When you find yourself moving slowly in the dark, the fire of your willpower not yet catching, unsure if what you’re creating will take root, your vision strong, but your body not yet ready to take action – this is where wisdom for deep Winter lives. 

It may feel like you’re lacking something, but in fact, under the surface, deep in the cave, beneath the layers, seeds germinate and a process of learning unfolds. 

The cold, dark energy of Winter can feel like stagnation, like failure. Fears about not making it to Spring – of our ideas not becoming manifest, our dreams not forming into reality – spin in the dark. We all want to avoid becoming the Little Matchgirl. You know – the little girl from the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale; so poor, with nothing to warm her, and nothing to eat, forced to go sell matches. Barefoot. In the snow.

If the Little Matchgirl heard the Celtic Winter Goddess banging her hammer on the rocks, perhaps she would have waited, hiding somewhere in that broken home. Perhaps the fear of freezing in the snow, the fear of death, would have kept her alive. But the fear of her strict father who sent her to earn money on a dark, cold New Year’s Eve, was stronger.

She lit match after match, trying to stay warm, sparking a dream, a vision, a fantasy with each match she burned. Until eventually, the dream of her beloved dead grandmother carried her into her own death. Frozen. Smiling. In the snow. 

The wisdom of deep Winter comes as a process. It begins with softening inward. Pausing, listening, germinating our dreams before we move into action. The wisdom of deep Winter is the sacred work of not yet.

Deep Winter Is a Threshold, Not a Delay

Dominant culture is not one that supports a slow rhythm, moments of pause, or the cyclicality of nature and life itself. Our bodies, however, function in relationship to light sources, to dark periods, to lunar phases, to the seasons. 

Bodies need to rest, to play, to move, and to pause. We are not meant to go without stopping the way that capitalism trained us. And when we pause and wait, or when we’re not seeing results right away – that’s not failure. That’s wisdom waiting to be submerged in. 

Why Modern Culture Panics in the Dark

Modern culture is structured in a way that doesn’t honor the seasons. The cycles of the earth around the sun, the phases of the moon, natural, hormonal fluctuations in human bodies are not taken into consideration in the way that life is lived in our culture.

Darkness isn’t honored in our culture because rest doesn’t make money for big corporations. 

The source of the overculture’s animosity toward the dark has its roots in soil cultivated through 5000 years or so of the rule of patriarchy. In human domination. In disconnection from the body – the body as a well of wisdom. In buried feminine power – demonizing it, and treating it as something that must be controlled, tamed, crushed, and used.

Just look at the Little Matchgirls’ father, who sent his daughter to sell matches in the coldest, darkest of nights. The wisdom of waiting, which would have kept her alive, did not land in his heart. 

The darkness, the feminine, the moon, the wild, the earth itself – all have been made to be dreaded. Disrespected. 

What Happens When We Mistake Rest for Stagnation

Deep Winter is the very core of the feared feminine archetype. She’s feared when she’s dark and cold and old. She’s feared when she’s the coals of a hot fire that turns you on deep in your ancient, primal core. She’s death. She’s a distraction. She’s destruction and danger and decay.

In the current overculture (as Clarisaa Pinkole Estes calls it), the fear of not being productive, not being “successful,” is still dominant. 

This fear is justified. It’s not only that we have come to equate our success with our worth. Life is expensive. Money is survival. Counter culture actions are necessary. But they also require some privilege in certain cases. Resisting the brutality of capitalism, so deeply rooted in patriarchal dirt, can begin with a sacred pause, with cultivating a slower pace.

No time is more on time than deep Winter. More and more of us cultivate dark season spirituality at the end of the year, before the Winter Solstice, and during the space between Solstice and New Year’s (this is a Northern Hemisphere perspective). But as soon as the new year begins, the expectation is to hit the ground running, to reach fast for goals, to renew, to rise, to grow.

When we rush into resolutions and goals full force in the beginning of the year, most of us abandon them by week two or three. Our dreams and goals and visions burn out like the Little Matchgirl’s matches. And we experience burnout too. Our nervous system is not designed for constant rushing, for stress caused by striving, for constant and continuous production. 

Earlier this week, I shared a contemplative video on the space between – between breaths, between seasons, between thoughts, between movement and stillness – working with the wisdom of Hindu Ganesha, and the Cailleach (a Celtic goddess), weaving a meditation from the Vijnana Bhairava. If you want to explore this deep Winter threshold, and move slowly into the new year, you can find it here. 

If we look at what nature is doing, we see that above ground, life is quiet in Winter. Beneath the surface seeds are germinating. They wait. They don’t rush out of the soil. Sprouts don’t reach for the light quite yet. This is still a time for stillness, for softness, for sacred waiting in the dark. Incubation in Winter is a deep and necessary process. Not just for plants and for animals. But for us humans too. This is not stagnation. This is a sacred pause. 

Meeting the Cailleach: Guardian of the Dark Season

In the Celtic tradition, there’s a wild Winter goddess whose role is to keep plants and animals in hiding while the season storms and the frost forges on. 

In a way, the Cailleach is the embodiment of that which the patriarchy is most afraid of.

She is an old woman. Older than the mountains. She is ferocious and feral and unapologetic. She is grandmother Winter, who bangs her hammer on the rocks, making mighty noise and threatening living beings, making sure they don’t come out of hibernation.

The Cailleach is responsible for incubation. Without her deadly, fierce presence, no new life can be born.

The Cailleach as storm-maker, land-shaper, and timekeeper

This great Celtic Crone Goddess is a destructive force of nature. She is the raging storms that cause trees to collapse and rocks to fall, life to freeze and death to take its toll. She scatters you. Beats and batters you. Devours you. So that you can be reborn.

She shapes the mountains by dropping rocks out of her apron. And destroys society by spreading disease through it. She creates the world through earthquakes, birthing it through the canal of the dark night of the soul. She is everything we can’t control.

The Cailleach is as ancient as time itself. She is the veiled future and the dissolution of the past, the passage of time, and the one spinning the cycles of nature, as the dark, cold Winter and the death that roars through it, marks the birth of light and the return of life. 

Why She Frightens Us – and Why She Should

The Caileach is scary because she’s the face of destruction, the threat to our health, the wild energy of uncertainty, the dangers of life’s storms.

We’re frightened by her fierce form because she’s a raging force that brings with it death.

We’re also scared of her dark, gloomy, untamed character because we’ve been trained to be scared of the dark feminine archetype. It’s ingrained in us to have fears related to decay, destruction, and death. If we didn’t fear it, we wouldn’t protect ourselves from harm. But just because it’s scary and dangerous, doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. It’s only demonic in our eyes because we’re part of a patriarchal society. 

Capitalism doesn’t benefit from us sheltering in place, turning our gaze inwardly, and taking things slowly. 

The Cailleach’s threats are so important. She wants us to take our time. She wants us to follow her instructions to stay sheltered. She wants us to take it seriously. 

Sacred pause is her love language. 

She teaches us not how to be comfortable, but how to endure. Not how to keep going, but how to say no to hustle culture. Not how to be a hero and fight the beast in the cave, but how to dwell in the cave as the heroine who takes time in the underworld before she comes back up, learning that this journey through darkness must be taken again and again – it is inseparable from the fertile soil, from flower and fruit, from nourishment and pleasure and joy. 

The Cave Is Not Retreat – It Is Preparation

The wisdom of deep Winter teaches us that waiting is not necessarily passive. We need to learn to stay in the dark before we re-emerge. This is part of the process everywhere we look in nature. 

Why Nothing New Survives Without Incubation

If a butterfly was to rush its process, it wouldn’t become a butterfly. If a seed tried to skip germination, it wouldn’t be able to sprout. 

Darkness is crucial for rest and for healing, for developing and for becoming. Our circadian rhythms need the fluctuation between light and darkness. Time in the dark is necessary for any organism. 

Incubation provides conditions for new life to begin its journey. Time in the dark, in the cave, in the egg, in the womb, in the soil – provides nutrients, protection, and the energy necessary for dormant life to awaken. 

What Forges Inside When We Stop Performing Clarity

In the dark cave we nourish the vision, we tend to the temple of dreams with tenderness, so that the liquidity of those precious possibilities can take the necessary time to take form and firm up.

Going for what we want requires preparation. Sometimes that means a decade or so under the ground. Dormant. Bringing vision into form requires time in deep darkness. Time to grieve what has been lost helps us prepare for what we want to grow out of ashes. 

It’s true that sometimes we might get stuck, we might get stagnant, we might escape the challenges of the world out there and lean into the cave as a safety zone. It’s true. 

But if we develop deep listening and soulful engagement in our cyclicality, we learn to move with the rhythms of the earth and the moon. And you know where this deep listening is learned and cultivated? That’s right – in the cave! 

The cave is the house of intuition. In the dark hidden spaces, we move with our beating heart, and we learn that deep Winter mythology, the dark feminine archetype, and characters such as the Cailleach, guide our path in that slow, wise, ancient, sacred way, which grounds us, and connects us within and all around. 

We need time for not knowing. In that space of not knowing we pulse with possibilities. 

Working with Deep Winter Instead of Against It

Resistance is an important energy. We need it when it’s time to crack the egg. But when the egg needs incubation so that the life inside of it can develop, we need to receive ourselves in that liquidy space, and allow ourselves to be submerged in it. 

Our nervous system needs time to rest. It needs to digest the nourishment and the experiences of life. We can’t be on all the time. We need the ability to move between the Sympathetic Nervous System and the Parasympathetic Nervous System. We need time to soften and space out. 

We need time and space to engage with our unconscious. 

We need to dream. 

There are ways for us to work with the energy of Deep Winter. Learning how to work with it – not against it – is healthy, helpful, and necessary. 

Ritual, Breath, and Myth as Winter Companions

Breathwork is one of the most accessible gateways into the cave of deep Winter. Some breath exercises can help regulate our nervous system. This helps us manage our stress levels, which supports healthier functions in our system as a whole – from the heart, the brain, the hormones, to our mental, emotional capacities. A regulated Nervous System is key to being able to focus and center ourselves. 

It also carves a path into a grounded space inside of us, within which we can soften our edges and listen to the voices of wisdom that want to speak through us. 

Wisdom comes to us in many forms. It is personal and collective. It is embodied and cosmic. 

One of the ways we can access the unconscious and carve pathways for wisdom to emerge from those deep, dark caves, is ritual. From sacred movement to placing objects in a certain way, infusing action with symbolic meaning, infusing symbols with personal meaning, singing, chanting, dancing, and weaving intention into action. 

Ritual forms a bridge between imagination, inspiration, intention, and the body. It opens the door for the unconscious to communicate with our awareness. It builds a temple for soulfulness to be nourished and nurtured. 

If you want simple and grounded tools and ideas for creating your own rituals, and opening the channels for deep Winter wisdom to flow through, this free ritual guide will support you.  

Stories and symbols carry in them deep meanings for us to unpack. They hold secrets of ancient times and keys for understanding ourselves in this day and age. Myth is a powerful companion in the cave of our being. When you listen to a story, you become a channel for its wisdom. Read about why myth matters here. 

Learning to Trust What Hasn’t Ripened Yet

Asking ourselves to trust something that churns within unseen realms is a big ask. To trust the unseen. To trust the liminal. To trust the not knowing. To trust the not yet. It’s a big ask – huge, really. 

This trust does not need to come as faith. 

You don’t need to believe that what’s beneath the surface will eventually rise. 

There’s no way to know this.

So we sit with the question. We sit with the maybe. We sit with the not yet. And we breathe. We let stories help us map our way in the dark. We breathe. We create something. We make meaning. We imagine. We breathe. We doubt. We wonder. We don’t know. We breathe. We ceremonialize and make sacred connections in unseen realms. And we breathe. 

We learn to trust not by believing. We learn by listening. Softening. Questioning. We learn by opening our hearts in the dark. The wisdom of deep Winter does not come from faith. We learn to trust by leaning into the unknown and developing a relationship of meaning with that which is not yet.

If this way of listening speaks to you, I share mythic reflections and evocative explorations regularly – through writing, through breathwork, through storytelling, through meditation, and through yoga as embodied ritual. You can continue the thread on my YouTube channel and on my Substack.

Thank you so much for reading. If this has moved you in any way, share it with a friend today. 

Much love,

Hagar