So, those who have been following along with the Getting to Know the Powers series may have noticed references in the past four essays to time. There are six Powers who are associated with time as a concept in Waincraft – Abundance, Winter, Blood, Rain, Sun, and Moon. But these deal with different types of time and related concepts.

Abundance deals with time in the greater arc, the time of space-time and the fundamental quality that we experience as progression, age, change and ordered passage. This is clock time, science time, abstract time, philosophical time, counted in minutes and hours and centuries and aeons.

The Weird Sisters as a whole represent time as the three-fold spiraling progression of before, during and after. This is life time, social time, measured in breaths and events, years and decades and generations, families and cultures.

Winter is the first part of this spiral, and deals with the has been, the was, the already happened. In the cosmology, this portion of life time is associated with everything that lies under the surface, the unseen, the bones and worms and strange sea creatures and pale blind fish in dark underground pools. The past cannot be reached or seen or felt, but only imagined, remembered, told about, because anytime you try to get below the surface, you only create more surface

Blood is the second part of this spiral, and deals with the now, the is, the happening. In the cosmology, this portion of life time is associated with everything that can be seen, felt, reached, or touched – the surface as a sensate half sphere whose boundaries are formed by the past (under the surface) and the future (beyond the horizon) This is, in a sense, the only time we ever truly know, because we live in an ever-changing, never-moving moment of Now that a millisecond ago was To come, and a millisecond from now will be Then.

Rain is the third part of this spiral, and deals with the to come, the will be, the maybe. In the cosmology, this portion of life time is associated with beyond the horizon – that which cannot be seen in the now, and thus cannot ever be pinned down and definitively described. It is everything that lies beyond our reach and our knowledge. Tomorrow truly never comes, because by its very nature, it is unobtainable, just as no matter how long you travel or how high or low you climb, the horizon remains always out of reach, and what lies beyond out of sight and knowing until that beyond becomes here and now.

Sun and Moon, being children of Abundance, are markers of cyclical time, time in the lesser arc, the time of measurements and repetitions. This is calendar time, measured in days and weeks and months and seasons, the time of planting and harvesting, of building and repairing, of sailing and fishing and gathering. There are roughly 3.09 moon cycles per solar quarter (solstice to equinox, or equinox to solstice, or in the four-season year), or 4.12 cycles per solar third (for those who prefer three-season years) This yields, when rounded, twelve 30 day lunar months with 5 excess solar days (6 in leap years), or twelve 29 day lunar months with 17 excess solar days (18 in leap years). Waincraft does not have a set religious calendar, but one could be created based on lunar, solar and seasonal cycles for each person’s bioregion.