Janus is With Us

Restoration Anglican Church

We have just celebrated the birth of our salvation, his entering our hearts with the Holy Spirit, and the imminent return that we long for. Through the symbolic death of the year with its shortest day, and now the long, long cold. It’s cold, purifies, and cleanses, an extremity in temperature, but instead of cleansing by fire, it puts some of the cancerous imperfections into a slumber that they never awakes from. Now is the season of Janus.

Janus the primordial deity of transitions, beginnings, gates, time, duality, and doorways, the archetype of birth death, light, dark, male and female. One face gazing reflectively forever in the past, a melancholic meditation on long-ago mistakes, a regret of things not said, missed opportunities, potential lovers not kissed, an “I love you” not uttered before a sudden death. Janus the eternal and reigning king of hindsight, a keen eye on the things that should have been done, should have been said, and regret. However our month’s archetype is not simply a melancholic cliché; forever sad and beautiful, his other face stares forever into the future.

 He sees all, and evermore into what awaits; not just this future but other realities, dimensions and universes, one small choice having a cascading effect on infinite probabilities; thoughts, feelings, and actions spiraling out in endless cycles. Dominoes stacked and falling in infinite arraignments, more tiles and possibilities than there are connections in ones brain. The archetype that sees the architecture.

As one sits next to his hearth, fortifying himself with a peaty scotch, or a hearty stew during the long, long cold with its short days and purifying snow; may he not fall compulsively into depressive cycles of ruminations, but also planning for his future. 

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While the cold will make one heave a great sigh of relief to find oneself in the dark vault with the pale dead. The cold seeming to soothe all care, melt away every pain, comfort every sorrow, but alas The bright days of spring with the sun in the south at meridian which is the beauty and glory of the day await his plowshare.

January is the perfect time for reflection, the perfect time for planning, and the perfect time for resolutions. Make peace with those you have wronged, or those who have wronged you. Make peace with yourself. And love, love with all that you have,  for one day the archetype of doorways will compel you to enter and you don’t want to be an “I love you” not uttered before a sudden death.