Merry Winter Solstice!🎄
Merry Winter Solstice!🎄
Greenery! Ritual! Candlelight! Honoring the dark! Welcoming the light!
Inside: Contemplating the spirit of Solstice Season; ritual suggestions; directions for writing a Solstice letter to yourself; and an invitation to tonight’s Solstice gathering.
What is Winter Solstice?
Many good things happen in the dark. Seeds gestate, bodies rest, bodies heal, we share our beds. At night, we can see the stars and into the mysteries of the cosmos.
Winter Solstice is a time of prophetic dreaming.
Solstice is the holiday where we celebrate our return to the collective consciousness, a process sometimes called passing away, but which in fact describes the process of passing through the veils, birthing, dying, we are escorted by the Anima Mundi (Hecate) as we shifts between forms.
Today we celebrate what we’ve lost and let go of: our loved ones who gave their bodies to the earth, to feed the bodies of others; the opportunities we missed; the one that got away.
Light a candle for all those whatever or whomever has slipped back into the infinite this year, may the light help them find their way.
Our body is made of other bodies, and one day other bodies will be made of us. The body of the earth is made of the bodies of the stars who exploded and died and drifted through space until they came out in the form of dogs and poppies and desert sand.
Solstice is the holiday to honor these transitions. We honor the ones who have slipped away, and we honor new bodies as they’ve appeared in our world.
Today we honor the new possibilities, the loves we’ve yet to meet, the joy we’re calling in, the babes taking their first breath, the new novels, the songs and the homes that have found their way to us.
Today the light returns.
Say the names of the new beings born to the world this year, ring a bell and welcome them to their new home.
You can light candles and ring bells for anything that has died or been born this year — relationships lost, projects born, jobs lost, periods of rest and silence born. Solstice is the time to honor all of it. To enter the New Year honoring the sacred, the Goddess of the Threshold, the Holy Spirits of Change.
Read on to find some simple techniques you can use to celebrate this holiday!
With love and Solstice blessings,
Amanda
Winter Solstice Ritual Suggestions
Join me and many wonderful guests for a Solstice Ritual tonight with Myth Salon. 5pm. Free! But you need to register here
Listen to the Between the Worlds Solstice episode, where we share the meaning of the season with you
Lovely Mystery Culter Rebecca Bush suggested reading the poem The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper out loud. It’s beautiful and great to read around a bonfire!
Open yourself to receiving prophetic messages coming through your dreams
Gaze out into the night sky, let yourself contemplate infinity
Give to offerings to the Old Ones, Saturn and Hekate the Crone: greenery, silver coins, an egg, a song, a bow of holly
Get a wreath and put it on your door, or burn your old one from last year, or the herbs you gathered at Summer Solstice, call in the new light
Read about the pagan power of reindeer
Light candles for those who have passed on this year, ring bells for those who’ve come into the light this year.
Listen to this Reclaiming chant for Hecate and Cerridwen the Crones (and maybe try chanting it yourself).
Also, listen to the Big Fat Solstice playlist made by Danica Boyce. ‘Tis a personal Yuletime fave I listen to every year - it really gets me in the spirit of the season.
Read your Solstice letter from last year, and write your new one (see below). Put a reminder in your phone for next Winter Solstice on Thursday, December 21, to pull out and read the letter you wrote today. You should also probably put a note in there about where you put the letter so you don’t lose it
Write A Solstice Letter To Your Future Self
Paid subscribers, get the guide for your Solstice letter to you future self below. This has been such a meaningful practice for me, and I’m so excited to share it with you!