Shadows Growing Long: Archetypes of the Darkening Year

The year tilts, and suddenly the light is not enough. Evening comes earlier, sliding across the sky like ink spilled over parchment. Fields are cut bare, fruit trees stripped, and the air holds that particular coolness that makes the bones remember winter. It is in this dwindling light that the old archetypes stir. They wait, patient, until the balance tips, and then they rise.

The first to step forward is the Crone. She does not whisper; she clears her throat, and the sound makes the leaves fall. She is not fragile age but distilled clarity. Keys jangle at her belt, one for each threshold we hesitate to cross. When she looks at you, there is no place to hide. You remember the cupboards you haven’t cleared, the truths you haven’t spoken, the endings you have avoided naming. She asks no permission. She simply shows you that the season has come when some doors must be locked and others opened. Those who fear her call her cruel. Those who listen call her wise.

From the edge of the firelight, something else slips closer: the Shadow. Not a figure with features, but the shape of yourself cast long and strange against the ground. It bends when you do. It mimics what you deny. Stories call it the double, the monster, the reflection that lingers a beat too long in the mirror. It is uncomfortable, yes, but not your enemy. In its darkness lies the vitality you buried: the wild, the creative, the forbidden yes that could carry you further if only you dared. This is the time of year when the Shadow presses close, reminding you that light without contrast is blindness.

And then there is the one who descends. Call them the Underworld Hero, though heroism here does not mean triumph. It means willingness to go down, to leave behind what glittered in daylight, to strip to the bone and walk beneath the earth. You find their story everywhere: Inanna passing through her seven gates, Persephone with pomegranate seeds staining her lips, Orpheus turning too soon. They are not cautionary tales so much as maps of initiation. To live fully, one must descend. To grow, one must meet the dark and return with something transformed.

These archetypes are not abstract figures. They breathe in you, especially now, when nights are long and the veil between inner and outer worlds thins. You may notice them in the sudden urge to clean the house before winter, in dreams that replay old wounds with uncanny clarity, in the quiet pull to journal, to light a candle, to walk at dusk. They do not ask you to worship them. They ask you to notice.

At the Autumn Equinox, balance is held for a fleeting moment: light and dark poised like scales. But balance never lasts. The wheel turns, and the dark half of the year begins its reign. This is not tragedy. It is instruction. The Crone teaches discernment. The Shadow offers truth. The Underworld Hero shows the way down and back again.

So when shadows grow long, do not rush to banish them. Sit with them. Taste the fruit of the season. Let the archetypes walk beside you into the coming months. You will find that darkness, far from being an absence, is a place of seeds, waiting to break the soil when the wheel turns again.