Just recently I saw my first carnival of the season.

As I see Wodanaz in both the Hunt and the Carnival, the first carnival of the year is a moment like the first farmer’s market, where I am seeing a power shift from their winter self to their summer self and I stop to acknowledge the passage of time.

This is, of course, entirely UPG, but the role of carnivals in pop culture is liminal and dangerous, a place where the bad are punished and strange blessings and curses both might come up, so it seems reasonable to me that archetypal Carnival might feed on the same energies as the Hunt. And of course, I first met Wodanaz wearing the face of Mr Dark.

I know other pagans who mark their seasons with nature-based observations, noting when plants first sprout or ripen, but I suspect I’m just not sufficiently earth-attuned for that. I’ve been trying to pay more attention to the signs of the seasons, what the plants are doing and so on, and I can certainly note and appreciate it. It just doesn’t resonate for me the way spotting the lights of a ferris wheel on the side of the freeway does.