Month: December 2014

Sleepless Nights. Nightmare after nightmare. And is it still the nightmare, or is it real? Was that noise still part of the dream or not?  They’re here. These unholy spirits which whisper into our thoughts. We can really feel them. They’re already in the bedroom.  They want us to see the world from their perspective.  Some memories suddenly appear in a different light. Paranoia sets in, bad feelings, fear, which wasn’t there before. Is somebody creating this? Or is it only me? Perhaps it’s all in the imagination.

In some winter nights chaos seem closer to us. That’s why we have so many stories and old traditions about the rough nights. The rough nights are special winter nights, and the wild hunt is roaming through the woods. Usually the wild hunt is envisioned as a bunch of demons and lost souls. Some people believe Nordic God Wotan is their leader.

Only a few of us would believe that the wild hunt really exists. And regarding anxieties and weird feelings in certain winter nights we’re quick to blame the usual suspect – the weather.

However there is some truth here. If the Otherworld comes close to us, we can feel its different energies and entities. And in certain times it means entering a chaos zone, which is like being exposed to a very strong radiation.

The wild hunt might be related to the agents of chaos. This is what these dark energies which could be felt in the rough nights are about. The Otherworld is a storehouse of images – the demons of the wild hunt are symbolic expressions of this archetypical imaginary, which doesn’t mean they don’t exist. There is also an element of the archetype of apocalypse here, which could be felt in the rough nights. There are the most elementals forces at work here, and have a stronger influence on us as on other days. Like Sauron from Lord Of The Rings, which is lurking in darkness, the powerful energies of the wild hunt doesn’t like to reveal themselves but create something like a poisoning air; in which more crimes and other painful things do happen. It’s a dangerous time, that’s what the legends of the wild hunt and the rough nights want to tell us.

As always darkness and light are close together, and the light will come back. But before that happens we have to walk through the darkest corners of the forest dark once every year.

A gate is usually a building but we could also imagine many other forms of gates. Gates to the Otherworld might exist on another plane. The idea of a wormhole as portrayed in science fiction seems also to be a gate, which allows you to reach a distant planet or galaxy without loosing time and which presents more a concept rather than a literal gate. Gates exist between different countries or between different dimensions. Sometimes a gate is made for protection. In many stories a gate only opens when the hero passes the test.
We are walking through many gates in our lives. Perhaps a gate can also be a certain moment in time. Winter Solstice in some sense is a form of a gate itself. Every year again we enter this gate, and it’s the darkest time of the year. We don’t see much, and things are lurking in the dark…

The time between the winter solstice and New Year’s Eve is a time of transition. A lot of people believe that the veil between our world and the Otherworld becomes thin for some time. It’s often a time when old fears come up and we become intimidated.

In some stories there are dragons and other dangers waiting in the dark before the hero reaches the gate. In a metaphorical sense this applies also to many other circumstances. We need to pass through the gate if we want to see the light again. We hope for a safe journey, but if we see winter solstice symbolically as a gate, which opens up to a new beginning, this gate is a dark gate. It challenges us and it does test us in many ways before we see the light again. The gate of darkness might lead you also into your own darker side if you are not aware. If the veil between our world and the other world becomes thin not only well-meaning entities but also darker forces can open this gate from the other side and will have a stronger influence upon us. Many old rituals teach us that if we want to keep the darker forces away we need to become for some time a demon ourselves and even to dance with the demons. The biggest danger is always to neglect their existence. Maybe the dark gates, which exist in various forms, are supposed to check our weaknesses before we’re allowed to see the light again.