Midwinter Solstice

This rite begins on Midwinter’s Eve (20th Dec) and ends on Sun Return (25th Dec)

In the old ways of Following the Deer Trods, our Midwinter ritual is very special to us. It ends on the day Sun Return, of the Gift Bringer when we exchange gifts with our loved ones. And, for us, it’s our New Year’s Day, the one that aligns to the cosmic cycle.

– this Arthur Rackham picture –

Midwinter’s Eve (20 Dec): we prepare; we light the First Fire and sit-with it, asking all the good nourishing things that have come to us over the past year to come back into our mind’s eye; and we also ask to see again all the shit that has happened. As we sit with the fire we make a 2-column list, one side for Food, the other side for Shit; the list won’t be final not, set in stone as it will change throughout the whole Midwinter ritual.

It's a composting rite: the Food has nourished us, the Shit is the waste product, including all the ideas, habits, beliefs, and things we’ve grown out of, that are past their sell-by date.

We often have a glass of mead as we do out sit-withs. Mead is made from the honey of our local bees, the old name for it is Methyglyn; we sometimes steep fly agaric in the mead for several months before drinking.

Midwinter’s Day (21 Dec): we light the second fire. Today is the Shortest Day and Longest Night; it’s about celebrating death and gestation, the longest night is the night of the most womb-darkness. We have feast of what everyone likes to eat best. Sometimes it’s quiet and solitary, others we’re a party of friends with tales and singing, music and drumming, our drumming includes all sorts of percussion, syncopated rhythms and wordless vocal music.

The 3 Days of the Standstill (22-24 Dec): each day, we light the 3^rd, 4^th and 5th fires. On these three days, we take out our 2-column list again and sit-with it. We just sit, watch the words and allow them to show us all the possible meanings they hold. Doing this means that some things in the two lists may well swap columns; what we thought was shit might turn out to have been food now we’re still enough to see it more clearly; and vice versa, so what we had thought nourished us might turn out to have been shit. That’s what happens when you begin to work with the clear sight (what clairvoyance means).

The word solstice means the standstill of the sun, it derives from the Latin words sol ("sun") and sistere ("to stand still"). We use this word because, for these three days, the sun appears to rise at the same point on the horizon, so it appears to stand still. The Solstice Standstill is a time of gestation, time within the womb between conception and birth. It’s a composting time too, as we began on the 20^th, as we collected waste in the compost caddy list, then on the 21^st we put it in the compost bin and celebrated doing so. Now, from the 22^nd to the 24^th, we sit quietly with the alchemical breaking-down and building-up process that transforms that shit into gold 😊. That gold will feed and support us through the coming year.

Sun-Return, the day the sun moves on again (25^th Dec): we light the 6^th fire, celebrating the rebirth of the sun, and also the final rubado process of the alchemical composting. It’s the high-spot of the Midwinter celebration; as well as the best feasting, we drink more mead or our favourite single malt Scottish whisky. Both drinks are made very specially; for the whisky it has to be the single spring of that place combined with the barley also grown on that land; for the mead it comes from hives of a loving gwenynwr, our old word for a beekeeper, and one who talks with their bees, as my uncle did.

It’s also the day of the Gift Bringer – this Arthur Rackham picture – when we exchange gifts with our loved ones. And one of the gifts he brings to all of us is the gold from our composted shit ✨