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Donna Henes

The Winter Solstice: Blessings of the Returning Light

December 21, 2017 By Donna Henes Filed Under: Mindfulness Tagged With: Winter Solstice

The days and hours leading up to the Winter Solstice are the darkest of the year. True, the days following the solstice are just as dark, but the energy is different. After the solstice, the dark gets a tiny bit lighter each day as the world as we know it on the Northern Hemisphere turns toward spring. But now, pre-solstice, we are spinning further and further into the dark. And it’s damn dark out there.

[pullquote]The Winter Solstice is an anniversary celebration of creation. Since the earliest of human times, it has been both natural and necessary for folks to join together in the warmth and glow of community in order to welcome the return of light to a world that is surrounded by dark. And through the imitative gesture of lighting fires, like so many solar birthday candles, we do our annual part to rekindle the spirit of hope in our hearts.[/pullquote]The days have shriveled to a skeleton flicker of light. The frozen nights are endless. These are dim, drab times. No flowers, no foliage. No insects, few birds. No animals out and about. The Earth Herself is congealed with cold. Dark death and Arctic gloom surrounds us. How do we know that the sun, too, won’t die, its flame of life extinguished forever? How do we know that it won’t just go off and leave us, abandon us to the night?

Wrapped in the dark womb of the weather, it is not difficult to imagine the terrifying prospect of the permanent demise of the sun and the consequent loss of light, the loss of heat. The loss of life. Without the comfort of the familiar cyclical pattern, the approach of each winter with its attendant chiaroscuro would be agonizing. The tension intensified by the chill.

With the death of the sun, the world would be cast back to the state that it occupied before creation, the classical concept of chaos. The black void. The Great Uterine Darkness. It is from this elemental ether that the old creatrix goddesses are said to have brought forth all that is. This sacred spark of creative potential that is contained within the primordial womb is one of humanity’s oldest concepts. The visual symbol, which represents it, a dot enclosed within the circle, is also extremely ancient. Still in common use today, it is the astronomical notation for the sun.

Among the most archaic images of the sun is the brilliant radiance that clothes the Great Goddess. The great Mother of the pre-Islamic peoples of Southern Arabia was the sun, Atthar, or Al-Ilat (later to become Allah). In Mesopotamia, She was called Arinna, Queen of Heaven. The Vikings named Her Sol, the old Germanic tribes, Sunna, the Celts, Sul or Sulis. The Goddess Sun was known among the societies of Siberia and North America.

She is Sun Sister to the Inuit, Sun Woman to the Australian Arunta, Akewa to the Toba of Argentina The sun has retained its archaic feminine gender in Northern Europe and Arab nations as well as in Japan. To this day, members of the Japanese royal family trace their shining descent to Amaterasu Omikami, the Heaven Illuminating Goddess.

According to legend, Amaterasu withdrew into a cave to hide from the irritating antics of Her bothersome brother, Susu-wo-no, the Storm God. Her action plunged the world into darkness and the people panicked. They begged, beseeched, implored the Sun Goddess to come back, but to no avail. At last, on the Winter Solstice, Alarming Woman, a sacred clown, succeeded in charming, teasing and finally yanking Her out, as if from an earthy birth canal, and reinstating on Her rightful celestial throne.

Other cultures see the Goddess not as the sun Herself, but as the mother of the sun. The bringer forth, the protector and controller, the guiding light of the sun and its cycles. According to Maori myth, the sun dies each night and returns to the cave/womb of the deep to bathe in the maternal uterine waters of life from which he is re-born each morning. The Hindu Fire God, Agni, is described as “He who swells in the mother.”

It is on the Winter Solstice, the day when the light begins to lengthen and re-gain power that the archetypal Great Mother gave birth to the sun who is Her son. The great Egyptian Mother Goddess, Isis, gave birth to Her son Horus, the Sun God, on the Winter Solstice. On the same day, Leta gave birth to the bright, shining Apollo and Demeter, and the Great Mother Earth Goddess, bore Dionysus. The shortest day was also the birthday of the Invincible Sun in Rome, Dies Natalis Invictis Solis, as well as that of Mithra, the Persian god of light and guardian against evil.

Christ, too, is a luminous son, the latest descendant of the ancient matriarchal mystery of the nativity of the sun/son. Since the gospel does not mention the exact date of His birth, it was not celebrated by the early church. It seems clear that when the church, in the fourth century AD, adopted December 25 as His birthday, it was in order to transfer the heathen devotions honoring the birth of the sun to Him who was called “the sun of righteousness.”

The return of the retreating sun, which retrieves us from the dark of night, the pitch of winter, is a microcosmic recreation of the origination of the universe, the first birth of the sun. The Winter Solstice is an anniversary celebration of creation. Since the earliest of human times, it has been both natural and necessary for folks to join together in the warmth and glow of community in order to welcome the return of light to a world that is surrounded by dark. And through the imitative gesture of lighting fires, like so many solar birthday candles, we do our annual part to rekindle the spirit of hope in our hearts.

 

Oh Sun, source of light, love and

power in the universe

Whose radiance illuminates the whole Earth,

illuminate also our hearts

That they, too may do your work

 

— Sanskrit prayer for peace

 

 

 43rd Annual Winter Soulstice Celebration

with Mama Donna, Urban Shaman

 Part One

Wednesday, December 20th

 Event Begins 11:00 PM

 The Moment of Truth  11:28 PM

 Standing in the Shadows on the Longest Darkest Night of the Year. 

Calling out the dark. Looking at it face to face.  

Naming it. Claiming it. Feeling it. Understanding it.

Part Two

Thursday, December 21st

 Event Begins 11:00 AM

Solstice Moment 11:28 AM    

Lighting the Fire at the Solstice Hour Bringing back the light.

 Re-igniting the fire in our hearts.  

Owning it. Pledging it. Manifesting it. Being it.

Grand Army Plaza  at Bailey Fountain  

Park Slope, Exotic Brooklyn, NY  

Free!   

For info: 718-857-1343 cityshaman@aol.com

Filed Under: Mindfulness Tagged With: Winter Solstice

The Autumn Equinox: The Dark Season

September 21, 2017 By Donna Henes Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: autumn, Fall Equinox

Fall is when we reap what we have sown

Autumn is inexorably associated with ripe maturity, harvest and death, as well as the implicit understanding of an eventual rebirth, the offer of resurrection.

The autumn ushers in the dark season. The season of diminished light. From now until the Vernal Equinox, six months hence, the nights are longer than the days. Shade and chill prevail. The year, the season, the sun, are slowing down, growing cold, getting old. The insidious forces of death sweep in and overshadow the vibrant life source.

[pullquote]Just as the dying sun is sure to return, so, too, will the seeds buried deep in the dark, begin to sprout come springtime. This potent promise of prospective plenitude sustains us through the empty stomach months.[/pullquote]The air and land, once alive with teeming species, are becoming empty in fall, and mute. Birds leave. Insects nest. Burrowing animals hunker. The trees discard their once green mantles, shrugging off leaves aglow with the fiery patina of age and sun. Stripped, they emerge skinny and naked, shivering in the wind. The flowering and fruitful plants shrivel and wither and prepare to die with the coming cold. Final fruits, nuts, ripe grains and grasses are gathered in before the fatal first frost.

Fall is like being retirement age. Having weathered the cycles, the rainbows and the storms, the trials and the troubles, the struggles; the teachings of a full life, it is now the season to reap what you have sown. If you planted your seeds in the spring and tended them well — watered and weeded, pruned and staked, mulched and sprayed, propitiated and prayed; and if the weather was willing — enough, but not too much, sun, wind and rain; and if you were lucky — favored by the powers that be in the universe; come autumn it is prime time to harvest your crop.

You have lived responsibly, raised your family. You have followed your calling, perfected your craft, participated in community. You have done your job, played your part. You have paid your dues — not to mention your payments, your taxes. You have worked your ass off. You are ready for a rest. You earned it. You yearn for the freedom and leisure that follows hard work well done. This is the future you have been saving for. In fall, you cash in and collect the fruits of your love and long labor.

Autumn age provides the perspective of the telescope of time. Here is the potential to ripen to a healthy, golden perfection before the stalk of life is scythed. To propagate the plentiful seeds of genes, of experience, of heritage, of the accumulated wisdom of the generations grown patiently over time. These are the seeds of survival. This is true for plants, too. In the fall of their lives when they are past their prime, as their last productive act and in a grand finale flurry of display, they go to seed. They issue forth from themselves the fertile means to assure a continuous succession.

The parent plant scatters these precious seeds to the four directions. They send them out on the winds and over the waters. They arrange for them to be delivered in the fur of animal couriers and dispersed from the air by birds and bats. They are given over to the grain harvesters of many species. It is imperative that these wild and domestic seeds find their way back into the earth womb to germinate and grow again. This accomplished, their lives complete, their genetic deed done, they die. Their decomposing leaves and stalks serve to cover the embryonic seed asleep in the cold ground. Even in death, they serve to nourish new life.

Autumn, then, is inexorably associated with ripe maturity, harvest and death, as well as the implicit understanding of an eventual rebirth, the offer of resurrection. Just as the dying sun is sure to return, so, too, will the seeds buried deep in the dark, begin to sprout come springtime. This potent promise of prospective plenitude sustains us through the empty stomach months.

 

 

Donna Henes is an urban shaman in exotic Brooklyn, contemporary ceremonialist, award winning author and popular speaker. Visit her website at

 http://www.donnahenes.net. Email her at cityshaman@aol.com.

© copyright 2006 by Donna Henes

— — —

ReligionAndSpirituality.com is a big tent for all expressions of faith and spirituality, neither excluding nor favoring any.

All opinions expressed belong to the writer alone, and are  not necessarily shared by ReligionAndSpirituality.com.

Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: autumn, Fall Equinox

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