Winter Is Coming!

Actually, Winter is already here.

Samhain marks the end of the final harvest, the beginning of Winter and the Celtic New Year. Historically, our ancestors would have spent the last nine months working toward this final harvest.

First, they would have repaired their tools, and made everything ready for the new season at Imbolc, back in February. Then they would have spent the months of March and April, preparing the ground, and planting their crops. May through July would have been spent tending their fields, until finally from August until Samhain, they would have been harvesting everything they could.

There is still firewood to gather for the cold days to come, but that can be done as needed. It is time to relax, and reflect inward about the year that has passed. Has it been a good year? If so, think about why, and give thanks for all the abundance you have received.

If it has not been such a good year, now is the time to look back on the choices you made, why you made them, and how they affected your life this year.

In either case, now is the time to look forward, and plan how to get what you want out of your life in the next year. If your year hasn't been what you wanted, plan now, how to make this coming year closer to what you desire. If you had a good year, you can't just sit back and enjoy life. There are bigger mountains to climb, each one bringing more, and better things into your life.

Those who just coast, allowing life to take them where it will, are never happy with where they find themselves. You know these people, they are the ones who complain about their job, or their spouse, or their kids. They never seem happy, yet they never realize that they have the power to change their own lives.

Now is the time to reflect inward, and decide what it is you want out of life. Once you have that outcome firmly in mind, you can plan the steps it will take to get you to that outcome. Witches like to use the phrase "Everything happens for a reason", I prefer to look at it from the other direction.

Nothing happens by accident.

Those who have the life they want aren't born to it, they work their asses off until they get it. The more you want something, the harder you will work for it. That's human nature. I'm simply pointing out that as a thinking being, you have the ability to look inward and find the things you really want out of your life, and then figure out the small steps it will take to get them.

No matter how big your desire is, no matter how high or far into the distance it seems, you can get there by taking small steps in that direction. There may be 100 or even 1000 steps to get you to what you truly desire, but each small step you take, gets you closer.

Now, between Samhain and Yule, is the time to reflect on what you truly want from your life.

My next post will talk about the steps you will have to take, to get where you decide to go. Until then, I hope you have a Blessed Samhain.