Winter Solstice
Solstice has appeared in many stories
Around the winter firelight, solstice has appeared in many stories.
In this, the longest night, Baldur is born to Frigga to bring fruitfulness to the earth. Isis gives birth to Horus, the winged Sun. Also born this night is Mithras, the sun of Persia, Amaterasu the Japanese Goddess of the Sun, Saturn, Hepahestus, Quetzalcoatl, Lucina — and Lucia the sweet European Goddess of Light, with candles crowned, carrying us through the darkness. Christians celebrate the lowly birth of the Savior who illuminates their world.
And more — Sarasvati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and Queen of Heaven was at this time born. The Hopi Kachinas return in this season, the Deer Mothers dance for the renewal of the earth. Vesta’s fires are rekindled on the Roman hearth. In this season Jews celebrate a temple lamp that had oil enough for only one day but which burned for eight.
In this time between times, the dream-mares of night may ride us to the place between worlds, the place of bright visions that can become real.
Once again the indomitable darkness comes to swallow up the light, to sweep us under the cold of unending night.
And once again the darkness fails— who was to know this? — not with the trumpeting triumph of armies of fire, but with the huge empty blackness softened by a single flame, the smallest of candles, a few seconds more of day, a tiny infant birth of light.
And from that light the year begins anew.
Some information was freely adapted from http://www.goddessgift.com. Text and graphic by Gerald Grow. For Christl.
