In the Bleak Midwinter

On being called to the Light

I have no idea where I got this. I found it on my laptop.

This Advent has been pretty dark, and not just in terms of the ebbing of the light characteristic of the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. I mean psychologically dark, spiritually dark. So many people in my life, even friends I haven’t seen for years, have given voice to their battle with this darkness. It’s more than Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s more than a malaise.

By this time, most readers of the Druid will have heard of the exploits and exploitation surrounding a young British woman, Lilly Phillips, who had sex with over a hundred men to promote her “brand.” That we live in a world where this is promoted—my God, that it’s even possible—is pretty dark, indeed.

This Advent has also seen reports about the drones over New Jersey—the exact site of Orson Welles’s “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast from 1938. (Does NO ONE have an original idea anymore?) Come on: why would an “advanced civilization” need headlights on its spacecraft? Do they have turn signals, too? Do they also have aircraft equipped with stereo cassette players? Geez. Then Alejandro Mayorkas, the US Secretary of Homeland Security no less, says the government doesn’t know anything about them and can’t do anything about them, even if they did. This isn’t exactly dark, but it certainly indicates that the Biden Administration, in the aftermath of the election, thinks of the citizenry as a confederacy of chumps.

We also learned this week that, yes, there were “confidential human sources” sent to the Capitol on January 6^th, despite three years of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and other officials swearing that was not the case—even lying under oath to Congress to hide their complicity. We also found out—though many have been saying so for a long time—that Pfizer (and, we can assume, other pharmaceutical companies) hid deaths and other problems related to the Covid vaccines. Unconscionable.

That governments and corporations lie, of course, should be assumed. But I think it has become more and more obvious to what an incredible volume they do lie, not to mention the absolute disregard they pay to those who suffer from their insane and sinister dissembling. These Archons are a bad bunch.

I think, at least to some extent, the bleakness that characterizes this Advent has something to do with these various darknesses being exposed. For some, to find out not only that one has been lied to, but that one has accepted the lie as truth and made serious and irreversible decisions based upon it—in regards to one’s own health, relationship with others, a kind of unintentional complicity in the Covid crime—is not an easy thing to face. But even those who never accepted the lies are feeling the same darkness. I think it’s inescapable.

In fact, I would call what we’re experiencing right now a kind of collective mourning. It’s as though the very air were permeated with grief.

One of the more difficult things for me to come to terms with regarding the madness of the past five years is in acknowledging how damaging it has been to my children. As you may know, I have nine, ranging in age from fourteen to thirty-five. They all suffered from the past five years, but the elder children, then from twenty-five to thirty, seem to have been less scathed than the younger ones. It also wasn’t as bad for the youngest ones, who were between nine and fourteen at the time. Those in the middle, between seventeen and twenty-three (basically college age) appear to have borne the brunt of it. I don’t know if this is universally true, but that demographic appears to me to have suffered a lot. An important time of their lives was taken from them; and, when things finally returned to a seeming “normal,” it was too late. How could it be anything but that? They were the victims of the most devastating and wide-reaching psyop in history.

Like I said, it’s been a pretty dark Advent for me.

It was so dark that I had run out of things to write about. I even took to canvassing followers on Substack Notes and X for inspiration. That’s when my friend, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, wrote this: “I’m always an advocate for tuning into the Cycle of the Year as path of Initiation…So how about Winter Solstice?” (You can follow her always-interesting Substack, Cognitive Ritual, here.)

As regular readers will no doubt be aware, the Wheel of the Year and its beautifully intertwined agricultural and liturgical dance is one of my major themes; and I think Hazel is right to point to the Cycle of the Year as Path of Initiation, especially this year. It feels as if we have all undertaken the Hero’s Journey to the Underworld. We have all been wounded. Alas, some will never return to the Upperworld. People die in fairy-tales all the time.

Nevertheless, today I experienced a turning.

It’s still deer season here in Michigan, though I had pretty much given up on getting a deer this year. For all the reasons already mentioned (and probably more) my heart hadn’t been in the hunt as much as it usually is. I know from experience that the woods and the animals respond to our inner states of being, so not seeing any deer over the past month doesn’t surprise me. I just felt disconnected from Nature, a sad state of affairs indeed. Muzzle-loading season is almost over here in Michigan, so I thought I might go out one more time. Last night, I went to drop the last of the carrots on my bait pile. The almost full moon was shining through the trees, leaving their spindly shadows everywhere. It was extraordinarily beautiful. I went back to the house, read some Dylan Thomas, said some words to the close and holy darkness, and I slept. I woke up this morning a little late, but still before sunrise, drank a quick mug of coffee, and made my way to the blind.

On the way, in the milky light, I stopped and stooped (it was still dark enough to not be able to see clearly) at the bait pile to notice it almost completely bereft of carrots. When I stood, I heard—then saw—a shadow running through the woods (my blind is in the middle of the woods). It was definitely a deer, and I figured I had blown my chance. I decided I would sit until I got too cold and go back to the house. I didn’t think the deer would come back.

It was very cold this morning, about twelve degrees Fahrenheit, but there was no wind and only a thin layer of cloud tried to hide the moon. Usually, I begin my time in the blind by praying the rosary. I barely made it into the first decade when the deer returned. It was a doe, a very large one, and I knew she’d been waiting for me. My friend Shari Suter (from the Grail Country YouTube channel) told me that the First Nations people near where she lives in British Columbia say that the hunter dishonors the deer when it offers itself and he doesn’t take it. I knew this doe was giving itself to me; and I did not dishonor it. When I found it, I did as I always do: I gave thanks both to the Creator and the deer for the sustenance of life. Then I had to drag the deer through thickets and snow and uphill to the homestead. It was 7:40. The sun was barely up.

In the Grail literature, as well as in much legend and fairy-tale, the hunt leads the hunter into a place he never expected (as in the Legend of St. Hubert the Hunter, who found Christ by pursuing his quarry—though it was really Christ who was hunting Hubert). I feel that this is what happened to me: I was pulled out of myself, out of the darkness, and into myself, into the light. In every way, this was a Solstice Initiation.

Now, I’m not saying that the darkness is over, even for me, but I did feel the light this morning. By abandoning the cares of the world and again participating in the sacramental nature of the world, the light broke into me.

Christmas and the Winter Solstice at which it occurs affirm the birth of light within death, within the Cosmic Order, within the soul. And while this has been among the bleakest of bleak midwinters, I nevertheless feel the Spirit of Christ, the Light of Us All and of Nature, moving nearer.

In parting, I can’t resist but share this quote from the great Beat poet Gary Snyder’s prose poem “Long Hair,” as it more accurately than most describes the process by which we can become possessed by the Wild of God:

Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They
do various things which irresistibly draw men near them;
each one selects a certain man. The Deer shoots the man,
who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home
and eat it. Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and
hides in there, but the man doesn't know it. When 
enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all
at once. The men who don’t have Deer in them will
also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some.
This is called “takeover from inside.”

The blessings of Advent to all of you.

A reminder: I am doing an online course, Shakespeare, Magic, and Religion which starts at the beginning of January. I still have some spots available, and it would be great to have you along for the ride.