Insights & Journal Prompts to integrate the Winter Solstice
Every year at the Winter Solstice, the northern hemisphere of the Earth tilts farthest away from the Sun, towards the glistening darkness at the outer edge of our solar system.
For millennia, our ancestors engaged in ritual practices at this time of year to re-member the story of creation is a story of both darkness & light, death & rebirth. That creation isn’t something that occurred in the past, but that is ongoing, perpetually, & we are a part of it, feeding it & shaping it.
Photo by Jacob Amson on Unsplash
Ancient people went to great lengths to build ritual monuments like Stonehenge, pictured here. Stonehenge was built to perfectly align with the rising Sun at the Winter & Summer Solstices & took at least 1500 years to construct.
Built from giant stones from across the region that would have been extremely difficult to transport, the monument carries a message of unification across diverse cultures under the same source of energy (the Sun) & form (the Earth) animating all life.
These themes are especially present on this Solstice as Jupiter & Saturn approach an exact square on Christmas Eve. Jupiter & Saturn are the largest planets in the solar system & known as the sages, their cycles marking points of expansion (Jupiter) in our reality (Saturn). These are the planets that came together with Pluto in Capricorn right before the pandemic, exacting for the last time in 2020 on the Winter Solstice, marking the end of a 200-year period of aligning in Earth signs & initiating a 200-year cycle of air sign alignments.
One of the most powerful things you can do to work with this friction & resist the oppressive systems that aim to keep us all separate & in darkness is claim the wholeness of your life.
Not just of your past into your future, but the shoulders of the ancestors you stand upon. Not just your human ancestors, but the plant & animal ancestors that sustain you, grow with you, who provide shade, warmth, & shelter, & who you also sustain. Honoring the symbiotic ecosystem that exists among all manifestations of consciousness - all beings of starlight.
In the shortest day & longest night, reflect on where your consciousness, that inexplicable light, has expanded to embody more aliveness:
How have challenges supported you to soften by illuminating what really matters? Cultivating a sovereign use of strength.
What have you learned this year about which struggles are aligned with the purpose your soul came here to fulfill?
Have any struggles eventually created ease as they erode burdens that you no longer need to carry? Or by inspiring you to connect to the resources around you, revealing a co-creative resilience that is as ancient as the carbon in your bones?
Reality is shifting.
How it shifts depends on us.
How we hold it. Mold it. Receive it.
This time of year is about turning inward. It’s about getting quiet & still so we use the dark days to nurture our receptivity.
We cannot change that which we are not.
What you create in 2025 will emerge from what you receive from 2024. What you allow to come alive in you, claiming how it nurtures you, & choose nurture it with the creativity of your life force.
Light a candle. Gaze into the flame. Revel in the majesty of fire that is woven in the fabric that is you.
At the heart of all ritual is this sacred light.
Offer something to the fire: Your breath, your tears, a poem, a song.
Know that fire as the source from which you came: the star from which we’re born: the Sun sustaining life on Earth.
Give thanks for its time away & give thanks to its return.
To dive deeper into the extraordinary astrology of our times & the Year of the Snake that lies ahead, visit www.starsisterastrology.com/astrology-of-2025 to learn about the workshop I’m offering with my brilliant teacher Marcia Wade of Star Sister Astrology.
Solstice Blessings Beloved.
May you know yourself as light: sacred, (r)evolutionary, & infinite.
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