The candles have burned down, the last of the apples are in a bowl on the table, and the photographs are back on their shelf. Samhain was nine days ago. Now comes the part of the year that nobody writes songs about.
The seven weeks between Samhain and Yule are the darkest stretch of the Wheel. The days are still shortening, and there is no festival to look forward to until the solstice. For years I found this gap dispiriting. I have come to think that it is the most useful time of all, provided you stop trying to fill it.
Here are five small things that I do between now and midwinter. None of them takes more than a few minutes.
1. Keep one candle for the dead
Samhain night gets all the attention, but the ancestors do not leave on the first of November. One evening a week until Yule, I light a single candle by a photograph and sit with it for the length of a cup of tea. I say very little. It has become the part of the season that I would least like to give up.
2. Walk at dusk
It is tempting to hide from the early dark. Go out into it instead. A ten-minute walk as the light goes, without headphones, teaches you more about this season than any book. Notice which trees still hold their leaves, where the birds are roosting, and how early the first star appears.
3. Clear the altar
After the abundance of the harvest festivals, I strip my altar back to almost nothing: one candle, one stone, a bowl of water, and a bare branch in a jar. The emptiness is the point. The land is resting, and the altar should say so. It also makes the evergreens of Yule feel like an event when they arrive.
4. Choose a winter study
The dark months were traditionally the time for stories and for learning by the fire. Pick one subject and stay with it until Imbolc: the runes, the folklore of your own district, the trees on your street, or one deity's myths. A single subject, studied slowly, is worth more than twenty skimmed. This winter I am reading everything I can find about the customs of the midwinter fire.
5. Rest on purpose
This is the hard one. As I write, the moon is new, and the nights are as dark as they get. Everything outside has stopped growing. You are a part of nature, and you are allowed to slow down as well.
Do less magick, not more. Go to bed earlier. Say no to one thing each week. If you practice shadow work, this is its season, but treat it gently. Rest is not the absence of practice. In November, it is the practice.
Looking toward the light
Yule falls on December 21 this year. When it comes, we will light every candle in the house and talk about hope. For now, let it be dark. The seed has to lie in the cold ground before anything else can happen, and so, I think, do we.