Happy Winter Solstice. May you be surrounded by warmth, inside and out, on this longest night of the year. This is the moment of turning, and though the darkness is strong, little by little it will begin to relinquish its power to the light. This sentiment held a lot of power during times when Winter brought the question of whether one could survive to meet the Spring once more. Perhaps today it still holds power, as we stand soon the threshold of a new era, looking through the gateway through myth, prophecy, and intuition, while still mired in the violence and struggle of the one we are said to be leaving. Before we can experience change, perhaps we have to make it. Maybe it is good to remember the rituals that ask us to look for light and to create it, when darkness holds its reign. If we don’t shine more light within, how do we expect to find more of it without?
I have been thinking about a sentence I read recently in the book Brujas, The Magic and Power of Witches of Color, by Lorraine Monteagut. She is speaking to a community that contains a complex mix of lineages, ancestral wounds, lineage gifts, instinctual magic, and creative resilience. Though not everyone reading this will be part of the Latinx heritage, I think that most Americans carry a good portion of those attributes, and similarly, often lack a clear sense of belonging. She was talking about joy as resistance, making the case that when we create ecstasis, ritual, activism, and prayer in the ways that we can, holding the threads the way we are able to, we are raising the vibration and making repairs for everyone, even when we are wounded, confused, and in the creative process of reinventing. She said, “The path of the spiritual warrior is to remain open to both the the dark and light in ourselves,” and I believe that to be true. What startled me, though, was actually a reference to a quote from actress Evan Rachel Wood, from her 2021 testimony against Marilyn Manson, regarding the sexual and emotional abuse during their relationship. I don’t follow media closely, so I hadn’t heard the words before. She said, “Sometimes we are held down, not just by our attackers, but by what we know about our place in the world.” Though she was talking about the freeze response that happens in victimization, and primarily referring to women, I think this is an accurate description of what darkness within us means. Our own underworlds, our own self concepts, our own limiting beliefs, our fearful suspicions that there is nowhere else for us to go, or to grow into, that is our longest night. That is the place where we need the ritual act of bringing light to the shadows to burn through the part of ourselves that feels the sun is not meant for us.
In the past few months, these blogs have explored the legacies we carry silently within us from our history, so I don’t have to say now how deep this kind of thinking goes, or how ingrained it can be within us. But, what about the everyday reality that we meet reflected in language, media, stories, the mirrors of the people around us, the news of war, atrocities, illness, and fear that tell us safety is a privilege we can lose and power is always in the hands of someone else? These are the shadows that hide in plain sight, because we are so used to them. Shine a light. What stories are you accidentally telling yourself, even now?
If we are standing on the threshold of a change of era, then we had better change too. I think the best thing we can do is add the unique illumination of our own unfettered souls into the mix of dreaming that we create collectively. We should do what we can to make our dreaming more conscious, and impassioned. No one else will do it for us. Illumination sounds so nice, but it means shifting many small decisions, actions, and self concepts that we might rather not see. Are you willing? Are you tired enough to light that candle in the dark?
I am grateful for gentle rituals that remind us that we have always needed to return consciously to the light within, in order to invite the light without to renew. I have enjoyed sitting in vigil with the fire on the Winter Solstice, holding space for the Mother Earth in her labor to birth the Sun once more. I have enjoyed watching my sweet son, named for the first light of dawn, walk a spiral in the darkness to light his candle in the center, adding his light to make the path of beauty more clear. What does it all mean? Our metaphors travel before us, perhaps so that we can meet them with more courage, hope and love. That is faith. Let’s have faith that, as we stand on the threshold, we do not truly know our place in the world. We have absorbed many ideas about what it may be, and we have felt a pulse deep within that suggests what it could be. Let’s untangle the knots, examine the threads, and wash them clean. Let’s be ready and open to find out something different than what we have previously believed. Let’s call for the return of the light, and invite it to ignite within us. Maybe each of us can be more of who we are at this new birth of the Sun. Maybe we can create the shift that lights a path of beauty. I hope so.
What helps you see in the dark? What lights your way forward? How will you look within, with courage, to clear what is outdated and find what is far more true? You are invited into the quiet reflection of Winter and the rebirth of the Solstice. May your heart and your path be illuminated more and more each day.
In Love and Light,
the eleventh house