We’re a Circle
Inside a Circle
With no starting
And by no means ending…
by Deborah and Rick Hamouris
As you might know from my e-newsletter, the Neighborhood Notes on this week’s situation of The Wild Hunt, phrase of mouth, or social media (together with our hearts-overflowing Facebook Group), it’s time to start our Solstice Solar Wheel Prayer Circle.
Beginning tonight, and each Sunday night via Yuletide (or Christmas), we’ll be a part of collectively in grace, considering the darkish, and calling within the return of the Mild.
In case you have been an everyday reader of mine, you already know that starting in late November, I invite everybody, no matter your non secular path, to hitch collectively in a digital Creation prayer circle (or spell weaving, for those who’d choose to consider it like that).
That is our TWENTIETH anniversary! The numbers becoming a member of us have doubled a number of instances, making it now an enormous, really world-wide occasion. Finally estimate, we had hundreds of individuals, with 2,000 or so within the Fb group alone.
I can not thanks sufficient for sharing this hopeful celebration with so many souls, for all these years. It’s a reward that offers and offers and may open hearts and spirits world wide.
So please be a part of us every week, and please inform your folks and family members. The underlying vitality of this observe is, by its very nature, inclusive and welcoming to all beliefs, traditions, and philosophies.
You’ll be able to’t do it flawed and you can begin ANY time. So if it’s a must to miss it this week, you’ll be able to nonetheless begin with us subsequent week, or any time till it’s over. And in case you are touring over this vacation weekend or produce other challenges, you should utilize a ribbon to your wreath circle, and battery-powered tealights to your candles.
The Fundamental Thought
The unique supply for this explicit adaptation was the late Helen Farias, founding father of The Beltane Papers journal, after which it was continued by our late buddy, Waverly FitzGerald in her College for the Seasons.
Since 2004, I’ve been carrying this beautiful custom ahead, including a number of of my very own gildings. And as increasingly more folks have joined, they’ve created their very own ceremonies. For this I’m grateful. It is a custom that doesn’t have to “belong” to anybody however you, and your Beloved(s).
The ceremony is solely an adaptation of the extra acquainted Christian observe of lighting candles on an Creation wreath, which in all probability was the descendant of much more historic, pre-Christian traditions, main as much as the nonetheless second of Solstice.
All you want is a wreath, 5 candles, and a peaceable time-out every Sunday night from now till Winter Solstice, and/or Christmas, relying in your most popular climax of the celebration.
Every Sunday, you’ll mild a candle that’s symbolic of some attribute, aspect, or imaginative and prescient, as we go into the deepest darkness of the yr, and put together for the start of the Baby of Promise, the standing nonetheless second of Solstice, and the reawakening of the Mild.
The primary week (tonight, in case you are counting right down to Solstice, or beginning subsequent Sunday, Dec. 1, in case you are counting to Christmas solely), we’ll mild one candle solely.
Then subsequent week you’ll mild first your candle from Week 1, then the second candle. And so forth, till Solstice evening, or Christmas Eve (or Day, relying in your denomination), while you mild the fifth, ultimate candle, relying in your choice.
This Yr There’s an Further Lighting
This yr’s countdown is barely difficult by the truth that there’s an additional Sunday between Solstice and Christmas. So for many who are counting right down to Winter Solstice, tonight is the primary candle lighting. The fifth, ultimate candle shall be lit Saturday, Dec. 21 (Solstice Evening).
For Christians who’re counting right down to Christmas ONLY, your first candle shall be lit subsequent Sunday, Dec. 1, and your fifth, ultimate candle is lit for Christmas.
For households that want to rejoice each, my suggestion is to begin tonight. Then, subsequent week’s 2nd candle can symbolize the second lighting for the non-Christians, and the first lighting for these counting right down to Christmas.
Every participant in your loved ones or group can ship out their prayers and envision the candle’s symbolism in any manner they’re moved to.
At Solstice, you’ll mild the fifth candle, after which at Christmas, merely rekindle it.
Within the lighting ceremony, the candle can symbolize no matter high quality you want, so the tandem lighting actually shouldn’t be an issue.
Further multi-faith ideas for the qualities you may want to assign your candles will be discovered here on our main page.
Why Are We Doing This?
That is the season of Creation, which isn’t a strictly Christian time period, though it is the identify given to this essential season of the church.
Creation merely means “to return” from the Latin, so it might apply to the approaching of the Christ youngster, or the approaching of the yr’s longest evening and the assured revitalizing of the Mild. Or no matter else you wish to set your intention in direction of.
We additionally honor the fertile, crucial endarkenment, whereas making ready for renewal and enlightenment.
For many people, our religion — in life, or the Divine, or one another — is being examined like by no means earlier than.
As we make our option to the top of this extremely difficult calendar yr, within the deepest darkish of the yr within the Northern Hemisphere, we’re additionally making ready for that second of stillness, when the Solar halts its descent, seeming to face nonetheless in its arc (“solstice” comes from the Latin for “standing nonetheless”). Then, the Wheel of Time turns, and the hours of daylight will slowly, slowly lengthen once more.
But even within the coronary heart of the darkness, the sunshine isn’t extinguished. The Baby of Promise, the Reward of Love, the blessed renewal of life and hope returns.
There’s great energy and solace in carving out a time of peace and sacred spaciousness on this typically loopy, commercialized, typically miserable and overwhelming vacation time.
However you’ll uncover that the true enormity of this ritual lies within the visceral sense you’ll have, of all the numerous hundreds of others, up and down the face of the Earth because the shadow of evening falls, who’re becoming a member of in with you.
From each stroll of life, all completely different ages, beliefs, languages and lands, you’ll be able to really feel the worldwide wave of prayer and devotion you might be becoming a member of and part of. You’ll sense how, as your candle is extinguished, folks to your west are simply starting to collect and light-weight theirs, making a wave of sparks and light-weight that strikes throughout the face of our Mom Earth.
About 2024
This has been an exceedingly troublesome yr.
Sure, I do know. We preserve saying that. Yearly, we predict it simply has to let up, however then it doesn’t.
This yr, there are hundreds of thousands of us who’re in deep grief, concern, and damage over the course essentially the most highly effective nation on the planet has simply chosen. Dreadful horrors hang-out our horizon. They prolong far past the shores of the USA, for our interconnectedness places all at profound threat.
Maybe we’re squeezing via a painful start, or it’s the shift of the paradigm, the changeover of the aeon, or possibly only a prepare wreck second in historical past. In any case, over these years, and previously few weeks, it looks like it simply retains getting darker.
However this ceremony is, itself, dwelling proof of how, regardless of how deep the descent,
the Mild will return.
Are you able to think about our Ancestors, watching with dismay as the times grew shorter and shorter? The creeping sense of — what if the Solar goes down and by no means comes again?
Earlier than there have been electrical lights, when oil lamps and candles had been uncommon, and solely the Moon, the celebs, and firelight held whole evening blindness at bay, it will need to have been fairly disconcerting. Though their ancestors and clever ones certainly taught that each one can be nicely and the Mild would return, they’d have watched the daylight dwindle to just about nothing, particularly within the far north.
The storms and the chilly would have grown extra lethal every week. Their total world can be at low ebb. It could certainly really feel, as many people at present do, that each one was misplaced. They’d be requested to maintain the religion, regardless of all of the proof: months and months of steadily failing mild, plummeting temperatures, the dying of crops, and the fateful deep silence of Nature throughout, besides maybe the howling of wolves.
But the Elders can be undaunted. They’d promise: All shall be nicely.
Our ceremony does precisely this.
Collectively, we mild candles and with our entire hearts we all know — you and I — that with our love and our mixed intention, the Mild will not die. With our ultimate candle at Solstice, we’ll honor the understanding that the Wheel has turned and the sunshine will strengthen as soon as extra.
What holds essentially the most that means for you, pricey reader? What Mild do you lengthy to rekindle?
We’re right here. Really feel this. That is the sacred pause when you’ll be able to sense this in each manner.
Collectively, allow us to be the builders and bringers of the awakening that reveals how interdependence is our truest nature. We bear witness to the existence and sacredness of Fact. And Love is the best fact that infuses all.
We due to this fact weave our prayers across the globe, with our wreaths honoring the good Circle that’s the Divine One. Lighting our weekly candles with our consciousness on the 4 quarter factors, or no matter you identify as holy, we anchor our imaginative and prescient into manifestation.
A Recommended Intention
From inside the sacred darkish, we will come up, for we bear inside us the hope and data of the Mild.
By our love and can, we now help and embody the shift of our human household, with out exceptions, to a extra simply, compassionate, and fruitful affinity with all the worlds, and the Divine Good.
By this candlelight, we stand for the Mild that’s all the time Entire. With our prayers, we embrace essentially the most historic Divine One(s) whose identify is Love. With our arms and hearts joined, now stepping via the gate of change, we honor the certain and true dawning of therapeutic, grace, and rebirth.
As we descend into the darkish, we see and encourage the spark in each other, serving to it to develop and burn brightly, in order that we every grow to be a beacon of hope, love, and braveness for all.
With unfailing, steadfast devotion, from inside and with out, we look after the Earth, Her sources, and all Her beings.
So mote it’s.
For Our Mates within the Southern Hemisphere
I invite you, additionally, to mild your Summer season Solstice candles (maybe on a Summery wreath of herbs and flowers), and shine your dazzling hearts upon this work with us. For you, too, are the light-keepers and an integral a part of this weaving.
You are the stewards of the Mild’s climax now, because it shines and warms, and you’ll be guiding it again to these of us in colder climes quickly.
Tonight’s First Lighting (Nov. 24)
Collect together with your family members or alone, tonight, wherever you might be, round sundown. Floor and middle your self, or create sacred area in no matter manner is true to your observe. (If sundown is unimaginable, no worries. There are folks in practically each time zone doing this, so you’ll certainly not be alone).
The primary candle could symbolize the Ingredient of Air: data, data, understanding, communication. The swimsuit of the Tarot it represents is (normally) the swimsuit of Swords: phrases, notion, angle, thought.
You will need to acknowledge the dissonance and fear at present affecting this aspect.
From air pollution within the air we breathe, to the spying and manipulation of world communications, to the doubts and disputes being raised about whether or not there may even be any such factor as “info,” and “fact,” take into consideration how concern distorts what we see, what we consider, how we make decisions.
We cross judgments, we’re informed and typically share hurtful tales about each other.
We’re being lied to and our data entry is being manipulated by our leaders on a colossal scale not seen because the darkish days of the Second World Warfare.
In case you are with your folks, household, or neighborhood, you may speak some time about these issues, and the chilling winds of subterfuge and ignorance now threatening free expression and consciousness.
Then, enable some silence. Along with your breath, inhaling and exhaling, start to see, know, and perceive the methods these kinds of concern exist.
With readability and compassion, look inside your self. Think about how your individual prejudices could have wounded you. Maybe you have got spoken untruths or unkindness, or just misunderstood somebody.
After which, nonetheless utilizing your breath as a magical software, let these fears and hurts be dispelled as you mild your candle.
When it’s lit, breathe into your huge consciousness your whole gratitude for breath itself — this primary, final, and most significant reward of life. Really feel your inhale and exhale, your life-long companion, because it helps you loosen up, grow to be alert, and conscious. Let your breath sigh, or snicker, or sing, or pray. In case you are with family members, you may inform tales, converse of what you give thanks for, give honor to those that are pricey to you, and why.
Gaze some time upon the dancing flame and name upon the powers of the week’s Ingredient or Reward of Spirit, to heal and bless.
If you find yourself at peace, and the time feels proper, gently extinguish your candle.
Blessed be.
