Hello everybody!
How are you on this longest night and shortest day of the year? And it is darker than a usual Solstice night too! Due to the lunar eclipse on this Solstice Day it is the longest and darkest night in 500 years! (you can read more about it here) That is something that deserves extra celebrations now, isn’t it?
The High Priestess says:
“This is the night of the solstice, the longest night of the year. Now darkness triumphs; and yet, gives way and changes into light. The breath of nature is suspended: all waits while within the Cauldron, the Dark King is transformed into the Infant Light. We watch for the coming of dawn, when the Great Mother again gives birth to the Divine Child Sun, who is bringer of hope and the promise of summer. This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; the center is also the circumference of all. We are awake in the night. We turn the Wheel to bring the light. We call the sun from the womb of night. Blessed Be!”
Purify, cast the circle, but do not light the candles. Invoke the Goddess and God. All sit down and begin an antiphonal chant.
All:
“To die and be reborn,
The Wheel is turning,
What must you lose to the night?”
Covener: “Fear.”
All:
“Fear is lost to the night.
Fear is lost to the night.
To die and be reborn,
The Wheel is turning
What must you lose to the night?”
by Starhawk, “The Spiral Dance: Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess”
This beautiful piece by Starhawk applies to our lives at so many levels. Globally we experience quite a bit darkness, or what appears to be darkness, don’t we? Yet in the deepest darkness there is always the seed of light, the promise of light. So we must nurture the flame until it burns brightly in all hearts! Personally we might go through darkness, through experiences that appear to be dark, dense, and yet in all of them there is a gift, a gift of the light, and the promise that it too shall pass and the sun will shine again. Solstice is the time when time stands still in a way…when the Sun stands still. It is a big for the whole solar cycle. May we reset our lives, our consciousness, our minds and start anew tonight.
What must YOU lose to the night, dear ones? What must you let go, release, lose forever so you find your Self, so you find the Light? This is the question I am taking into the vigil of the longest night in 500 years tonight. I am embracing both darkness and light, night and day in my heart and bowing to both as Divine expressions of the One. I am opening to receive the Knowing that all polarities are One, that all is Divine. I will lose fear tonight….
Blessed be!
Happy Yule/Winter Solstice to one and all,
Golden Drops of Heaven 