This was a Wheel of the Year celebration that I have been truly looking forward to as it was created and led by Emily from Wise Woman Witchery and Erin LaFaivre from Full Circle Herbals. It was hosted on 19th December as well so we could have watched the replay on the Solstice to
We started with clearing our energy to truly make the most of this ritual. Clearing energy can be done in a variety of ways - using herbs, incense, bells or our breath (budget witchery for sure). We ran our hands over our bodies without physically touching to clear our energetic field of any stagnant energy.
Next Erin led a grounding visualisation which was really powerful and brought the plants of this season, the evergreens, into focus. How they, despite it being the winter season in the northern hemisphere, continue to find sustenance in the ground through their roots and don't follow the other flora that lose their leaves and don't bloom at this time. I felt like this was very symbolic that there is still life within the earth even though this is the time of year when everything turns its attention inwards and the ground doesn't appear to hold much life within it - the earth is always full of life if we could only pay attention to this even in times of rest.
As always with any ritual, a protective magickal circle was cast where we all envisioned our energies reaching out and surrounding all of those who participated live, all those who would watch the replay and all those who have come before us. I love participating in these circles because I truly feel connected to all those who do the ritual.
Next, the directions were called in - East and Air for inspiration, South and Fire for passion and movement, West and Water for flow, North and Earth for nourishment, and Centre and Spirit for connection. Emily and Erin shared this and it was truly wonderful to envision and take part in.
In the couple of weeks leading up to the ritual, Emily and Erin asked for people to submit a pair of sentences that would be used to create a poem about the light and darkness. The sentences I gave were: "The dark is all-consuming and cold. The light is all-encompassing and warm." I tend to associate darkness with a lack of heat which has the kind of energy that just takes over, consuming everything in its path, while lightness is the opposite, taking everything in without diminishing its individual qualities.
We did a meditation exercise next that involved scrying with a candle. I used a spiced orange soy candle as oranges can be sliced and dried then used for decorations. The spiced element is warming and I always think of chai as a winter drink because of the warming properties of the spices.
Because I have quite an active "monkey" brain, I tend to write notes of what comes to mind as they come into my consciousness or there is a high chance that I forget about the ideas by the time we take a break to journal.
From this meditation exercise, I had a few ideas of what it is that I have learned about the darkness and the light. The biggest thing that came to me was the concept that we all have shadows that need to be brought into the light (hello, Shadow Work). But there is always hope to be found and this made me think of the Starlight card from the Forest of Enchantment tarot deck which is all about hope and the stars singing a song of hope down to the patiently waiting elves sitting in the branches of trees.
Another idea that came to me were that it is only through integrating the shadows that we can truly find the light within ourselves. In this time of darkness, there are more shadows around us that can teach us so many pieces of wisdom if we could only be open to those teachings.
The final thought that came to me was to find my rhythm to dance to in the darkness before bringing it into the light. If we can truly be ourselves in the darkness, then we should be able to bring it out into the light in complete comfort of being authentic to our true selves.
This final idea is what I used to create a sigil using a method that I don't tend to use very often as I like to make Bindrunes (runic sigils). With this method, you remove all vowels and repeating consonants so that you have a list of individual letters. Then you combine these remaining letters into a symbol that feels right for you. (See picture on the left for each part of this process that I followed to come up with my sigil)
Once I was happy with the sigil I created, I went on to draw it on the back of the label of my candle. Now I can light the candle and always have the sigil activated.
This was the first time where I felt that the sigil was perfect and it tied into the Shadow Work topic of the Priestess Path course.
I did have another idea that I could have chosen to create a sigil from - integrating the shadows to truly find the light. I may create another sigil in the future to utilise this idea.
That's the beauty of sigils - you can keep an idea until you truly feel it is needed before you create a sigil from it.
I hope you enjoy reading about my experience of Yule 2021 and that 2022 holds many blessings, much abundance and plenty of joy!!!
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