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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in winter sunstead

 

 

On a whim the other day, I did an image search for “Yule ornaments.” What I found dismayed me.

Or rather, what I didn't find dismayed me.

Pentagrams, runes, Thor's hammers, witches on brooms: pagan schmuckerei for pretty much every taste and tradition.

Out of the first two screens, maybe 150 images in all, I found one Sun.

One.

For a moment, I felt a sense of vertigo, as if I were falling: a giddy kind of kinship with the “Keep Christ in Christmas” folks.

Solstice is relationship: Earth, Sun, Us.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Sun Run

In traditional societies as far removed as Zuñi Pueblo of the American Southwest and the Kalasha valleys of what is now northwestern Pakistan, the Winter Solstice is marked—among other activities—by footraces.

I've long wondered why this would be so, but this morning—watching the Sun leap up over the horizon—it suddenly occurred to me why.

It's sympathetic magic. The Sun is a runner.

Every day, the Sun walks across the Sky. Even on the day of his birth, he walks from one horizon to the other. Well, he's a god; he can.

(During the Bronze Age, when we became a Horse People, people began to say that the Sun drove across the sky daily in his chariot. In those days, nobles and warriors rode horses and drove chariots, unlike us common folks who walked; when we rode, it was in ox-carts. Surely, went the logic, the Sun was more like nobility and the warrior-kind: hence his chariot. These days, though, we understand that to walk is more sacred than to ride.)

Three-some weeks until the Evenday and his due Eastern rising. This morning he came up still considerably south of east.

“He'll have to run to catch up,” I thought.

Aha.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Once and Future Holiday

I don't know about where you live, but here in Minneapolis the Winter Solstice is hot stuff.

Every year I'm struck by the ever-increasing number of (non-pagan) Winter Solstice events going on: drum-jams, concerts, performances. This year I was dumbfounded to hear that even the local Episcopal cathedral is getting in on the act, holding a special “Light in Darkness” service for the Solstice.

Christmas' religious origins will always render it problematic in an increasingly secular culture. More and more each year it reads as a once-Christian culture's nostalgia for a now-unretrievable past.

The Solstice, on the other hand, is an event that engages us all, no matter how we see things, or where our ancestors came from. Conveniently, it also comes at a time when most people don't have family obligations.

Once you've embraced the Winter Solstice, of course, it only makes sense to do the same for its bright Summer twin. And then...well, if you're going to do the Solstices, you might as well do the Equinoxes too.

And so we'll go together, step by logical step. That's how we'll take back the West.

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  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    There is a site called Neopets.com. Every year they have a Winter Starlight Festival during the month of December. I've been goi

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Solstice People

Back in high school, a non-pagan friend and I were discussing the winter holidays.

“But we have Solstice, too,” he contended, meaning non-pagans.

Well, in the sense that the Solstice happens whether or not you pay attention to it, I suppose that they do.

But here's my question. The Sun, the Earth: are these (so to speak) just people that you walk past in the street every day without really noticing, or are they People that you actually know and engage with?

As I write, we're nearing the end of the Samhain Thirtnight. Every morning—I'm awake then, I actually see it—the Sun rises a little later, a little farther South. Every day, he goes a little farther away, and we see that much less of him.

I don't know about you, and I don't know about non-pagans, but personally I feel that that fact somehow involves me.

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  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Conversely, I used to get all bent out of shape when someone would wish me "Merry Christmas," as if it were some sort of attempt a
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I remember a time when people would actually say Happy Holidays and nobody got upset about it. Then for some reason I don't under

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Serious Big Magic

Shit.

Something has gone seriously wrong.

Haven't you noticed? The days just keep getting shorter and shorter.

Every day the Sun goes farther and farther South.

Every day its highest point in the sky gets lower and lower.

If this keeps going, soon it won't rise at all.

It just keeps getting colder and colder. We keep getting more and more snow.

If this keeps up, we're all going to freeze in the dark, if we don't run out of food first.

If we don't do something soon, we're all gonna die.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Signs & Portents
Tis the Season!

It’s that time of year once again. The merriest, cheeriest time, or so we’re led to believe. It’s the Winter Holidays: Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, Yule, New Year’s, Kwanzaa, and so many more. As always we’ve gathered our very best stories on the subject from PaganSquare as well as any other bits from around the web we thought you might enjoy.

We hope you enjoy the rest of the winter season! And have a Happy New Year’s!

—Aryós Héngwis

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Sun Stands Still

Solstice: literally, “the Sun stands [still].”

The Sun is a god of constant motion. Every day of the year, he rises from a different place on the horizon.

But at the solstices, summer and winter, his movement slows. For several days in sequence, he seems to rise from the same place.

Sun stands still.

And while the Sun stands, the world waits.

The 2nd century Protoevangelium of James tells a strange story.

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