THE BETWIXT TIME - WOMB TIME

In the long nights when the wheel of the year turns toward its deepest rest, the old peoples listened for the voices of the unseen ones. The keepers of a living wisdom woven from the threads of earth, sky, and the heartbeat of women whose prayers rose with the smoke of sacred fires. Among these timeless ones are the Tuatha Dé Dannan, the people of the goddess, whose story sings of a feminine current in the indigenous cultures of the Celtic lands long before new tides of story and scripture reached these shores.

The Tuatha Dé Dannan walked the islands of mist and mountain, their names sung in the old tongues as daughters of art, of smithcraft, of healing waters, of song that could bend the course of rivers. They carried within them the deep knowing that the world is shaped not only by what is seen but by the tenderness of the hidden places, the sacred thresholds where one enters into mystery without fear or haste. In their weaving of worlds, they revealed that power belongs to those who honor the earth as mother, the moon as sister, and the heart as the portal to the unseen.

This feminine current of the indigenous Europeans comes from the oldest days when women held council beside wells and under oak boughs. These women did not seek power over others; they remembered their own souls. They listened to the language of roots and wind. In this remembering, they carried forward a lineage that predates the tales of later ages, that came before the story of Mary was carried on new winds to these shores. Here in these green lands, the sacred feminine was mother and guide, shaping the bones of the world with song and breath and the humility of open palms.

And now we find ourselves in this betwixt time, the threshold between the dark dawn of winter and the returning light. Between Christmas and New Year we walk the quiet places in our own hearts where the old year gently loosens its grip and the new year waits in the hush before sunrise.

This is a time the Celtic peoples knew well, time for women especially to tend the inner fire, to weave dreams into the coming year, to rest in the fertile silent ground of the heart.
In these days of softened time, the old wisdom calls us to listen. The Tuatha teach us that there is no rush out of the sacred pause. That the space between endings and beginnings is a holy river where we may wash away the dust of our striving and open to the shape of what wants to grow. Here we look inward with gentle eyes, receiving invitations to breathe with deeper calm, to attune our spirits to the music of subtle realms, to honor our own cycles as sacred as the moon’s.

Modern woman finds this so difficult as the world is not as it was then.

This betwixt time is fertile with possibility, a hush where the feminine current of these lands whispers for us to remember. We remember the water-wisdom of Boann whose river carved its course against all tides. We remember the silver song of Brigid rising in dawn light. We remember that the heart is a threshold no less sacred than the door of a temple, and that through it we walk into our own becoming.

May this time hold you like a still lake held by ancient hills. May the breath of the Tuatha Dé Dannan rest upon your brow. May you find in the quiet between the years the deep peace that comes from aligning with the ancient feminine pulse of the earth. And may your steps in the coming circle of the year be guided by that lingering whisper , the voice of inner knowing that speaks in the language of wind and sky.

Are you taking the space to listen ?

Art : Titania Frederick Howard Michael