Applying the Scythe

In the United States, two of the iconic images of the Gregorian calendar New Year are Father Time and Baby New Year. Father Time, with his hourglass, robe, and scythe, looks like some sort of combination of Chronos, the Greek Lord of Time, and the Grim Reaper, who sometimes sports a sash with the outgoing year emblazoned upon it. Baby New Year is usually depicted as a toddler in a diaper, sometimes wearing the sash of the incoming year, and occasionally wearing a top hat. Pagans recognize Baby New Year as yet another version of the Divine Child of Yule.

One popular custom is to make New Year’s resolutions. Many people, coming off the general overindulgence of the holiday season, resolve to lose weight. Others resolve to quit smoking, or to cease some other self-destructive habit. Many pagans will have already declared their affirmations and goals at Yule. However, the Gregorian New Year, being the celebration of such a large chunk of the earth’s population, has a special significance and energy that magical folk could use to reinforce their own practice – and help the planet.

December 31, 2015-January 1, 2016 will fall during the waning moon, so for magical folk, any workings will need to take that into account. Waning moon magic is about banishing, releasing, sloughing off, taking apart, and letting go. With the addition of Father Time and his scythe, there is also the powerful image of severing that can be brought to bear in a ritual. A scythe is not a subtle tool, but subtlety is not what you need when you really want to get rid of something for good. Of course, most of us have more than one thing that plagues us. Identifying these problems clearly, focusing on them, raising energy, and mowing them down in a great swath, would make for quite a productive, and satisfying, New Year’s Eve working.

Speaking of things that need to be mowed down in a great swath, there is whole lot of ugliness out there – particularly in the United States – that needs the attention of an army of magical scythe wielders. Bigotry, greed, ignorance, and indifference are four of the most grisly examples. A working for peace and sanity might conjure up images of these forces as four hideous plants – or perhaps as one loud-mouthed newsmaker. Applying the scythe in such a ritual – in large enough numbers – could save the world.