Solstice blessings everyone!
Even though most of us who track these things celebrate the Solstice on the 21st, in my time zone the astrological Solstice is today, as our life-giving central star crosses over to the first degree of Capricorn. I don’t share this to be pedantic, even though I am a huge nerd about these things, but to highlight that there’s a real energetic threshold we’re crossing — something’s clicking over, it’s not just another day.
The sign of Capricorn (if you’re not familiar or even into astrology, that’s OK, just imagine I’m describing a fictional character and the arc they go through in their adventures) deals with themes of responsibility, wise leadership, maturity, integrity and the many dilemmas that arise when we’re in a position of authority. That energy is at its most raw at this opening of the season. Interesting contrast with the holiday spirit, no?
During our month-long Capricorn season, the psychic weather carries the signature of those themes and how we can best live up to them based on our specific life situation (and could this be related to how we’re driven to make New Year’s resolutions?).
For us in the Northern hemisphere, the balance of light slowly but surely begins to shift, as the days imperceptibly begin to get longer. The ancestors of these Northern lands made a ritual out of fire and light: lighting candles and hearth-fires for the season as a way to keep the warmth of the heart alive; as a way to safely traverse the unseen, the shadowy and the unknown. There is also so much to be said for the fertile and generative darkness, how it can be like a return to the dreaming time of the womb, to prepare to birth ourselves and our world anew.
Today, however, I’m focusing on a particular aspect of our connection to light at the darkest time of year. When the Sun is less available to us, we have to make our own light. And we do! All living beings generate photons (light particles) just by virtue of being alive, and we, warm-blooded animals, produce heat as part of our metabolism. We are, almost very literally, slow fires, burning throughout a whole lifetime.
At the energetic level, as a clairvoyant I spend a lot of time looking at people’s auras: the energetic field that surrounds and pervades our physical body. From a psychic perspective, auras look colorful and luminous– the healthier, the brighter they are. Let me tell you, it’s always a breathtaking experience to see people as veritable light shows.
Don’t we often describe our aliveness, our passionate spirit, and our creativity as our “inner fire”?
On today’s Solstice, I’m celebrating and honoring the fact that we are each made offire and light, a stunning display of artistry and energy, capable of reaching into the darkness and forging a path to the other side. Fire requires us to have a wise relationship with it. We tend it with the right amounts of fuel and create safe containers, and so it is our ally with its light, warmth and transformative power, neither fading nor consuming, neither dimming nor destroying.
I think this is a great place where can reflect on how we bring our capricornian wisdom and leadership to the table — in service of each of us shining our inner light in the darkness.
The chickadee painting is my rendering of this life-fire flaming through more-than-human bodies 🔥, painted with acryla-gouache on paper.
