Winter Solstice: Embracing the Darkness

My ethnic heritage is mixed: a thoroughly Canadian mingling of English, Cree, French etc on my father's side, and Latvian on my mother's. Having grown up with my mother's family, I've had some connection to Latvian culture ( a few staple and special foods, the language spoken in the older generations, midsummer celebrations starting when I was in my teens, but we were not an especially traditional family). I've known that the Baltic nations (particularly Latvia, Lithuania and Old Prussia; Estonia belongs to a different linguistic group) preserve interesting linguistic and cultural ties to ancient Indo European origins. Also, Latvia and Lithuania, having been Christianised later and perhaps less aggressively than many Western European nations, preserved a lot of the pre-Christian culture, both in a vast trove of folk songs, and in daily cultural and religious practises, often with Christian forms grafted on top. As someone interested in archetypes and symbols (anyone who has seen my drawings inspired by the Goddess work of Lithuanian archeologist Marija Gimbutas will know of my interest!), ancient cultures, and in particular, practises that are tied to the rhythms of nature, I've been interested in delving into this rich past.

This year I wanted to make some modest observation of the Winter Solstice, a day I find more personally meaningful than the mainstream holidays. While looking for inspiration in ancient Latvian symbols and beliefs, I came across the idea that the old Goddess and Shamanic cultures didn't just think of Winter Solstice as a looking forward to the Light, but also/rather a looking inward/Earthward into darkness (my paraphrase). (This page, under the entry for Aukselis https://eldermountaindreaming.com/2017/05/15/latvian-symbols-latviesu-simboli/  I also came across the idea in a discussion of Traditional Chinese practise).  I find this idea intriguing-- not darkness in the modern Western sense of negative, evil, but rather the Old sense of darkness as the source of fertility, life, mystery. Think of soil, blood, the inner spaces of heart and mind, the thick tactile blackness of night, of caves-- mysterious, perhaps terrifying, but rich with possibilities and built of the very stuff of life itself..... So a different turn for this year's verse!

Sun will come again, 

but Earth calls me to pause,

forget the sky for a time,

sink into her ancient darkness

fecund and mysterious...

feel the hot kernel of flame,

the Midnight Sun, resting 

in that place she goes to wait

deep inside.

As Moose lays deep in thickets of Sister Willow,

Grouse shelters in Grandmother Spruce

and Squirrel guards her ember

within the embracing soil,

so I will slow, feel the night 

chill around me

the Earth's hot heart within.

I will grow within the dark contraction

till Sun returns and with green arms 

pulls me laughing back into the blazing day.

Cohan, December 21, 2017