It's the eve of the Winter Solstice. In about sixteen hours the Sun will be the farthest south that it gets, and it will begin climbing more northerly. The day afterward we'll have a new moon. I'll be glad for the extra sunlight.
Tomorrow I'll be laying out a spiral and holding ritual space for a Solstice Lights Spiral Walk. The forecast is calling for more clement weather this year. With any luck, I'll be able to ignite a candle with the light of the solstice sun. Last year it rained and rained and rained, which made having an outside spiral walk with candles challenging. This year we're a little more prepared for uncooperative weather with LED backups and more covered lights. Also, we have an indoor Plan B if it looks like a Second Flood is going to happen. At least a horrific cold snap, which I'd seen in a long-term forecast last week, doesn't appear to be happening.
What the Winter Solstice means to me is that this is a time to examine the structures that sustain and renew us for the rest of the year. That there's a New Moon about twenty-four hours later means that both the conscious, primary processing, and the unconscious, secondary processing modes are focused on the same inventory of systems of maintenance. At the risk of sounding like Dion Fortune raving her herself, the deity that I associate with this time of year is the Castellan, who sits on the Inward Deosil Spiral between the Grid of Systems and the Tree of History.
I believe this calls for a Tree of Life tarot reading with a yearly-planner and scones.
Today I spent the morning in a Zoom conference writing with other writers. I managed to polish and write a bit on a short story that I've been toying with for the last few months. I've been discovering the plot as I go along, and the next step is to focus on what the main character's emotional stakes are—I've got all of the visual eye-candy and cool magical McGuffins in, so right now the story is functioning on a wonder-story level, but it needs more work to function on a "character dissatisfied with their situation" level.
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