The following article by Tahverlee Anglen was first published in the October/November 2026 issue of The Edge magazine, a publication that serves as a “community for higher consciousness” in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
The Season of Descent
The Edge Magazine
October-November 2026
The sun slowly fades, the cool temperatures roll into our energy like a long-forgotten hug, and the earth prepares for its long season of rest. Regardless of where you are located [in the northern hemisphere], there is a shift that happens as the year begins to turn inward. The earth’s energy changes and moves into a period of rest. A period of tending to its roots. A time to replenish after months of outward motion of continually reaching higher toward the sun.
I spend significant portions of my year on what I call “full systems firing” energy. I am creating, teaching, writing, traveling, holding space, and continually bringing ideas into form. I love the seasons of my life when the energy is moving outward and everything feels alive with possibility. There is something intoxicating about watching the seeds you planted begin to grow. But we cannot stay in the season of growth forever. Working with the return of the dark nights is a powerful way to recharge and rebuild your own resources.
For a long time, I struggled with that. Slowing down felt like I was losing momentum. Resting meant I wasn’t creating. Turning inward felt like a wet blanket on my exciting life and spiritual growth. So much of our world celebrates what we produce and accomplish. Even in our spiritual practices we continually look for the next “big” thing to do to get to the next stage. We want the next awakening, the next manifestation, or the next level of understanding. We are always reaching for something. But nature does not do this.
The trees need to slow their growth and shed their leaves. The plants need a break to allow their roots to flourish. The planet needs the inward time to replenish, to descend. So too with us. We need breaks from reaching towards the sun so as to take our energy downward and inward.
There is something sacred about pulling your energy inward as the nights get longer, and focus on tending to your own roots, your own soul, and pause. The descent is the place where we strengthen our fortitude and gather energy.
If we choose to spend this season with more time by candlelight without the glare of artificial light and put our screens away, we may just find that life will indeed carry on as it needs to, but our internal energy systems will replenish. A good practice to do once the sun goes down is to journal on what wisdom is waiting for you in the darkness. Ask yourself what parts of you were neglected while producing, achieving, and reaching outward. Doing this while in the quiet of the evening or longer, darker mornings, will support your time in the descent.
This is where the season of descent has changed me the most – just slowing down long enough to ask the questions and simply sit with what arises. Sometimes it’s just more rest. Sometimes it’s grief for what changed in the previous season. Sometimes I even discover a hidden treasure of an idea that was buried underneath the busyness of living. And sometimes the answer lies in just being willing to sit in the darkness, under a starry sky, and breathe it all in.
So as the light fades, let it remind you to descend too, to turn inward, to complete the season of outward momentum and take time to replenish your own roots. I promise there will be another season of reaching towards the light, but for now, be willing to see what grows in the dark.
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Time to Go Inwards
• To Dream, to Feel, to Listen
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards
• Brigit Anna McNeill on “Winter’s Way”
• God Rest Us
• Allow Everything to Rest Right Now
• Stepping Out of Time and Resting Your Mind
• A Renewed Mind
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• Autumn’s “Wordless Message”
• Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
• Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance
• A Prayer of Anchoring
• Cultivating Stillness
• A Sacred Pause
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Mystical Participation
• October Vignettes (2024)
• October Vignettes (2023)
• October Afternoon
• An Autumn Walk Through the Neighborhood
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• The Prayer Tree . . . Aflame!
Image: Michael J. Bayly (Benson, MN – 10/11/26).
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