{"id":927,"date":"2016-09-19T08:07:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-18T22:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/hearthwitchdownunder\/?p=927"},"modified":"2018-01-24T13:32:13","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T03:32:13","slug":"the-mystery-of-the-autumnal-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hearthwitchdownunder\/2016\/09\/the-mystery-of-the-autumnal-spring.html","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery of the Autumnal Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My favourite season is, oddly, autumn.\u00a0 I say \u201coddly\u201d because I hate the cold.\u00a0 I spent my youngest years in the warmth of Queensland, then tragically moved to Victoria with its icy cold touch of death.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure I am allergic to the cold, it\u2019s awful.\u00a0 But I love autumn, minus the roof lifting wind.\u00a0 And spring is almost equal in my eyes.<\/p>\n

Both of them are transitory seasons, they sit in the middle of what I have come to consider the main seasons.\u00a0 Summer is hot, winter is cold, but spring and autumn are in between.\u00a0 Sometimes cold, sometimes hot, often warm.\u00a0 Sometimes dry, sometimes wet, sometimes both in the same day.\u00a0 Sometimes windy, sometimes still. \u00a0Today was a perfect example of spring. \u00a0We had a beautiful warm sunny day, the kids had fun playing outside. \u00a0Tonight is cold, windy and pouring down rain, the local region is flooding all over the place, roads are closed all around us.<\/p>\n

Autumn and spring both contain equinoxes, which if you think about them, are balancing, transitory, liminal times.\u00a0 Night and day are of almost exactly equal length, at about 12hours each.\u00a0 Autumn equinox is the transition, that liminal moment from the time when the days are longer than night, to when the nights become longer than day. Spring equinox is of course the opposite, the liminal moment from shorter days and longer nights, to longer days and shorter nights.<\/p>\n

I absolutely love the heat of summer, and I adore the darkness of winter \u2013 but autumn and spring are the ones that really capture me.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably because of my obsession with balance and liminality.\u00a0 I really should be calling myself a Liminal Witch.\u00a0 And it fits, I am Hekatean after all.<\/p>\n

Both spring and autumn bring a sense of mystery and the mystical with them, but a different type for each.\u00a0 Autumn conjures a sense of hiding, what\u2019s under those leaves, what\u2019s coming next, what will the day bring \u2013 it\u2019s like the feeling of a murder mystery, without the murder.\u00a0 Spring has a similar sort of feeling, but rather than the suspense of a murder mystery, it\u2019s light and airy and speaks of bells and the fae.<\/p>\n

\"Spring
Fairies Looking Through A Gothic Arch. By John Anster Fitzgerald (1823-1906) \u00a0[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>Autumn, as I commented\u00a0on Pagan Tama<\/a>, always makes me think of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.\u00a0 The feelings that Frodo describes he has in autumn is similar to what I feel.\u00a0 A feeling of something coming, something about to happen, maybe a need to go somewhere.\u00a0 In autumn I do want to curl up with a book but simultaneously travel the forests hunting for mysterious things.\u00a0 Which is good, because I can do that inside of a book anyway.<\/p>\n

Spring however, spring wants me to call the mysterious things to me.\u00a0 It makes me want to dance and sing \u2013 which I often do as I clean the house.\u00a0 Loreena McKennit never has so much airplay in this house as she does in spring and early summer.\u00a0 I want to see little glowing lights in the night, glow bugs or fairy lights, and visit the markets of the fae \u2013 with proper precautions of course!<\/p>\n

Spring is perhaps the oddest time for me, especially for people looking in.\u00a0 I am a bit vocal about my distaste for things that are out of season, which is why I can\u2019t stand things like Christmas and Easter, because in Australia it is autumn at\u00a0Easter and bunnies and eggs make no sense, and it is summer at Christmas so it\u2019s all just terribly annoying.\u00a0 But I make exception for one out of season festival, and that is Halloween.\u00a0 I love Halloween, it\u2019s creepy and weird and scary and fun.\u00a0 I love it, it should be Halloween every day of the year.\u00a0 Living in Australia I have the luck of experiencing the fae-like mystery of spring, whilst also enjoying the autumn mystery that comes through Halloween symbolism.<\/p>\n

Autumn is my favourite season, but I have to admit that September and October are in many ways my favourite months, because for me they merge autumn and spring together into some kind of magical super season, full of mystical mystery and creepy warm fun.<\/p>\n

Hooray for an Aussie autumnal springtime and all the mystery it brings.<\/p>\n

\"The
Goblin market, Frank Craig. Public domain via wikimedia commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to see little glowing lights in the night, glow bugs or fairy lights, and visit the markets of the fae – with proper precautions of course!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2764,"featured_media":930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,136,46],"tags":[63,53,33,32,19,58,48,64],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-calendar-events-festivals","category-personal","tag-australian-paganism","tag-calendar","tag-festivals","tag-paganism","tag-personal","tag-sabbats","tag-seasons","tag-southern-hemisphere"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Mystery of the Autumnal Spring<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I want to see little glowing lights in the night, glow bugs or fairy lights, and visit the markets of the fae - with proper precautions of course!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hearthwitchdownunder\/2016\/09\/the-mystery-of-the-autumnal-spring.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Mystery of the Autumnal Spring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I want to see little glowing lights in the night, glow bugs or fairy lights, and visit the markets of the fae - 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