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winter
Nov 26, 2010 10:21:08 GMT -1
Post by Francis on Nov 26, 2010 10:21:08 GMT -1
I’ve been dreading winter coming this year and horribly it’s come early. Snow fell and stuck even down on the floor of the valley yesterday, and for the first time ever in November I had to feed hay to the sheep. After such a dry spring and early summer this year wasn’t a great one for growing grass, and it’s hard to see how the little hay we made is going to last the winter.
I’ll admit I enjoy a frosty , sunny winter’s day, but this year I just feel very negative about winter coming. I can’t really express the feeling more than to just say ‘negative’ – but a sort of anxiety and dread.
Anyway last night we decided to shake our fist at it’s coming – a sort of childish wish to stand defiant and present an undaunted face at the inevitable difficulties to come. We lit all the wood burning stoves in the house and kept them burning as high as was safe (ish). I reckon we had the equivalent of about 45-50Kw of heat being generated in our small house – so we had windows open whilst the snow fell outside!
Later though sitting by the fire as Anna and I talked about the coming winter months - planning and thinking ahead I could feel the ancestors around us who had sat by that same old hearth and worried about the winter. Unlike theirs sometimes did our children won’t go hungry this year, and our stock won’t starve. If it’s another hard winter we’ll buy in more feed for the sheep than we’d like to – and in the end it will mean fewer luxuries, and more hard work outside in the cold, but it won’t be a serious problem for us.
But the food we buy in for the animals will contain wheat and soya meal and the world only produces a finite amount of both. A hard winter in Britain will mean farmers buying more of these foods out of the world supply. This pushes the price up – and somewhere on this planet of ours someone is going to be unable to afford what they need because of a hard winter in Britain.
The snow falling on the fields around us and a hard winter to come won’t really hurt my family, but it did hurt the families of people who lived in this old hovel of ours a few generations ago, it’s going to hurt the families of people in some less well off countries this year (by reducing the amount of grains available for human consumption and pushing the price up), and I think it won’t be many more generations before an unproductive country like ours (that masquerades as a wealthy nation with an international political system that currently allows us to live beyond our means on debt) will see hunger in the winter in Britain again.
Winter is a time of hardship – that is the history of winter in our country- we’re one of just a few generations that have not had to worry or even notice winter that much. A little thought shows how unsustainable our current lifestyle is based on credit and unrealistically unsustainably cheap energy– it’s a temporary reprieve. We can’t produce enough food to feed our population in this country at the moment, and that’s whilst we can afford cheap petroleum for energy to power massive machinery and produce cheap fertiliser to produce large amounts of food. When the myth of our wealth runs out the way we produce our food will change drastically, far more people will work with the land and they will produce far less food. The time will come when we can’t afford to just buy huge amounts of extra food produced elsewhere.
Winter hasn’t gone away. We’re just keeping holding her at the gate for a few generations. Your great great grandparents probably knew her and I reckon your great great grandchildren will probably know her too.
As Pagans in Britain how do you relate to winter - I, like the arrogant fool I am, think we’ve forgotten who she really is. I think many British pagans haven’t even met her. They just have a fantasy of her that has more to do with pretty images on Christmas cards, than a merciless dreadful power who stops growth and takes life…
I just don’t get this neo-pagan thing of welcoming the coming of winter and would be interested to hear how you approach and relate to winter.
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winter
Nov 26, 2010 18:13:06 GMT -1
Post by potia on Nov 26, 2010 18:13:06 GMT -1
Some of you know of my relationship with a being I call the Cailleach. While she is known for having a lot to do with winter and often called the hag of winter I do not consider winter and that being to be the same. Just as I don't consider Rigantona to be the same as summer. I'll think on this a bit more and try and reply more fully later
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winter
Nov 26, 2010 19:25:29 GMT -1
Post by redraven on Nov 26, 2010 19:25:29 GMT -1
As a boiler engineer, I have a pretty dynamic relationship with winter. she signals an increase in workload. There may be something slightly perverse here when I state that a dose of no heating or hot water for most folks results in a change of perspective as reality bites and the "given" of hot water and heating is recognized for the modern miracle that it is. Needless to say, there aren't many places I'm not welcome at this time of year. Thus I have come to recognize in me, the connection between me and winter, she the bringer of reality and me, the restorer of normality (does that sound pretentious??) and I actually view this as a dynamic and interactive relationship. This restoration of normality is how I perceive my service to the community to be formed at it's most productive.
RR
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winter
Nov 26, 2010 20:46:35 GMT -1
Post by potia on Nov 26, 2010 20:46:35 GMT -1
As Pagans in Britain how do you relate to winter - I, like the arrogant fool I am, think we’ve forgotten who she really is. I think many British pagans haven’t even met her. They just have a fantasy of her that has more to do with pretty images on Christmas cards, than a merciless dreadful power who stops growth and takes life… I just don’t get this neo-pagan thing of welcoming the coming of winter and would be interested to hear how you approach and relate to winter. Winter starts to bite early here in Scotland and it's a time I respect and to some extent have a fondness for but not as a pretty thing. It's an implacable force bringing increases of ill health and death and yet also it is a time that can bring the focus of life closer to home and hearth. At this time of year I see family that I rarely see at any other time of year and I have time to spend with them. And yet it's also a time when the sharp touch of death is ever closer. I guess it's a time when the realities of life and death are made clearer and that is something I often need. The season of winter and the being I know as the Cailleach are not the same to me but there is a relationship between them. Winter is her waking time. For me at this time she takes the sovereignty of the land. She is to me the first mother, loving at times but harsh too. She constantly challenges, pushes and tests me and yet in the times I need her the most, the times I am closest to breaking she supports me simply by accepting me as I am. I welcome winter in the same way as I welcome darkness and pain. Because without these things I'm not sure I'd appreciate the good things I do have in my life, family, home and dear friends nearly as much as I do.
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winter
Nov 26, 2010 23:40:06 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Nov 26, 2010 23:40:06 GMT -1
........ As Pagans in Britain how do you relate to winter - I, like the arrogant fool I am, think we’ve forgotten who she really is. I think many British pagans haven’t even met her. They just have a fantasy of her that has more to do with pretty images on Christmas cards, than a merciless dreadful power who stops growth and takes life… I just don’t get this neo-pagan thing of welcoming the coming of winter and would be interested to hear how you approach and relate to winter. It's true that many have lost any sense of real contact with the land, in spite of avidly viewing wildlife programmes on TV etc and among these even many pagans only pay a sort of folksy lip service to the turning seasons in their festivals. But of course Winter will come whether we like it or not and whether we welcome it or not. It's not so much a matter of welcoming it, as far as I am concerned, as acknowledging it, for not to do so would be too withdraw the empathy with the land and the seasons where we are that is the essence of being pagan. Potia mentions the Cailleach as being in some way bound up with the coming of Winter. I once wrote a story in which a woman called Rhiannon goes out into the dark at the coming of Winter and offers all she is wearing to the old crone on a grey mare when the cold threatened to invade her house. That is one way of being with the land as life seems to ebb away. But in the same story I had her building the hearth fire against the night and blessing her family with a hearth spell. I think we inevitably do both, so I can understand your stoking up of the wood-burning stoves and your feeling of dread, both are appropriate responses to the season and need to be built into our mythology. I have always felt close to the seasons changing throughout the year, and would feel strangely out of place living in a climate that didn't have this. So while I wouldn't exactly say that I welcome Winter, and while I can appreciate that our ancestors had real reasons to fear its coming, I wouldn't have it any other way but that Winter should come after Autumn and that we should watch the Spring slowly emerge from it in due season.
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winter
Nov 27, 2010 17:34:10 GMT -1
Post by arth_frown on Nov 27, 2010 17:34:10 GMT -1
I quite enjoy when autumn and winters comes. It means at last the biting insects are gone as I come up with huge lumps because of them. Autumn equinox marks the the time to get back into the woods and fell some trees for firewood and crafts. It also marks the time when the fairs and shows slowly come to a end and planning for next summer and winter begins. Firewood is stacked ready for splitting and seasoning and the rest of the wood is sorted out for the crafts. I suppose the most significant point is when we lite the fire at home again and the first frosts and felling of the first tree. I think I'm a bit more biased that I like the spirits of winter rather than summer. Summer seems too busy and winter is more single minded.
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winter
Nov 27, 2010 18:25:35 GMT -1
Post by Lee on Nov 27, 2010 18:25:35 GMT -1
I do welcome winter, it means cold frosty mornings, wrapping up warm and the feeling of bliss after getting into the warm after going for a walk in the biting cold. Admittedly my livelihood isnt as precarious as Francis' over the coming months and to say i would like to experience it would be foolish that said, this winter will be interesting. My income will be at its lowest for a very long time and once rent is paid there will be a tight squeeze for food and bills. already i am wrapping up against the cold and only putting the heating on for an hour or so at night (which does the trick) and can forsee it being a frugal few months ahead. the upshot is that i am turning inwards to my house and hearth rather than the outdoors and what is going on; cooking, eating, baking, preserving etc all to set something ahead for when times might be harder. winter also means christmas - the time of the year i am guaranteed to see all of my family for a few days, have a great time and eat like a pig. so whilst there is apprehension for what lies ahead, i am also in a peverse way looking forward to it and the challenges i will have to face for the first time.
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winter
Dec 16, 2010 16:42:24 GMT -1
Post by crowman on Dec 16, 2010 16:42:24 GMT -1
autumn is my favourite time of year followed by winter. I prefer to be out walking in cold clear conditions rather than blistering heat. If youre cold you can always warm up, you cant do the opposite in summer however, well not easily anyway.
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winter
Dec 17, 2010 9:11:59 GMT -1
Post by dreamguardian on Dec 17, 2010 9:11:59 GMT -1
Some how managed to get in to work this am at stupid o'clock but never gonna get home. The perils of living & working in the sticks but not in a negative way!
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winter
Dec 17, 2010 11:28:12 GMT -1
Post by potia on Dec 17, 2010 11:28:12 GMT -1
Some how managed to get in to work this am at stupid o'clock but never gonna get home. The perils of living & working in the sticks but not in a negative way! Winter suvival training
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winter
Dec 17, 2010 11:31:58 GMT -1
Post by Francis on Dec 17, 2010 11:31:58 GMT -1
Some how managed to get in to work this am at stupid o'clock but never gonna get home. Fair play DG - I guess in your line the rest of us need you to get in more than ever when it's like this.
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winter
Dec 17, 2010 11:46:38 GMT -1
Post by Francis on Dec 17, 2010 11:46:38 GMT -1
Edit - relevant bit to this topic starts about halfway down after the bloggey bit!
I'm having my first day off in weeks! Not much fun though as I'm sick as a pike. I've been carrying bales of hay and sacks of sheep food through very deep snow for the what seems like as long as I can remember and my body's just packed in today! There were only a few of our sheep still up in the mountains, but some of our neighbours were caught out by the early November snow and haven't been able to move them since - so everyone's been having to help out and get feed and water up to them. Very hard work - did I say that already??!
We've had so many mild winters recently that lots of people have been crossing their hardy Welsh Mountain sheep with lowland breeds to get a larger meatier lamb - and these softer sheep have been hammered by the weather. Last week we found twenty six dead ones under six feet of snow that had drifted against the mountain wall....
The people I've been working with are all nominally christian - but when you actually talk to them their perspective and relationship with the land, and its many denizens not recognised by the Natural History Museum, they are more pagan (from my perspective of what pagan means) than the majority of hippies I've met at the pagans camps I've been to.
I feel too rough to talk about it now, I can't seem order my thoughts my heads too woolly but in essence the consensus seemed to be that Winter involved the absence of something that was present in the Summer - that was felt most clearly in the greenwood.
That it was an absence of the benign, fertility and life of summer, not that it was replaced by something else. So not two parties winter and summer where one is ascendant and one vanquished - but just that the growing fertility of summer is lost in winter leaving the bones of the earth to await its return. So no winter equivalent of this summer fertile growing presence - just an absence.
Sorry if I laboured that point my head feels like it belongs to somebody standing next to me that I'm just witnessing - if you see what I mean!
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winter
Dec 17, 2010 15:13:46 GMT -1
Post by dreamguardian on Dec 17, 2010 15:13:46 GMT -1
Winter suvival training Ha! Are you going to do one of my new courses in the new year?
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winter
Dec 17, 2010 15:15:31 GMT -1
Post by dreamguardian on Dec 17, 2010 15:15:31 GMT -1
.... Last week we found twenty six dead ones under six feet of snow that had drifted against the mountain wall.... ... Sorry if I laboured that point my head feels like it belongs to somebody standing next to me that I'm just witnessing - if you see what I mean! Not laboured but much to think & reflect on.
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winter
Dec 17, 2010 21:24:15 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Dec 17, 2010 21:24:15 GMT -1
The people I've been working with are all nominally christian - but when you actually talk to them their perspective and relationship with the land, and its many denizens not recognised by the Natural History Museum, they are more pagan (from my perspective of what pagan means) than the majority of hippies I've met at the pagans camps I've been to. Yes that has often seemed to be the case to me. I'm not sure if this is only the case on the fringes, where people are still living close to the land, that is living a rural lifestyle rathe than an urban one, as so many, even if they live in the 'country' live essentially urban lives. But, as you suggest, some hill farmers still seem to live quite close to the land in a pagan way which may not be the case (though I don't claim to know this) even for farmers in some more developed areas. I take this point. But I once knew someone who defined 'The Cailleach' as an absence, but of course if you define something it is also a presence! I hope you are coping now that the snow has returned again as North Wales seems to have had another particularly bad blast of it.
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winter
Dec 18, 2010 0:26:34 GMT -1
Post by Rion on Dec 18, 2010 0:26:34 GMT -1
Here's hoping my flight home isn't cancelled tomorrow what with all this cold white stuff apparently falling out of the sky over there.
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winter
Dec 22, 2010 8:26:44 GMT -1
Post by nellie on Dec 22, 2010 8:26:44 GMT -1
I'm a bit late to this conversation but thought I would post anyway. I see winter a bit differently. Although I know I should be honouring the balance that winter brings I always find the dark months difficult. I've had a problem with anxiety in the past (and i'm talking about the panic attack inducing kind of problem here) and it is always the winter that I find that the illogical anxiety threatens to take hold again- this makes winter a struggle of wills between me and the little anxiety troll (no i'm not crazy honestly, just have a morbid sense of humor sometimes) When I mark the changing of the seasons it's less about celebrating the darkness and more about being aware that the seasons will change eventually and the sun will shine again; it's more of a countdown. Partly because of the struggle I have in winter with anxiety it also signals a time for me of turning inwards. I recognise the necessity of it, and even sometimes the beauty, but for me it's all about keeping in mind that the darkness will give way to the light again.
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winter
Dec 22, 2010 8:54:11 GMT -1
Post by Tegernacus on Dec 22, 2010 8:54:11 GMT -1
I used to love the winter months as a child. Not the obvious snow, but the darkness-at-3pm, the whole lot.
However... as I grow older, I find that connection with winter diminishing fast. Infact, I have developed SAD, and have to have every light on in every room, candles, anything I can get. These days from Halloween to around March is a time of dread for me (with a brief respite around the solstice because I double the amount of lights then, what with xmas stuff too).
When I lived on a bus, most of my daylight hours were spent gathering and chopping wood, and most of the dark hours spent feeding the fire and trying not to freeze. I suspect it was similar with our ancestors. (Roman villa? yes please!) lol
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winter
Dec 22, 2010 9:27:16 GMT -1
Post by potia on Dec 22, 2010 9:27:16 GMT -1
This winter does seem to have a particular deadly beauty about it. The severe frosts here in Glasgow are leaving the world decorated with a glistening beauty but you only have to be out in it for a short time to recognise how deadly it can be.
I've spent a lot more time worrying about other people I know. Are they warm and safe? Are they coping ok? Do they have enough food?
But I've also witnessed much more kindness and helpfulness in people. Strangers pushing cars up hills. Neighbours clearing each others drives and putting grit out. More reaching out to each other. And it is this that reminds me that even in all this there is hope.
And part of that hope is that the the sun will strengthen and that land will warm again eventually.
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