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.

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.

And so the wheel turns once more, this eve at 3.15am Wollombi time when the sun storms into the firebrand go-getter energy of Aries. Crossing the equator as he goes, the sun king delivering our equinox tipping point when day and night are of equal length. Our Northern friends begin to rise and stretch into Spring as here in the South we begin the descent towards the dark cauldron days of Winter.

There was a time when the movement of the planets above us and the earth below us alone marked the passage of time. Before clocks and calendars were invented to explain time, the Ancients walked in step with the world they inhabited, building ritual observations into a foundation stone of their lives.