Goddess Complex

02/02/2026

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.

This curious reticence we maintain, doing anything but face the bitter chill of our own shadow. In the last few years particularly we have seen it over and over again structurally, politically and personally. A sturdy refusal to acknowledge the gaslit past in order to heal its damage and craft a braver truer future.

Fortunately everything in Aquaria is not having a bar of it. Not no more. One does not revolutionise thy world through denial, projection and blame nor by maintaining the status bro. Though narcissists and naysayers will keep trying, we can all smell the fear of revelation. We know it personally. Truth emerges from the well roaring with good reason. There is no liberation without her.

Shadow work only begins when you can truly madly deeply acknowledge your own groundhog days; the s**t that happens on repeat where you are the inconveniently common element. We'll do it over and over again until we get sick of the same outcome and long for a different ending. Shadow work is the only way to outwit your personal definition of insanity.

As we slipstream deep into the alternative dimensions of Aquaria, its kaleidoscopic frame takes our broken glass and creates something beautiful through its moving pictures. A dance of shadow and light that you can choreograph to end the winter of your discontent. Or tuck back in for more of the same.

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I'm not going to live by their rules anymore
~ Phil Connors, Groundhog Day

Now is the best time ever to dive into your shadow. If you are seeking a way that offers solid support, experience, guidance and the dark humour required to face shadow and make light, I'm your witch.

02/02/2026

The choice is yours boo boo ☄️

02/02/2026

Being raised by a combat veteran who started teaching me self defense at an extremely young age has paid off in both mundane and spiritual fights 🫡

02/02/2026

02/02/2026

02/01/2026

The gods are gods because they are so very humanly relatable to our human experience. In my point of view the gods are capable of both noble and terrible acts, just as we are. To try and box them up neatly is desecration. It’s highly possible that Bride is all of her lore, including this lore and the lore of warring with her elder sister. I have three older sisters and two absolutely hate me, mostly just for existing as myself. To try and define them in any immovable way is to try and define every aspect of the ocean or the celestials. Impossible. Just my misfit zen take on the subject.

There’s a Scottish tradition about the Cailleach (the old woman of Gaelic mythology who created and shaped the land) which says that she has a sister (or in some stories, an alter ego; in still others, a daughter) called Bride.

The Cailleach rules over the dark half of the year, from Samhain to Bealtaine, and Bride (who is sort of the Scottish equivalent of the old Irish goddess Brigid) rules over the light half, from Bealtaine to Samhain. (Some traditions would give the timings as Imbolc to Lughnasa.)

Well, much as I love the Cailleach, it's hard not to love Bride too. I don't see her as some youthful, flower-flocked spring maiden; I don't think that image ever resonated with me even when I was a young maiden myself!

I see her as a profoundly green, fecund, strong-faced Earth mother/creatrix who is no more to be messed with than her rather more obviously uncompromising older sister. Yes, if the Cailleach is the destroyer, Bride is the creator. Two sides of the same ancient archetype, each of them here given their own distinctive form.

I never bought into the idea in some of the old stories that they battled each other for control of the seasons, either; it seems to me that each of those very wise-womanly archetypal figures would know all too well the necessity for balance – for the never-ending cycles of life, the creating and dying, which keeps the great engine turning. I can think of all of that in the abstract, of course, but I've never been able to love abstract.

What I can love are the images I hold in my head of two very powerful women – one old, one younger, but each beautiful in their own unique way – who personify all that is rich and essential about all the seasons of the year.

~ Sharon Blackie

Art by Sue Ellen Parkinson

01/31/2026

Life slowly entwined by the reemergence of the dawn of Imbolic, leading us slowly, cautiously, back into warmth and light from the lessons, and formations of the death season. How has this death season changed and shaped you? I know many of us have gone through dramatic upheaval and our definitions of safety and wellbeing have been revised as we are born anew from the wellspring of winter’s desolation. Who will you be come spring? Can you see yourself more clearly and less ambiguously? Or are you still finding definition of who you are born anew as through winter smoke and haze?

༄ Wishing you foul weather on Imbolic. Let us hope that the Cailleach doesn’t have much wood for her fire.༄

01/31/2026

Listen to the song as you absorb the words 🎵 ✨🪞🪷

01/31/2026

I just love wet specimens 🫙❤️‍🔥