us just such an Autumn boon. Both of us reformed scientific materialists by education but Pagans at heart, we sealed our pact with gratitude for the Beauty of Life pouring forth from Our Mother Earth.