I don’t think there can ever really be just one definition of time. It’s a human construct to measure our days, our daily progress, to bring order to our lives. But what time means to one person means something different to another.

My Muggle is a marathon runner. So a time for him to run “a quick 5km” is different to how I would undertake 5km, for example. A 7am start at work followed by a 6am wake up is completely normal for me, yet horrifying to someone else.

The Pagan Experience: How do you measure time? How do you make use of linear time in sacred space? How do you call forth the space of timelessness in your physical life? How do you integrate the two for your magickal/spiritual work?

I am someone who has always worked by the, “things will happen when they’re ready.” Obviously I can’t use that approach for appointments, or anything on a set schedule (and I try not to be someone who works on Pagan Standard Time…) But for my magickal life where spells are cast with a set time involved, it’s for as long as the lesson needs to be learnt, or for as long as the Universe and the Gods believe the spell shall last.

Recently I’ve been on a journey working with my Shadow Self, and tonight I was shown enough to have an idea of where it is going, what I need to do, and what will be at the end of it. That is a perfect example of something from my magickal world that greatly affected my mundane world, but something I could not rush or put a time factor on it. It shall take as long as it shall take, and as long as it takes for me to understand the importance of why I’m experiencing it.

There are some things in this world that you cannot measure with time. I never begin a ritual thinking, “The opening will go for 5 minutes, then this for another 5, and it all has to be finished by the time the oven alarm goes off and dinner is ready.” When you’re lost within the momentum of ritual, of spell casting, of communicating with the Gods, time is endless. It is fast and slow all within a heart beat.

I’ll say to my Muggle I’m going to do “Pagan stuff”, he asks “for how long?” and I reply, “as long as it needs.”