Before mankind invented time as we know it in order to correct the pesky lag between equinoxes and the maths that couldn't keep up, there was the wheel of the year. This is nature's time determined by the uncalculated movements of our luminaries, the sun and his lover the moon.
Today is the cross quarter, the middle point between solstice and equinox. This is marked by the sun sitting at 15 degrees of Aquaria, an esbat often observed on the first of the month because it's more convenient and easier to remember.

An ancient Imbolc tradition was the divination of the end of Winter. Old tales tell of the Cailleach gathering sticks to determine remaining fires, or the bone hag staying in bed on foul weather as Winter contracted to an early end.

These tales evolved into local folklore including a favourite, immortalised in film, featuring a groundhog with a name longer than its body whose fear of his shadow determined how long he stayed underground and Winter continued. No better metaphor for humanity and its fractured relationship to its own darknesses.

Pluto's retrograde is the next to tangle itself in this eclipse season, now stationing to turn and head underground for his regular sabbatical in the shadowlands. This year locked in a challenging aspect with the axis of past and future and our current eclipse ground zero. Dragging us back and forth across evolutionary thresholds that grate and smooth by design.

Whilst the sabbats that mark the notches on the wheel of the year stand sentinel over eons, they become our personal markers for change. We arrive to each in a different form and at a different place in our life.