Okie Wheel of the Year: Feb 22 2021

How can we use the Wind?

An Oklahoma Sky

Finally the Sunrise!

Spring is back in town! After that 12 days of historic cold, it was nice to get back to my morning walk routine and see the sunrise. Some systems refer to the spring equinox as the sunrise of the year, and Imbolc as the growing glow on the pre-dawn horizon. That makes logical sense to me, but I love watching the sun rise during the Imbolc season. The golden sun melts down bare tree limbs and across the last of the autumn’s grasses just as spring slowly spreads across the land. This week we’ll reach the midpoint between Imbolc and the Equinox. The sunrise seems to pick up speed with each day closer to its eastern center on the horizon. The winds also seem to pick up speed at this time of year, so let’s talk about the magic of the Okie Wind.

Wind lore around the world seems to me heavily influenced by whether a culture is coastal or more desert, and of course sailors and, more recently, pilots may have their own relationship to wind. Hippocrates had much to say on how wind affects health, some winds bringing disease and others relief.  Some animist traditions have names for different wind spirits. My OBOD druid tradition treats air as the element of the east, intellect, and clarity, represented by the hawk. Other traditions place the air element differently and may have a different relationship with air. In Oklahoma, our winds predominantly blow north and south assisted by the northerly or southerly wobble of the jet stream. An excessively exciting jet stream plunge to the south was responsible for bringing those 12 days of subfreezing temps all the way from the artic into Texas last week. The jet stream is more typically the cause of our rollercoaster weather, making Imbolc a time of rotating warm and cold, north and south winds, which become more southerly as we ease past the equinox into April.

How can we use this magically? Modern witchcraft makes use of moon phases. The wind has its own energy and its own, less predictable cycles. The north wind might blow in cold winter weather or lovely, cooling summer rain. The south wind may drive back the winter or fill the sky with orange dust from New Mexico and spread wildfire. Sometimes the south wind blows in spring thunderstorms and refreshing north wind marks their passing. The winds’ moods and energies are as varied as the weather itself and they are as strong and influential here as the sea is to the coasts. The sky is our sea. But unlike the stories and songs of the sea, there is no source to consult about the magic of Oklahoma wind. We have to rely on intuition. Different traditions use moon phases differently, some using the full moon for manifestation and others for clearing. The wind also has differing effects on people. The same wind may blow hope and vitality for one person, and cleansing or endings for another. While we can know moon phases by consulting a calendar without ever looking at the sky, wind energies are felt. We feel the wind on our skin and its moods in our spirit. How can you use the powerful Oklahoma wind in your own practice?

February sunrise on winter-ravaged cottonwoods