The Solstice is for Soulsearching

Celebrate your Soulstice today!

NASA photo of today's eclipse

Today is not only the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere (lucky Southerners are starting summer), it is also the occasion of a lunar eclipse. The convergence of these events hasn’t happened since 1638, so the day is special indeed.

Let’s celebrate the solstice, but in our inimitable habithacking way, recrown it Winter Soulstice,  and use the day for reflection, goal setting, and soul searching.

The wonderful Wikipedia (a good place to send a year-end donation; I just did…click here to support this essential resource) tells us a solstice is a twice yearly astronomical event in which the sun reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes.

The word solstice pairs the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun comes to a stop before reversing direction.

From the lovely Candlegrove website that explores the ancent origins of this winter holiday:

“No one’s really sure how long ago humans recognized the winter solstice and began heralding it as a turning point — the day that marks the return of the sun. One delightful little book written in 1948, 4,000 Years of Christmas, puts its theory right up in the title. The Mesopotamians were first, it claims, with a 12-day festival of renewal, designed to help the god Marduk tame the monsters of chaos for one more year.“

As habithackers, we can certainly get behind the idea of taming the monsters of chaos!

The website notes that citrus fruits are associated with this holiday and suggests several rituals, from the simple making of pomanders to passing around an orange in a group. Each person peels a bit of the orange while contemplating something to peel away in his or her life. The peeled orange is passed around again, but this time, each participant eats a section, while making a wish or sending out an intention for the next year.

I especially love these rituals she suggests, and I quote  from the website :

“Nighttime wishing ritual: Go outside and settle into the night. Listen. Think about the night as if it were an island. Have in mind what is important to you — what you want to release from your life and what you want to welcome into your life in the coming year. Breathe each thing you want gone, one at a time, into the palm of your hand, then blow them away into the winter sky. Do the same with each desire you wish to enter your life. When you are finished, go inside and light a red candle. Put it in a safe place to burn out completely. The candle is a symbolic guiding light to draw your desires to you.

Ritual similar to sun maps found in Zuni homes: At a specific time on the winter solstice, (perhaps sunrise or noon), mark where the sun’s rays shine inside your house, with a special mark or sign on a wall, or by hanging a feather or other object that casts a shadow at a specific point. I use an ornament shaped like the sun with a mirror in the center. Then in future years, you’ll be able to observe the sun approaching winter solstice.

A solstice candle, lit at sundown and allowed to burn in a safe place through the night, is a simple tradition deeply connected to ancient ways.”

I’m going to keep it simple this year. As soon as I finish writing this post. I am going to write down five disappointments on a piece of paper. Then I’ll write down five intentions. I’ll light a candle and burn up the disappointments. Then I’ll take my intentions and put them in a special beautiful vessel. On the Summer Solstice I’ll take them out and see how I’m doing.

What are you going to do for your Winter Soulstice?