This year they began dramatically
Rolling clouds moved too quickly over the hills, time-lapse speed across the sky. I watched the day begin from my bed, the light shifting, the shadows racing, and the Omen Days for 2026 were suddenly underway.
The rhythm of the Omen Days varies wildly from year to year, and I was reminded how, on some days, inviting in the pause can feel anything but gentle. Sometimes the pause arrives like a dramatic fall, a tumble of Omens, one after another, like dominoes. I was immediately pulled back into memories of the previous year’s Omens: the crashing of pairs that appeared out of nowhere.
Two dogs.
Two chimneys.
Two cards.
Two birds.
The repetition was impossible to ignore, the insistence was almost confrontational. A mirror. Only later did the significance began to reveal itself, landing in the month I would complete the double crossing of the Lyke Wake Walk.
Meaning, as it often does, arrived in hindsight.
Other days, other months, have been nothing days
Indistinct. Quiet. On these days I have held the Omens much more lightly in my hand. A single card pulled. A short walk outside, sometimes no more than putting the bin out. I’ve tried not to look too hard, not to force the meaning, not to push myself beyond where I am. A dream noted, perhaps. A feeling acknowledged. An acceptance that the year ahead carries with it its own pauses.
The first years of the Omen Days were solitary affairs
They moved at a gentle pace and were very much rooted in noticing. A small anchor amid the chaos that often accompanies Christmas, the noise, the movement, the demands of a shared space with lots of people. When the pulls on my time were greater, the Omen Days became a mindful moment carved out just for me. They were a quiet space created with intention. A touchpoint in days that can so easily blur into a nothingness in busy households. I was grateful for those moments. A breath in. A breath out.
Over the past couple of years, as the grip on my time has loosened, I’ve leaned into the Omen Days in a different way, and for different reasons. They’ve taken on a more rhythmic presence, held not just by me but in the company of others. First within a small creative WhatsApp group, and then, this year, as part of a much larger community through The Wild Creative.
What I’ve learned is that these familiar rhythmic pauses feel different when they are held collectively. Our nothing days don’t fall on the same dates. One person’s stillness is another’s abundance. Some days are filled with birds, murmurations, skeins of geese cutting the sky. Other days the world offers snow, tumbling thick and fast from the sky, a blanket over fields and lanes. And sometimes we try a little too hard to pin meaning onto those things that refuse to be pinned down. In those moments, someone else leans in and reminds us, gently, that the purpose is the pause itself. That not everything has to mean something. And I am grateful for the reminder.
Not every stone or rock or pink-lit sky is an Omen for the year ahead
Sometimes waking with that heavy, sinking feeling in the belly is not the ominous foreboding of February. And yet, secretly, there’s a quiet relief when the melancholy lifts by lunchtime, providing a hopeful whisper that maybe that month won’t be so bad after all. Because it’s tricky, isn’t it, to sit with the idea that the year ahead might not unfold as smoothly as we’d like.
Only looking for the light is one way of approaching the Omen Days, but we also know that when the light shines, the shadows play too. Alongside connection, love and belonging, there will be challenge, loss, discomfort. Both ask to be witnessed.
The year ahead will be peppered with tiny wins and losses.
So where do we look during the Omen Days? It’s interesting how differently we’ve approached it. At first, the purist in me took a solitary walk every day. In hindsight, those walks yielded far more Omens, but they aren’t always possible, or practical, and some days, if I’m honest, the pull of home and bed was simply too strong.
Some people wrote first thing in the morning, still wrapped in sleep
Others made notes in their phones as the day unfolded. There was often a card pull, or a word, or a phrase, sometimes a chapter heading that nodded quietly toward the year ahead. A leaning in. A door left ajar. A dreamlike whisper of what might come. And sometimes, by candlelight, the feelings gathered through the day, those murmurs we caught like fireflies in jars, later found their way onto the page.
Five deer.
A racoon on the log pile.
Pools of water.
A cry.
And then, quietly, without ceremony, the days became months, the months became a year. Candles burned low. Wax pooled and cooled. Outside, the world carried on, indifferent and magical all at once.
The Omen Days don’t promise certainty
They don’t guarantee clarity. What they offer instead is a presence, a practice of paying attention, of pausing long enough to notice what stirs, what repeats, what asks to be noticed and held lightly. They remind me that meaning doesn’t always arrive when summoned, and that sometimes the most powerful act is simply to sit, to watch, to breathe, and to trust that what needs to reveal itself will do so in its own time. They also serve as a stark reminder, every year without fail, just how hard I find it counting to 12.
The Omen Days are a Celtic tradition from 26 December – 6 January, a liminal ‘time out of time’ where each day is said to represent the month of the following year e.g. 26th – January, 27th – February and so on. It is a mindful practice, a time for noticing and reflection, a time to journal or simply observe.
*A special thank you to Katie, Rivka, Mariana, Sally, Jen and Swailes for letting me share their pictures with you.