the beginning of what comes next.

If you are a pagan, a witch, or a plant, happy new year.

I know, it’s a bit obscure to imagine, but the plants know…and not by temperature - which we all now know can be so finicky - but by the slant of the sun, which gives us all life. For people who aligned their lives with the plants, the new year begins with the end of the harvest and the return to the root. It starts with a quieting down, a blanketing of the fields, a full release of leaf and flower and stalk, and a turn toward the fire. Essentially, the new year begins with a death, and while their is grief out there in the landscape, more clearly there is simply an exhale, a letting go. With death, we welcome the beginning of what comes next, including the liminal dream state that winter brings, if we allow it. You don’t have to be of any particular religion, ethnicity or indigeneity to claim this. You don’t have to be from any particular place, other than this particular planet.

The harvest is complete, the fullness of the earth’s giving over. This year I thank in particular: tulsi pine motherwort, elacampane ashwagandha osher, linden live oak lavender…and vitex, dear little tree that grew from my father’s seeds.

This planetary placement in relation to the sun is known as the middle point between the winter solstice and the fall equinox. This has little to do with any religious thought, but is significant in how we spin around the sun. One of the oldest systems for reading time - the same one that birthed the Iching, Qigong, Chinese medicine, and Daoism - is one that measures shadows. These shadows, when measured and linked together, create the image of the yin/yang symbol, and the fibonacci spiral.

With pine boughs on the altar, surrounding photos, notes, and names of my beloved dead, I begin again. As we in the Northern Hemisphere spiral toward the moment of deepest shadow, we are invited to follow the roots down, deep into the earth, and dream up what we will next become.

Pay attention to the place of composition, not the flower or mushroom that will come from it.