The Slowening

Beautiful Image from Art-Magick

The Slow Days are here.

Where once all was a headlong, pell-mell rush to the sky, each day bounding forward with a new life, a relentless change, an ever-quickening, now all things have slowed. Summer has thickened, ripened and stilled.

It's a time to slow everything down. There's no rush. There's plenty of light to play with.


I love these long, endless, meandering days around the Solstice. Summer now is truly unbounded, the thick heavy light of the Erce, the sun-goddess of the Angles, draping the northern horizon with an eternal dusk-dawn. The stars hold their breath as she glimmers her long eve of farewell that slips seamlessly into a long morn of greeting.

This year, even the mad summer showers have slowed, pressing their long thunderous kisses from air to earth with a lingering, lazy passion. The soils is sweet, wet and warm beneath my toes, the air above my head swimming with swift screams. All is lush, drowning in light or bending low with the rain's bounty.


There's much that's similar to my mind, in the quality of this time of year, to that of the Winter Solstice. That's also a slow time, but then the night has swallowed the world, and we retreat within our homes, within ourselves.

A time of fragility and strength-hoarding. Of hearth-gazing and long-dreaming. Exploring the inner secrets of the mind. To look forward to growth.

But now we can look out into the endless light.

A time of robustness and life-spending. Of long-walking and land-gazing. Exploring the outer secrets of the world. To look forward to harvest.


The Quickening is over.

Time to relish the Slowening.