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From SAD to MagickalHow Paganism Cured My Winter Blues by Kim |
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New York City, November. We've set the clocks back an hour and now it gets completely dark by 5:00. This used to depress me . . . after all, we're supposed to bemoan the days getting shorter, right? Less time to go, go, go, and do, do, do. We city folk are infamous for the hustle and bustle which lends the illusion of productivity to our lives. Plus, some smart folks have coined an actual diagnosis for the winter malaise -- Seasonal Affective Disorder. Soon as I heard of it, I decided I must have it. It would certainly explain my wish to hibernate all winter, snuggling under my cozy down comforter and asking someone to wake me when it's Spring! For a long time I felt out of sync, as if I were not how I'm 'supposed' to be. If my natural energy level tends to fluctuate from low to medium when all around me people are multitasking and surviving on 6 or 7 hours of sleep per night, then something must be wrong with me. If I believe myself to be a spiritual person, yet my experience of religion consists of dogma, most of which purports to offer me salvation from my inherent unworthiness, then I must not be as spiritual as I think -- right? Enter Paganism, the most recent stop on my spiritual journey. This phase of my search began about 4 years ago, when I began reading The Celestine Prophecy on my 35th birthday. That got me back into spiritual pursuits, which I had left for some time as I felt they had already left me. My past religious experiences had been limited to the patriarchal religions, and their dichotomy between good and evil, body and spirit, sinner and redeemer. Though not specifically a pagan story, what struck me about The Celestine Prophecy was the paradigm shift, with the notion that each of us has an inherent knowledge of the power of spirit, and a 'soul group' of kindred spirits that are available to help and sustain us on our journey. The details are sketchy to me now; I've read lots of books since then; but something in that book touched me in a deep place, and urged me to look again for what I had missed before &endash; connectedness to the divine (whatever that might be). And, I realized that it wasn't me that was 'out of sync'; it was the paradigm I'd been operating under. I began to read about shamanic paths, women's spirituality, past lives & reincarnation, and eventually Wicca and Paganism. Finally, here were spiritual principles that made me feel included -- a part of the process -- not just some unworthy soul in need of redemption from an outside source! And, the evidence to support these principles is all around me. I began to understand why I feel particularly close to Spirit when I notice the beauty of a spectacular sky, the changing colors of autumn leaves, the waves of the ocean. God/Goddess speaks to me in these images, in a way I can't quite articulate but that my soul recognizes and has been so hungry for. The concept of immanent divinity has transformed my thinking in so many ways! During this phase of my journey, my daughter has also been essential to my understanding of the divine. Not wanting to indoctrinate her with the typical Catholic dogma I grew up with, I was often either silent or vague with her on spiritual issues. Luckily, she had her own ideas, and with not much from me to dissuade her, she felt free to share them. I remember a conversation I had with her pre-school teacher when I was fretting about how to answer her questions of 'who made the trees'. I didn't want to say God and just leave it at that; because in our family & neighborhood God is defined and perceived in pretty typical male-based terms. The teacher suggested 'Mother Nature' as an alternative, which now seems so obvious I can't believe I didn't think of it myself! But I didn't, and thank Goddess that smart and intuitive women tend to appear in my life at just the right times. Now, at age 11, my daughter believes (and has taught me) that God/Goddess/Mother Nature are all synonymous and not at all mutually exclusive. Another lesson from my daughter started out casually, when she would talk about her 'powers'. It seemed comical at first -- I was driving an old beat-up car that at times would fail to start for no apparent reason, till it was good and ready. Alana, then three or four, would tell me from the backseat, "Wait mom, I'll use my powers." So I'd play along and not try again to start it till she gave the OK. More often than not, the car would start when she said it would. Eventually we started calling upon her powers, and mine, to meet all sorts of challenging situations. What a joy to find that in Wicca there are plenty of intelligent women (and men) who use their powers all the time. I'm not sure I'm ready to cast spells yet, but I have learned that there is power (magic) in belief and in raising energy toward a particular purpose. And I have learned that there is magick in the cyclical phases of nature. Every Spring, I'm delighted to go out and look at what's in bloom, what new life there is to see and be thankful for. From Spring into the Summer I feel my energy increase and I am most physically 'lively'. In the Fall I start to feel myself winding down, and looking forward to the Winter ahead. And now, as the days get colder and the nights longer, I feel most in my element. I can sleep more, read more, think more. I love this time . . . it's my time to be reflective, to think about the year that's ending and figure out what to keep, what to get rid of (materially and mentally), and to slow down. Numerous household projects (and many more books) await me. And I know that just as it is in Nature, this lull in the busy-ness of life is a necessary and wonderful part of the next Spring to come.
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