“The Winter Arc is a concept that refers to the period between October and January. During these months, many people experience a change in their mindset and well-being. The cold, holidays, and the end of the year can lead us to reflect on our lives and set new goals.”
During a recent conversation with a friend and colleague of mine, we were discussing how it feels like many Pagans overlook aspects of Samhain, lost in the aesthetics of death. Skeletons, Jack-o-Lanterns, and even more distinctly pagan practices like ancestor shrines, and invocations to the Morrigan or the Wild Hunt. There’s a good reason why this holiday maintains such a total grip on even the most secular parts of culture. It’s deeply rooted and intrinsic.
But Samhain is not only about literal, bodily death. It is in a sense also the death of the world, of the year. A retracting of vitality within after the dynamic and active warm months. A turning inwards, reviewing the year that has passed and forming the habits and goals for the coming year.
During this discussion, it occurred to me I had recently heard discussions in this vein… but not from any pagan sphere. It was actually the gym bros that intuited this deeper meaning to the season, with their expression “The Winter Arc.”
The theme of this meme revolves around isolation, focus, and reorientation. Some but not all highlight relationships during the warmer months being over, and a “return to the desert” as it were. This sub-variety hits particularly close to home for me.
Our habits don’t just change with the seasons due to daylight or temperature, we are innately attuned to the passing of seasons, and if we stop to observe our lives follow a narrative rhythm. The Winter Arc embraces a more profound understanding of the season of death, a radical shedding of the old self and an almost monastic dedication to one’s goals.
Stepping back from the social scene, stepping back from romantic pursuit, embracing the cold and the dark and the hours when no one else is around to appraise one’s self physically, mentally, and spiritually, and plot the way forward.
This year, alongside my normal and more esoteric Samhain observances, I am gladly embracing the spirit of the Winter Arc, I think it is a simple but sublime reading into the energy of the Autumn and Winter seasons, and one that easily incorporates into a vital Pagan’s wheel of the year.
In that spirt, and to revive my call to action to you fine young men and women from last year, Is 2025 going to happen to you, or are you going to happen to 2025?
The Winter Arc is the time to make that choice.