Solstice blessings

On a dark, black night,
Love lights a lamp.
You can’t hear the voice
of the One whose love
carries your heart away.
Forests, marshes,
the deep tanglewood
where one fears wild beasts
with every breath:
those whose love is perfect
will cross wastelands, seas,
the dark forests of the heart.

Bo, this is so beautiful

She changes everything She touches

We are fast approaching what could easily be the most important of all the times in the year. The Winter Solstice is both a point of changelessness and a time when all changes. Of course the Summer Solstice is this too but I would argue that the darkness of Winter adds its own special magic that cannot be matched in the intense light of Summer. Our ancestors built many fine stone structures carefully aligned to the Winter Solstice. So it must have been a time of great importance for them also. Some have argued that they did this because they were fearful that the declining sun would set for ever bringing eternal darkness on the world. Personally I find this hard to believe for they must have known that the wheel of the year turns with utter constancy. Earlier still our distant grandmothers must have seen the faithful cycles of the sun and the moon carrying on through the dramatic climate change and floods of the ending ice-age.

I would guess that the Winter Solstice is important because it combines a moment of poise and stillness - that only the dark can provide - with a real change of direction. Everything goes on but nothing is quite the same again. This echoes our experience of those Solstice moments of life; birth, menarch, leaving home and cleaving to another, death ... Womb moments.

Almost by accident, or more likely through the magic of Goddess, I recently found myself having an email correspondence with a wonderful woman about some of the Solstice moments of my early life. It struck me that all the Solstice moments of life have been the result of one or both of two things; listening to another and / or being touched by another. To listen or be truly touched we have to be brought to the point of stillness. Only then can we be truly open to the other. Then we must enter the creative dark where all seems confused and uncertain and anything can happen. Then the light rises. Then all seems the same but there is that deep awareness that things will never be the same again.

The more we listen, the more we open to touch, the more frequent such Solstice moments become. Utter life changing Solstice moments are rare magical events but every day has its little Solstice moments. In the darkness we process them in our dreams and a new day dawns like no other. This is how the Goddess loves, nurtures and tests us. This is what makes life such an amazing journey.

My beautiful, magical, intuitive daughter is pregnant for the very first time. One of the questions that always arises is, what gender will the new child be? Without any collusion at all I have discovered that my daughter, my partner and I have all had a deep intuitive feeling that the child is a girl. Today, my daughter has had a scan and was told they are 99.5% certain it is a girl. We are all so thrilled. My deepest wish is that this new woman will be blessed with magic and intuition. That she will be a born listener, open to touch, wonder awe and beauty. That she will have many Solstice moments and find a worthy place with the Grandmothers. She is expected to make her first cry to the Goddess at Beltane.

Amazingly this blog has made it into its third year. Whatever you call your Winter Festival and however you celebrate it, may it bring you many blessings.

Blessed Solstice

A Blessed Solstice to you all.

"Hidden old ones, far lost old ones, we are breathing life's seed, come to our fire, let us warm you.

from Ice by Carolyn Hillyer

A `Ghrian

As we approach the Winter Solstice I am reminded that in the Celtic tradition both the Sun and the Moon are perceived as feminine. Each year, close to the Winter Solstice our group dance the sun up to a very ancient song from the Isle of Barra in the Hebrides. It is a beautiful Scots Gaelic song to the sun, "a `Ghrian".

Failte ort féin, a sharian nan tráth, 

`S tu siubhal ard nan speur,

Do cheumaibh treun air sgéith nan ard, 

`S tu máthair áigh nan reul.

Thu laighe sios an cuan na dith, 

Gun diobhail is gun sgath: 

Thu'g éirigh suas air stuagh na sith,
Mar rioghainn og for blaith.

Hail to you, sun of the seasons 

As you travel the skies aloft, 

Your steps are strong on the wing of the heavens,
You are the glorious mother of the stars.

You lie down in the destructive ocean
Without impairment and without fear;
You rise up on the peaceful wave
Like a queenly maiden in bloom.

This afternoon there was another perfect sunset at Maeshowe.



And for the first time this year the Winter Solstice sunrise will be live on the Internet from Newgrange, see www.newgrange.com/webcast.htm

Maeshowe Webcam

Anyone who has visited Maeshowe on the Orkney Islands cannot fail to have been deeply moved by this ancient earth womb. The chamber is 35 metres in diameter and reaches a height of 7 metres; the entrance passage is some 14 metres long. It was constructed around 2750 bce in such a way that the midwinter sunset light shines down the entrance passage into the womb.

As you may have read from my post this time last year, three webcams broadcast the sunset daily around the Winter Solstice. This year all new higher resolution equipment has been installed. If you can't visit Maeshowe itself around the Winter Solstice it is best to point your web browser at www.maeshowe.co.uk between 2.30 and 3 p.m. GMT.

In such northerly parts of Brighid's Isles the winters tend to be cloudy and wet. I guess our ancestors must have been people of real faith as they waited for a clear day so the Winter light would pour down the passage and bring new life. Yet, today there was a beautiful sunset. My spirits are uplifted. It now seems right to prepare for the Winter Solstice celebrations. By a strange bit of serendipity I also received my first Winter Solstice card in the post this morning.

Blessed, sacred days.