Michelle MacEwan

Winter solstice

Tuesday 1st July, 2008

For the first time in many years I am home for winter solstice. I love this time of year and when the sky is clear here in the south the stars are a spectacular blaze of white light. This year we have had the full moon - so the focus of night light has been the highlighting of the moon against the wild black storm clouds over a very powerful Southern Ocean.

There has been a lot of rain and our valley is beginning to flood, the water birds are flocking in and the sense of peace is profound. Adjusting to being home has mostly been around the light. It is so pronounced at this time of the year - the darkness and the light. I am normally away from home until sometime in mid July when it isn’t quite so extreme. This year for many reasons I decided to come home in time for winter solstice. It is one of my favourite times - although I did have to tear myself away from Connemara. It is also beautiful there right now - the long days - light until 11pm and the short intense nights - that, at this time of the year are full of music, dancing, gathering. For Susan and I it was a deeply satisfying time of felting, cups of tea and slow walks through the bogs and glens, the rugged coast and mountain peaks, and most of all enjoying the spectacular late golden light. In all, continuing our pleasure and sense of connection with the land after a deeply satisfying time with the May pilgrims.

Here at home I find myself plunged into the mysterious radiant dark of mid winter. Mid winter in the the south of Australia, poised on the edge of the Southern Ocean and the Dreamtime. Wow! The night sky here is phenomenal. I often mention the brilliance of the night sky in the southern hemisphere and there is a scientific explanation - which I want to share with you. “The axis or the ‘wheel’ of our galaxy can be taken to cut the celestial sphere at the North and South Galactic Poles ( just as the Earth’s axis cuts it at the North and South Celestial Poles ). The NGP lies in Coma Berenices, the SGP in Sculptor. The sun and its planets lie slightly above the plane of the Milky Way, so we see more stars ( and more bright stars ) looking south than looking north. That is one reason why the skies of the Southern Hemisphere are so brilliant!” (David Ellyard & Wil Tirion, The Southern Sky Guide: 24 ).

Here in the Otways the stars are vivid, with the Southern Cross still high in the south west, but beginning to descend while in the north east a new bright star has risen, Altair in the sign of Aquila the Eagle. The Southern Triangle is about to cross the meridan and, in all, 6 zodiac signs span the the sky to the north west where Leo is setting. The north is full with Bootes the Herdsman, and the heroes Hercules and Ophiuchus and the south west is crowded with the constellations Vela, Puppis and Carina, and Canopis near the horizon.

Summer solstice is a celebration of creative fire, it is the time of the feminine, of music and poetry. It is also the time when the seed of darkness is born as we slowly begin to move toward the inner time - of the radiant dark - the time of gestation and rebirth. Winter solstice is when the light is born anew once more from the womb of Earth’s darkness. Ceremonies to welcome back the light date from the dawn of humanity. An important festival where people celebrated both divine love and human love and wrapped in this, the possibilities for the new year ahead. Winter Solstice has been celebrated since time immemorial. Brú na Boinne ( Newgrange ) in Eastern Ireland is older than the pyramids and is one of many Irish sites aligned to the midwinter. Brú na Boine is linked to the midwinter sunrise. As the sun rises rays enter the lintel above the entrance and light the passage all the way into the centre. Interestingly, the lintel is carved with a repetitive dagaz symbol. Dagaz is the rune of bright sunlight, of enlightenment and the crown chakra. This Hollow Hill was inherited by Oengus and his love, Caer, the swan goddess. There is a theory that Brú na Boinne is built in the image of the swan system, Cygnet,of which Caer is heiress (Ref: Mysticireland ).

These stories and mysteries are part of winter time for me. Winter is the going within time, the story telling time and the time of gestation. I delight in my home in the Otways as it does have the four seasons and I love to hunker down in the long nights with a blazing fire, my writing or a good book. I love to watch the storying of the land and right now it is about the first wattles bursting into bloom, showering the vibrant green of the land with their golden blossoms.  In Connemara the midsummer story this year was, for me, the most incredible season of bog cotton I have ever witnessed. And in the bog cotton I found an incredible sense of the gentleness and yet the powerful life force of the bog. Here, amongst the wattles, the bulbs planted by the early European settlers are beginning to show their heads, splashing the landscape with ribbons of colour - from wild iris to daffodils and tulips - as our seasons, even here in the south, are warmer than northern Europe and so the bulbs flower in winter rather than spring and summer. It is the time of the whales visiting our coast, of giant surf - yesterday was a 20 foot swell, and of setting intention for the year ahead. My dream for the coming year is to see growth of community - where we consciously foster a sense of support and interest for those around us. Of course our world has changed and we can’t live the way our ancestors did but I genuinely believe that we have to begin to develop ways of living in community and supporting each other in order to help create sustainable and harmonious lifestyles on our planet.

You can read more about the importance of community as our future in the journal entry on Vandana Shiva and in my recent article, Sean Nós.

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