Winter Solstice

Years’ end - Winter Solstice

The Winter solstice is actually the true year’s end and the day after is New Year’s Day. “The December solstice occurs when the sun reaches its most southerly declination of -23.5 degrees. In other words, it is when the North Pole is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun. Depending on the Gregorian calendar, the December solstice occurs annually on a day between December 20 and December 23.” (http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/december-solstice.html)  This year (2011) the Winter Solstice occurred on Thursday, December 22^nd at 12:30 am EST and in 2012 it will occur on December 21^st at 6:12 pm EST.  According to mystics who were masters of the cycles of time, such powerful celestial events have an immediate influence in the world.

The Winter solstice is the infusion, into the roots and seeds of our consciousness, the essence of the fruits of our life from the previous year.  The egg of the New Year’s purpose is impregnated with the essence of the harvest of evolution and awakening from the previous year. As the wisdom gained from the past is mingled with the potentiality of the future our awakening and the awakening of all is catalyzed. Even though it is the shortest day outwardly, it is the longest day inwardly and represents a great period of potentiality for the future and for the coming year.  So in the New Year, that wisdom gained from the past is mingled with the potentialities of the future, in this way nothing of what we have achieved through success or suffering is ever lost – it is mingled in the seeds of rebirth for the New Year.

Thus we appropriately use this time of the year as a time of reflection and goal setting – New Year’s Resolutions!  In fact, the entire winter season is a fine time for deep reflection, journaling, seeking inwardly the divine qualities that comprise our essential being, reconnoitering our purpose in life to see how it may have changed, and then setting our intentions and planning for things we wish to do in the new year to awakening and actualize more of what we truly are.

There is a blessing (a wazifa or Divine Quality in Arabic) which expresses this: Ya Zahir -Ya Warith. 
Explanation: This blessing will help manifest in our lives the new potentialities we continually accrue in the process of living and which become part of our ever evolving divine inheritance - this comprises (Zahir, the manifest) our own unique manifestation of divinity in life (Warith, our divine inheritance) and by this manifestation the divine purpose is fulfilled.

Christmas Trivia

Christmas Trivia

In the West we celebrate Christmas on DEC-25, as the day when Yeshua of Nazareth was born, which equates to JAN-07 of the Julian calendar used by some Orthodox Christian Churches. This is not actually the date of Jesus' birthday which most biblical scholars believe occurred in the autumn (I bet on or very close to the Autumnal Equinox). Christmas celebrated on Dec-25 can actually be attributed to attempts to increase its acceptance and cultural integration by aligning with two other popular festivals: (1) the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia¹; and (2) the Germanic/Nordic celebration of Yule². 

Saturnalia and Yule were/are not ‘religious’ holidays per sae but from my perspective they did have something in common with Christmas, and that was that they created powerful focalizations which catalyze light in the world... In the case of Saturnalia and Yule it was the light of the sun, the external cosmic light from which manifestation is born and reborn; In the case of Christmas it was the inner light, the Christ Light, the light of perfection, the source of all, the light of lights.

1.     Saturnalia is a festival of light leading to the winter solstice, with the abundant presence of candles symbolizing the quest for knowledge and truth.^[5] The renewal of light and the coming of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman Empire at the Dies Natalis of Sol Invictus, the "Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun," on December 25.^{[6]  Wikopedia Article}

2.     Yule (from the Norse iul, meaning wheel) marks the death and the rebirth of the Sun God; it also marks the vanquishing of the Holly King, the god of the Waning Year, by the Oak King, the God of the Waxing Year. The Goddess, who was Death-in-Life at Midsummer, now shows her Life-in-Death aspect; for although at this season she is the leprous white lady, Queen of the cold darkness, yet this is her moment for giving birth to the Child of Promise, the Son-Lover who will re-fertilize her and bring back light and warmth to her Kingdom. (Eight Sabbats for Witches_ by the Farrars) ^{Earthwitchery wedsite article.}