OM DENNE EPISODE
This is the twelfth and last of the series, and it's the equinox. Light and dark come level soon and then they tip, and from then the dark half has it.
It isn't a recap and it isn't a big finish. What it is, is a doorway episode. We stand at the threshold for an hour, look back down the glen quickly without making a meal of it, and then say something over the going.
The folklore is one of the Gaelic journey blessings, said standing at your own door before setting out. And it doesn't ask for what you'd expect. Not a safe arrival, not clear weather, not the business at the other end going your way. It asks for the earth beneath the foot to be blessed, and the path whereon I go. Nothing at all about the destination. There's a kindness in that which took me a while to see, because if you bless the destination you've given yourself something to keep checking on, and if you bless the ground you're standing on then it's already done.
Then the gap you're about to be in, and why you'll probably misread it. William Bridges separated change, which is the external event with a date on it, from transition, which is the internal business of becoming somebody for whom that's now true. And transition begins with an ending rather than a beginning, and the bit in the middle where the old thing is over and the new one hasn't started is not a failure of the process. It is the process. I've included what it actually feels like, since people recognise the symptoms long before they recognise the description.
There's also a passage in here for anybody who has listened to all twelve and still hasn't climbed the hill. Twelve podcast episodes were never going to shift something that has been in place for nine years, and I'd not have you turn that into evidence about yourself.
And the card is the Fool, which is numbered zero, which takes it out of the sequence and lets it sit at either end of the deck. So finishing on it isn't a trick. The mountains are behind the traveller rather than ahead. The bundle is tiny. And Pamela Colman Smith didn't paint the fall, in either direction, which is honest.
The practice at the end is a doorway one, and it finishes with the blessing and a turn.
The letter carries on every week. The podcast comes back around Samhain.
This week's card: the Fool. Numbered zero, which is why it can be the first card or the last one.
What happens now
The weekly letter carries on. If you'd like company through the dark half, that's where I'll be. The podcast is resting through the autumn and comes back around Samhain with a new series. All twelve episodes stay up, so if somebody you know is standing at the foot of something, they can start at the beginning whenever they like.
Take the quiz
You already know. So what are you waiting for? Nine questions, about three minutes, and at the end you get the name of the pattern keeping you where you are. Each result is a figure out of Scottish folklore, and you've met one or two of them across this series. At sageinthesky.com
