Merry Solstice & The Ancient Mothers

This is a time landscape of sacred feminine magic and blessings

Merry Season of Magic,

This is such a seasonal time of blessing, we’re spoilt for choice what to celebrate.

My solution is to celebrate EVERYTHING - I am a Christmas Witch through and though. I’ve always loved this season, even the times when I’ve been alone, or in grief.

This is a season of Feminine Magic, and the architecture of the whole holiday season is a celebration of the cyclical nature of the Ancient Mothers and their birthing power.

Saturnalia is a nod to our Lady Saturn, Queen of the Dark Womb, governess of time, death, rebirth, dismantling one creation and structuring a new creation in darkness.

Then we have Solstice where our Ancestors communed with a magical, benevolent Reindeer Mother who birthed the new light of the sun, and the new cycle of life.

Later on, Mother Mary stepped in with the grand nativity of her holy son, Jesus.

Whichever way we look at it this is a season of reverance for the Ancient Mothers.

I have been complaining this season that there has not been ‘enough winter’….

I dream of those dreary November days in Yorkshire when I grew up, when it would be cold, rainy, windy sometimes snowy and we were tested in our wintership, before we were then granted the luxury of Christmas with all its tinsel and froth and festivities.

December came like a santa-chariot or a savior in the midst of the profound darkness, and cold starry night skies of the North, to bring us back to life, with its surreal magic.

I think that’s the secret to Christmas, it has to happen against a backdrop of the enormity of nature, and her severity, and the snow-laden tree bones of her death.

Then, when the light of new life emerges between the cracks of desolation, the uproar of celebration feels like a cellular necessity that the body can jovially leap right into.

When we don’t get enough winter, Christmas is too energetically calorific to digest.

Somehow, between mothering a young ‘un, the ‘internet’, and the aftermath of living through a once-in-a-thousand year supernatural natural disaster, and an unusually warm November, stuffed with Thanksgiving, work commitments, and the gaudy promises of the internet streaming in the background at all times, I am feeling severely unwintered, and barely capable of feeling festive. I want to sit in a dark cave, lit by candles, listening to silence and the occasional shamanic stomp of deer hooves.

But here I am, on my sofa, with the tree glittering, surrounded by newly wrapped presents, and checking of my last ‘to-do’s before I can safely slide into Solstice.

In past years we have pilgrimaged to a sacred place for Solstice, but with our five year old Dragon and a forecast of snow, I think we may just settle in for domestic time.

Solstice is the start of the crowning, the sacred rite of the cosmic birth of the light.

I guess there are a few parts of me at war right now - my nature-witch self, who wants to have nothing to do with the man-made world, and wants to sink into the delicious magic of this time of year, when the skies are so big and vast, and our human selves diminish into our animal nature, who wants to hibernate and merge with the dreaming time of Gaia, to receive a renewal of the soul and a fresh star mantle for a new year.

This version of me is faced off by a tinsel loving child in me, and her memories of the wonders of Christmas spent in Yorkshire, where this annual ritual was more of a sacred ancestral tradition and magical portal for me, than a tacky consumer knees up.

My mum and dad are dead now, and I have not visited their graves for seven years or stepped on the sacred lands of Mam Tor, where I spent every Christmas eve for most of my adult life, stepping into the ancient old church at 11pm every night, lit up only by candles, to sing carols, or waking up to Mam Tor coated with light snow on her peak.

So there is grief in here too for me, nostalgia, old eras revisiting me like the ghosts of Scrooge. I can still barely believe I will not pour the sherry with my mum at 6pm.

This version of me has a few non-negotiables: we must have mince pies, we must send Christmas cards, we must have sherry, we must watch the old Christmas Carol.

Presiding over these two parts of me, animal and child, are the adult me. Tired, weary, ready for at least a four week nap, that will not materialize, who knows I have to initiate the magical space to slow down, to digest the last year, before we surge into the next, to reflect on the great triumphs, and the many mistakes of this gone year.

Solstice means - ’sun stopping’ (I think) but I can’t be bothered to check, so don’t quote me on it. Anyway, it should stop - this is a time to stop for a moment, for sure.

Reflecting on all this, I think I am going to mix it all in the pot - my animal self who is ready to hibernate, my child self who wants to fully immerse in the glitz and glamour of the Christmas spirit, and my adult self who is full to the top, happy, and very tired.

I’m going to let them ALL have free roam and see what happens in the chaos….

Above all else, I know this is a time of wonder and blessing, a time when the Ancient Mothers come closer, to give us gifts, boons and blessings. And just hold our hands.

I am here for all of it.

Thank you baby Jesus.

Thank you Mother Mary.

Thank you Mother Reindeer.

Thank you sun and moon.

Thank you Santa Claus.

Thank you wrapped presents.

Thank you Mother Amanita.

Thank you Ancestors.

And of course THANK YOU for being here, reading, listening, weaving with me.

Here are my two essays focused on this time of year, to dive into again, like an old Christmas tradition. Please pour a sherry, have a mince pie, listen to Slade wishing you a merry Christmas, and feel the dark night skies like interconnectivle tissues, gathering all of this crazy whirligig of human life, into its timeless cosmic womb.

READ NOW: The Solstice-Nativity Continuum

READ NOW: Solstice Shamans, Amanita, Reindeer, Swans

Enjoy this season, and I wish peace, love, joy, mince pies, for all the many versions of yourself, all the old ghosts, and the new hopes, that are vying for attention right now.