Winter Weather Spirits

Old Man Winter and The Cailleach

Jan 04, 2024

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Snow and Sun, AI Photo, Jan Blencowe © 2024

Winter is filled with magic if we allow ourselves to see it. Rather than view this season as a time in which everything is “dead,” think of it as a time in which things are revealed, exposed, and uncovered.

Winter corresponds to the Earth element, the “below” in “as above, so below.” It’s the densest, slowest moving of all energetic frequencies. In that way, and particularly in winter, we can see normally hidden realities as the energetic vibrations slow down and things are stilled like taking a still frame from a video.

So what do we see in winter that we otherwise normally wouldn't see? There’s quite a lot in nature to observe at this time of year, as birds’ nests that were once hidden by dense foliage are now revealed on bare branches, and the margins of ponds and lakes are exposed as the water congeals and shrinks back from the shore as frozen sheets of ice, as well as the graceful and sometimes twisted forms of bare trees, stand revealed before us.

Old Man Winter

In the mythopoetic world, there are other things to see in winter. Old Man Winter arrives, hard, cold, fierce and howling. He is often accompanied by Grandfather Frost and their young kinsman, Jack Frost. Together, they personify the weather of the season. Their imagery sometimes overlaps with Father Time, The Grim Reaper, Chronos, or Saturn.

Old Man Winter is transient, a drifter. He comes and goes; sometimes, he is a force to be reckoned with during a harsh winter, and other years he is less potent.

I think there is a lesson here about the masculine energy that we all possess. Sometimes, it is a fearsome power, like a warrior protecting his homeland, and at other times, it can be mild and gentle, strength under control, like a loving father with his children.

The Cailleach

In other places, notably Ireland and Scotland, we find the Cailleach, the old winter hag. The Cailleach is a deep and complex figure.

The Cailleach is born at Samhain, as the earth is dying, and is known as a bringer of storms. She is not born a babe or even as a young maiden. She is born old, and she grows even older as the winter progresses.

As “daughter of the little sun,” the Cailleach is an elemental power of winter, the cold, wind, and tempests. She comes into power as the days shorten and the sun courses low in the skies. She carries a slachdan (wand of power, similar to a shaman's staff), with which she shapes the land and controls the weather.
In the Skye folk-tale “Finlay the Changeling,” she strikes the ground with it, making the earth harden with frost. Wherever the Cailleach throws her slachdan, nothing grows. [From Max Dashu Secret History of the Witches, copyright quoting, MacKenzie, 140-1]

At winter’s end, some accounts say the Cailleach turns into a grey boulder until the warm days are over. The boulder was said to be "always moist' because it contained "life substance’

I love this imagery of the Cailleach, an old winter hag reverting back to her essence, a boulder, the very bones and core of the earth element. Yet, the boulder is moist even in its ancientness; it holds within it the moist matrix from which new life will emerge. This is one of the deepest mysteries of the feminine principle, its ancientness and its perpetual power to birth new life.

The Cailleach, or The Cailleach Beara is ever-renewing and passes through many lifetimes. Wherever she is found, the Cailleach is mainly known for two things: her identity as a hag and her association with winter.

The Scottish version of the Cailleach, the Cailleach Bheur, is depicted as “a tall, blue-faced crone” who is “both a personification of winter and a protectress of wild animals" in particular, the deer and the wolf, according to the Carmina Gadelica.

The Cailleach is said to have one eye. One eye is characteristic of those supernatural beings who see beyond the world of opposites.

“...her face was blue-black, of the luster of coal,
And her bone tufted tooth was like rusted bone.
In her head was one deep pool-like eye
Swifter than a star in winter.
Upon her head gnarled brushwood
like the clawed old wood of the aspen root.”
~ MacKenzie, Donald, Scottish Folk Lore and Folk Life, Blackie, London, 1935

The word cailleach means veiled one, but this is not a veil of modesty (the cailleachan are wild) but of mystery.
The Cailleach has universal qualities; she is not a goddess of fertility or death or any one thing, but a deity who is both transcendent and immanent. She is connected with rivers, lakes, wells, marshes, the sea and storms; with rocks, mountains, boulders, megalithic temples and standing stones; and with cattle, swine, goats, sheep, wolves, bird, fish, trees, and plants. ~ excerpt from Secret History of the Witches, copyright 2000 Max Dashu

The Cailleach’s Winter Work, AI Art, Jan Blencowe©2024

The Cailleach Creates the Landscape.

The land was born when the Cailleach dumped out the contents of her apron. ~ Patricia Monaghan

The apron is the divine womb, translated into the language of dress. ~ Michael Dames

Interestingly, even though Cailleach is typically depicted as a destroyer goddess, especially as a storm-bringer, she is also known for her ability to create new life. With her magical hammer, she is said to have created mountain ranges, lochs, and cairns all over Scotland. Scottish myths often cast the Cailleach as a shaper of the landscape.

The Cailleach brings up some very interesting questions to work with.

The first way to work with the Cailleach is to explore and create landscapes. This may take the form of:

landscapes of your outer life
landscapes of your inner life
landscapes of experience
landscapes of relationships

Questions to use

What does it mean to create the features of my inner landscape?
How do I create the features of the landscape in my life in the outer world?

As we stand here at the beginning of a brand-new year, there’s an opportunity to create a new way of being and living.

While storms and upheavals may come, like Old Man Winter, they eventually will recede, and then the bare winter landscape is revealed against the stark light of the winter sky. We see clearly our own core issues and what they mean.

From the Cailleach, we learn to be the shaper of our own lives. We can learn from the winter weather, the earth’s stoic resilience through winter, and the spirits that reside in our collective myth about winter. The inevitability of a harsh season of life helps us call up a pearl of wisdom and courageous resolve equal to the season.

Is the Cailleach new to you? Do you relate to her fierceness or her “moistness”? How does winter teach you?

The comments section is a safe and welcoming space to share your insights and experiences.

Comments and conversation are always appreciated and enjoyed, so feel free to let your voice be heard. I read them all and try to respond to each one.

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