|
Winter
Solstice Musings 2004
-
Margie McArthur, Dec 20, 2004
It all comes down to the Mother and her Child.
The story is told over and over around the world in various
ways, but it always comes back to the Mother and her child. Even
in Christian mythos the reference is to "round yon virgin,
mother and child."
Who is this Christ Child born of the virgin mother, Mary, at the
winter solstice—the time of the year’s longest night? It is
Child of Promise: Light born from the Darkness, Manifestation
born from the Unmanifest, Life born from the Void—the Void
which is not empty, but rather, full of potentialities.
This child is the light of renewed life, who is born into the
death and darkness of winter.
And who is the Mother who gives birth
to the
child? She is the Mare (pronounced: mah-ray, or mah-ree),
Mari, the dark and vast bitter sea of space - the Virgin Mother
Void from which all things are born. The correlate on earth is
the ancient sea (Latin: mare) from which all life came forth
- life-forms as
numerous as the stars in the sky or the grains of salt in the
that same primordial sea.
Tonight
is Mother Night, so called in the old Germanic Traditions where
the Goddess Holda was honored. This is the night we celebrate
HER - First Mother, the Great Mother of all manifest life. This
is the time of her confinement, the time when she labors to give
birth to the Light, the light which will enable life. From the
watery womb of darkness is born the fiery spark of light.
On
this night we reconnect with the eternal truth of
beginnings - of light emerging from darkness, of life being
birthed into being. And on this Solstice Eve night we honor
First Mother, as we remember how she gave birth to light, and
thus to the universe, and all that is.
Just
before dawn tomorrow (local time) comes the moment of solstice -
of the sun
standing still - the three day pause before movement seemingly
begins again on Christmas Day, when the Child of Light and
Promise has fully emerged and life starts anew. We celebrate the
fact that now is Horus is born from Isis, Adonis from Myrrha,
Mithras from Anahita the Immaculate One, and Jesus from the
Virgin Mary.
In
a way, each of us is this Child of Light, the Child of
Promise - Jesus, Adonis, Mithras, Horus. Each of us is light
born from our precious Dark Mother. The spark of life and light
of mind and intelligence are our heritage - within each of us to
use as we will - because we are all sparks from that first
Divine Flame and therefore, we, too, are Divinity as it
manifests on this plane of matter/mother, our Mother Earth.
When
the Christmas carol says, Veiled in flesh the godhead see,
hail the incarnate deity, it is really speaking not just
of the Christ child but of us all - the divine concealed in a robe of
substance; spirit contracted down from its expanded and rarified
state into a more dense, material one. Every winter solstice brings us
a fresh realization of this truth, and a fresh opportunity to
reconnect with our own divine source and self.
It came upon a midnight clear...... This time of the
year relates to midnight because it is truly the darkest hour
of the year. Darkness precedes and gives birth to the light.
How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given…...
The wondrous gift of life birthed from First Mother begins in
the silent darkness.
We hear the Christmas Angels, the great glad tidings
tell…... But as light emerges so does sound. And the
voice of the Divine speaks in the form of angels - the Beings
traditionally said to be messengers of the Divine - as they proclaim this sacred, auspicious beginning - the holy birth.
The Mother Mary is the ma-re, the matrix, the bitter sea (known
in the Qabala as Binah) from which all creation (matter)
arises. Mary births the light.... Maria (the dark and bitter
sea), births the Christos (the anointed one), who is Light
Incarnate - spirit in substance.
I realize that this might sound like it’s all past tense. As if it may have happened years ago and is now
complete. But please realize that it is an ongoing process,
because creation is an ongoing process that expresses
itself continuously through the cycles of conception, gestation, birth,
growth, decay, death, and rebirth. And the Cycle of the Seasons
reminds us of this, expressing this eternal truth, over and over
as the earth makes its yearly journey around the sun.
The solstice-born Child of Light is the
reborn sun that will increase and grow throughout the waxing
part of the year. But this Child, whose birth is commemorated in
story and song, also represents
the Light - born of the Galactic Mother - as shone through the
lens of the current Astrological Age, which is the sign of the
zodiac in which the sun rises on the morning of the spring
equinox.
Thus, for the last 2000 years, the Holy Solstice Child has been
the Piscean "Fisher of Men."
We have heard over and over that we are living in the time of
the changing of the Age from the sign of Pisces to that of
Aquarius. These Ages are like months of the Great Year - the
26,000 year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes, so we are
going from the 'month' of Pisces into the 'month' of Aquarius.
Each of these months has different energies and themes, and
these are then played out and made manifest in the ongoing
creation and evolution of our planetary lifestream.
The time of transition between Ages is traditionally one of
confusion and chaos, as old beliefs, ways of being, patterns,
and structures break down from their own dead weight to make way
for the "new" that is coming through. And yet, hints
and whispers of the new are often heard and felt too, although
these are still in embryonic
form. These transition times can be very schizophrenic, as
we struggle through them, wondering which 'reality' is the real
one!
And
this is where we are right now, at this point in time. We are at
a point very similar to that of Midwinter Solstice: already part way
through the cycle of breakdown and dissolution. We are at a
point where
the darkness is deepest, the dissolution most severe, and the
wintery, cold, watery Tide of Cleansing is sweeping things away,
often in a quite terrifying way.
And yet, we are also at the
point where the new energies, and hints of the new patterns can
be sensed, can be felt...just enough to give us the hope to hang
on.
We are truly living through hard times; time when one age is
dissolving and the next one is not yet fully formed. But we must
live in faith that it will be formed, that we will survive, and
we must contribute our good will and efforts to its formation and
eventual healthy birth.
But
getting through that dark time! We are helped in this task
by the fact that each
year as the winter solstice comes around it brings us
increasing infusions of the energies of the age to come, if we can but feel their tantalizing hints in the surrounding
darkness.
This
coming Change of the Ages is also marked in the Mayan calendar, whose end date of
December 21, 2012 is rapidly approaching. The Mayan lore says the
world ends on that day, meaning that one world (or Age) ends and
the next begins. But really, this 'end of the world' day is more than just one
24 hour day. This
end date is affixed to a celestial event that takes several
years to complete, so this energy of 'transition' (so similar to
that of the human birth process, as every mother knows) will be with us for several
years to come.
The celestial event to which I refer is the fact that the winter solstice sunrise
of
Dec 21, 2012, will
be exactly aligned with the dark rift of the Milky Way. This
rift
points directly into the galactic center, and is linked in
many cosmologies with the Great Mother Goddess who births the
cosmos. Poetically speaking, the visual imagery suggests the
dark rift to be the birth canal of the Great Mother, from which
energies from the galactic center - her womb - periodically emerge, bearing the
embryonic energies and new
patterns of the era which is to come.
This
alignment also conjuncts the Mayan stellar configuration of the Sacred
Tree, which is the spot where the ecliptic crosses the Milky
Way, So one might say that the Sacred Tree of Life will be
reborn or regenerated by the new
energies birthed by the Great Mother. What responsibility, yet
what joy, to be living during these intense times!
And with this we are brought back again to the darkness that is Mother
Night, as we await with joy, this Winter Solstice Eve, the birth
of the Divine Child of Light - within our planetary cycle, and
within our own hearts, minds, and souls.
So, indeed, the wondrous gift is given - the Divine
Light reborn of the Dark Mother.
Yes, it all does all come down to the Mother and her Child....
Blessings
of the dark winter sky and the bright winter stars to you,
Blessings of winter's peace and silence to you,
Blessings of winter's cleansing rains and crystalline snows to
you,
And peace - deep peace - to you and yours.
Blessings,
Margie
|
