Yule-Winter Solstice Exploration & Experience
Entering the Season
A Time of Rest
This season, from winter solstice, December 21, to Twelfth Night, January 6th, has always been experienced as a time outside of regular time.
It is a rest, a respite from the turning of the wheel and the relentless march of time. It also brings a pause from the weight and responsibilities of our lives.
As you enter this unusual and extraordinary season, I offer you...
a time of pause, slowing, and hibernation
a season of connection, visitation, and celebration
a time to dream, vision, remember, unpack, and put away
Create a seasonal altar for this sacred time. It can be Christmas-y or not. It may focus on natural elements like bare branches, pinecones, or winter animals. You can focus on the earth element and fill your altar with stones and crystals. If rest and comfort are important, place family photos, a favorite cocoa mug or mittens, and a childhood momento on your altar. If stillness and peace are desired, create a strikingly minimal space with a cloth and a single element.
Make space and time to set aside an early morning, a late afternoon, or evening (darkness is easy to find this time of year!) to light candles, put on music, and create some easy, flowing, intuitive art with these words, let them spark your imagination, tell a story, touch a memory......
flame
star
appearance
underground
safe
blissful
at ease
clear
unburdened
Winter Solstice, Birthing the First Spark
Letting go is the prerequisite for birthing the First Spark, and letting go and birthing always happen in the dark.
At the Winter Solstice, the sun is reborn. The ancient fears of starvation, destruction, and death are comforted and calmed for another year. The returning light, that tiny spark of increased daylight practically imperceptible at first, brings great rejoicing.
Here, the Christmas story fits nicely into the seasonal rhythms of the Wheel of the Year. Two strains in that melody weave harmoniously with Winter Solstice themes. There is Mary, the Archetypal virgin/maiden, complete in herself, who lets go of fear and cultural norms and trusts what is to come. She makes this decision alone, in the dark of not knowing.
Then there is the Spark, the Divine Child, the light in the darkness birthed from that decision to let go of fear and instead live from a place of trust. Ultimately, letting go and trusting shows us the way to transformation.
Since the Autumn Equinox, we've been in the Earth’s season of She Dies, reflecting on what must be let go, weeded out, and left behind in the old year.
Take a few moments this week to reflect on what you let go during the autumn and early winter. What have you shed and returned to the ground of your being to decay that will nurture your future growth, as the fallen leaves will encourage the development of trees in spring and summer?
Have you left behind...
excuses
self-doubt
toxic habits
overthinking
procrastination
negative self-talk
denying your truth
living in your comfort zone
caring what other people think
or something else
The Divine Child Archetype
This PDF article explores the Archetype of the Divine Child from a Jungian perspective.
After reading the article, you'll have greater context and understanding; use the questions below to journal or muse about the presence of this archetype in your life.
Questions to Work
How does the Divine Child within you appear as a part of self, archetype, or divine being?
What gifts does your Divine Child give to you?
How does acknowledging and honoring this part of yourself expand your spiritual life?
What message does your Divine Child have for you right now?
The Solstices have long been known as important gateways. They appear and open twice a year, in summer and winter, allowing the souls of mortals and gods to descend to earth and return to the heavens.
Although we have come a long way in time since the cave dwellers and neolithic farmers looked to the heavens for answers to their need for continuance, for the return of the sun, it is really no distance at all to a time and place where the gates of the Solstices opened upon all the immensity of the soul's great journey. ~ John Matthews
You are invited into the "soul's great journey." As you work on mapping and navigating your inner landscape, you have an opportunity to take a "journey within the journey" as the Winter Solstice approaches.
Gates are often considered places of initiation or entryways into holy places, sacred grounds, or spiritually significant transitions. Deep archetypal feelings may surface when we are "at the gate." Instinctively we recognize that we are required to let go of what is familiar, and prepare to enter and open ourselves to the unknown. Our passage through the gate is irreversible. We cannot go back. After we open the gate, we stand upon the threshold. There we must do the work of transformation. To thresh literally means to pound cereal grain to remove the husks and separate out the seeds. Figuratively, the threshing floor is where we tread, turn, twist, or flail as we do inner work. In our later years, it is the place of the soul's own threshing, where what is no longer necessary or aligned with our essential nature is released and discarded. We repeatedly come to the threshing floor to deliver ourselves to our final and holy excursion, in which we approach the opening to a hidden existence and discover a second grace.~Angeles Arrien
Entering the Solstice Season
How are you entering this season of darkness?
Where are you on your inner path?
Who meets you as the gatekeeper of the Solstice Gate?
Take your time and linger at the threshold. Dance, play, wander and dream. Feel yourself held in the in-between time. Extend your reach and take time for a long, luxurious exhale. Revel in the opportunity to pause and sink into that space between what has been released and what has not yet begun. The Winter Solstice Gate offers a time of rest and reverie as the old year slips away and the new year has not yet dawned. Times like these are few and far between and powerful and magical. The soul longs for rest, and the Great Wheel of the Year answers that longing with space to breathe, a gap between old and new that can be experienced as an eternal world. Embrace this opportunity to step out of the ordinary, the linear, the ticking of the clock, and the turn of the calendar page. Back away from planners, schedules, and appointment books. Reclaim that childhood ability to get lost in your thoughts and play for hours, unaware of time passing.
Use this Journey to the Winter Solstice Gate Guided Meditation to help you find your way into the season.
Allow all of the mystery and darkness of this season to have a place within you. When you are ready, welcome the first spark of returning light to illuminate your inner being. Follow its call to grow ever brighter as the season of Yule progresses and moves you toward spring.
When the tree is down, and the tinsel is gone, remember that Yule continues. Its symbols and energy work their way into your winter days, continuing to reveal the secret blessings of the winter season.
Take things slowly this time of year, and expect surprises and gifts of joy and influence to come your way.
Blessings of the season!
Jan