A Journey in Winter – Walking with Ceridwen and The Cailleach
Crone energy lead me along my magical path before I knew I was walking the path in the first place.
For me, on the surface, this turning to crones seems to be in line with the idea we try to bring what we lack – but need – into our lives from outside sources. Recently I’ve realised how as a child I stayed childlike well into my teens, and even now people mistake me for someone much younger than I am. But all I ever wanted was to grow older and know things. It’s the opposite of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys, and more difficult to achieve (I am nowhere near the all-seeing hag energy I’d love to embody, but I could quite easily be a lost boy if that was my thing). But after a recent trip to Scotland, where I felt one powerful goddess join another from the minute I walked out my front door, I’m starting to believe it’s not impossible.
There are other reasons other than some spiritual anaemia to explain why the universe expressed as older, colder, and darker appeals to me. I know it’s also because my role model as a little witch was my great-grandmother, who died long before I was born, but lived on in the things her son, my nature-respecting grandfather, taught me. It’s because I spent much of my childhood in the company of another set of great-grandparents; they were not witches, but funny and sharp, they both carried the lessons of a life spent working – and at times drinking – hard and shared them with me. And I know deep down I just wanted a mentor – a bit like the endless and immortal Mrs Which, Mrs Whatsit, and Mrs Who from A Wrinkle in Time – who is all-knowing and would guide me in the way I wasn’t being guided in my everyday life. Maybe it’s even because of how much I watched The Golden Girls when I was a child – those retired ladies really knew how to live, right?
Aging, darkness, night, death, and winter have been considered negatives in many places over many historical eras. Some of those things still unsettle people, I know. But for me, the dark is what it is – the complement of light, which itself balances dark. Dark and light are neutral settings – badness can come into our lives with the sun just as easily as it can with the moon. And the dark has a different and equally useful purpose – if light is active and lends itself to movement, the dark is calm, it’s where incubation takes place (of life, or of ideas and contemplations). Aging frightens people because it takes us closer to the inevitable end of our lives. Death frightens us because it’s difficult to know, to understand; it is unpredictable. Winter encompasses and represents all of the above. But all I can see is how much knowledge and experience the years give us, how much time for contemplation and learning there has been once we reach that end.
Ceridwen, via Wikipedia
Even so, sometimes the old-old gods also make mistakes, but the best part about that is how they tell us that’s ok, too. They have the wisdom to see sometimes it doesn’t really matter. My longest working spiritual relationship with a crone goddess is with Ceridwen, forged when I was seventeen, and still going strong. She is the Welsh sorceress famous for her Cauldron of Inspiration; accidental mother of the great bard Taliesin – because she created the potion for her own son, but the plan wasn’t as fool-proof as she’d have liked it to be. The three drops it took to give someone endless insight landed on the thumb of her serving boy, Gwion Bach, instead of being lovingly administered to her ugly son Morfran (or Afagddu). After a chase where Ceridwen and Gwion Bach shapeshifted as a series of animals, the boy ends up in the enchantress’s tummy, to transform into Taliesin. This worked out fine, of course, because the result was the Welsh bardic tradition. And Ceridwen is recognised as a goddess these days – she’s a witch’s witch, the dark moon guardian of poets, creators, and seekers, giving us space for our ideas to grow in the absence of bright overpowering light. She’s given me flashes of insight, strength to stay on the path, never letting me down when I’ve needed her most.
Very recently, after several months of another energy edging in, Ceridwen was joined in these efforts to help a little human writer find their way. I knew it was coming, and at last it fell into place. As I walked down the hill from my house to Sheffield station on a cold pre-dawn in early January, here was another crone. Depicted most often as a blue-skinned old woman, or a giantess, this goddess is rooted more firmly in the earth and the practical by way of her ties to wildlife and winter, and her rock-formation myths, dropping stones from her apron across these islands, from Scotland to Wales to England to Ireland and back to Scotland again. And if there was ever a right time to feel the Cailleach’s presence, it’s in the freezing short days and long nights of winter, when you’re about to hop on a train headed four hours north.
Cailleach, via Google
Another truth buried in this contemplation of sagacity (occurring, no doubt, because I’ll be 40 soon) was excavated by the Cailleach: I’ve always valued a no-nonsense approach to most problems, while knowing I’m an intuitive, emotional, airy fairy creature most of the time – the growth for me has been in combining them. The hero in my story when I’m overly stressed is someone who will tell me, hey, it’s alright, you’re upset, but come on now – get back up. Being realistic and sensible can come across as gruff, yes, but it is not the same as being unkind – in fact, it’s a great kindness. There are times when I must be this person for myself, rarer still when I’ve been that person for others (I’m more likely to be the woe-catching ear and the tear-stained shoulder), and there have been times when friends and strangers have been the ones to help me. And there are these occasions when the stern hand reaching down to me is from a more unseen place.
Edinburgh is a city of history and hills, populated by a grand mix of locals and transplants and tourists, and people like me: ‘visitors’ as my friend (an Edinburgh native) described me – someone who lives in the UK, but wandered further north to do research for one of my poetry collections. Many of the Cailleach’s Scottish myths are based in wild, far northern landscapes, but through the steep inclines and the nip in the air she made her presence known in this more lowland, metropolitan place. I had to walk everywhere I needed to go – not a problem if you don’t have a condition that affects all the joints in your legs, more of a problem if you do (spoilers: I do). My anxiety was high because I was traveling alone. There were moments when it would have been easier to give up and stay in my hotel room with a pile of books, but something wouldn’t let me even consider it.
Pure stubbornness and dedication to my work, I suppose – work I continue to pursue under Ceridwen’s watchful eye, Ceridwen who allows me to curl up in her cauldron when things get overwhelming, waiting things out and re-emerging energised. But in Edinburgh there was another force of nature saying: ‘no, she will not stop yet – she will do what she came to do’. Her blue hands at my back, a lift up – the hard-faced but well-meant instruction. I was in the Cailleach’s territory during her season, she’d called me in before I arrived and once I was there, things would be done her way – I managed to push through the anxiety; I swallowed medicine for the pain, rested well when the journey was finished. And when I left, she made sure I carried something of her with me.
Born in Southern Ohio, but settled in the UK since 1999, Kate is a writer, witch, editor and mother of five. She is the author of several poetry pamphlets, and the founding editor of four web journals and a micropress.
Her witchcraft is a blend of her great-grandmother's Appalachian ways and the Anglo-Celtic craft of the country she now calls home – though she incorporates tarot, astrology, and her ancestors, plus music, film, books, and many other things into her practice. Her spiritual life is best described as queer Christopagan with emphasis on the feminine and the natural world. She believes magic is everywhere.
Find Kate on twitter and IG - @mskateybelle - and at her website.