Our Introduction Countdown now unites
For Christmas and Yuletide, linked prayers of Mild.
Relying in your standpoint
Tonight we gentle candles one and two.
Tonight, within the threshold moments of nightfall wherever you might be, you might be invited to collect with people and households across the globe, from each religion and custom. Please take part our Solstice Solar Wheel observe, as we put together the way in which for the daybreak of the Mild reborn.
Each Solar Day at sundown, between now and Solstice and/or Christmas, numerous hundreds of individuals all through the world might be lighting candles collectively round a wreath.
Every week, on this small, quiet ceremony, we’re journeying collectively because the Solar reaches the utmost excessive in its annual arc, both for Summer season Solstice under the equator, or Yuletide within the Northern Hemisphere. All over the world, we’re in a loving refrain of prayer and peace, honoring the darkness and the rebirth of the Mild.
Tonight’s Lighting
In the event you and your loved ones are counting all the way down to Solstice (and maybe additionally to Christmas), tonight is your second lighting of the candles. Our first candle was lit final Sunday, Nov. 24.
If you’re counting down solely to Christmas, you’ll be lighting your first candle tonight.
I do know it sounds a little bit complicated, however it’s simply that this 12 months, we’ve got an additional Sunday between Solstice and Christmas. So the official Christian countdown begins tonight, Dec. 1.
That’s why I’m suggesting that, for those who want to accommodate each traditions, you may merely have an additional lighting of the opposite candles on Christmas Eve, and/or Christmas Day, or no matter different day in addition to Solstice you could want to commemorate.
PLEASE NOTE: Even if you’re simply now listening to about this, you haven’t missed out!
As a result of we return and rekindle the prior week’s candles earlier than lighting the present one, you may be part of any time via the ultimate lighting at Yuletide or Christmas! So please share – the extra, the merrier, and the mightier we’re.
Additionally, if you’re busy at sundown and might solely do that later or earlier within the day, no worries. There may be sure to be somebody, someplace in some time zone becoming a member of you! As some have stated, it’s like we’re doing a prayer model of “the Wave,” touring throughout the globe.
Likewise, please, please share! Invite everybody to hitch in!
And whereas I’m not an enormous Fb fan, I do dearly love our personal, fastidiously protected Facebook group, which has over 2,000 of us sharing our images, our knowledge, our questions, and our favourite vacation traditions. Simply fill out the enjoyable questionnaire in FB, and I might be delighted to welcome you!
Our Intention
You and your family members could change and adapt this as you favor, however that is what I’ve been guided to share with you for this, our 20th Anniversary:
Holding sacred area with each other, throughout Grandmother Gaia, we make our remaining descent into the darkish of the 12 months. And in our re-emergence collectively, let our imaginative and prescient open to a brand new form of gentle.
Let it allow us to see past the crumbling of the three,000 12 months outdated myths of separateness, exile, and innate wrongness. Collectively, allow us to behold and invigorate the profound interconnectedness that’s our truest Nature.
We subsequently 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 title as holy, we anchor our imaginative and prescient into manifestation.
We stand for the Mild that’s all the time Entire. With our prayers, we embrace probably the most historical Divine, whose title 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 turn out to be a beacon of hope, love, and braveness for all.
With unfailing, steadfast devotion, from inside and with out, we take care of the Earth, Her assets, and all Her beings.
So mote it’s.
Solutions if tonight is your second candle lighting
You possibly can, in fact, designate your candles in any manner you want. As an example, every would possibly symbolize the 4 phases of the spiral in The Work that Reconnects, plus including a further one for Solstice itself. In different phrases, it needn’t be a non secular attribution.
Different recommendations for a wide range of faiths and traditions will be discovered within the overview hyperlink discovered both on the prime of my weblog web page, or else via this link.
Nevertheless, many individuals counting all the way down to Solstice merely use the 4 Parts (Air, Hearth, Water, Earth) as their template, with the fifth, heart candle representing the Fifth Aspect (or Supply, Spirit, Akasha, Awen, the Solar King, the Oak King, or the Solstice youngster – no matter you want).
Tonight’s Lighting, Working With the Parts:
Collect along with your family members, or alone, ideally round sundown. Floor and heart your self, or create sacred area in no matter manner is correct to your observe. End up the lights the place you might be, and have your wreath, candles and lighter prepared.
Within the twilight, take into account once more (as we did final Sunday) the qualities related to the Aspect of Air: information, info, understanding, communication. Mild the primary candle once more — the one you lit final week — for East. See, know, and converse of how the numerous qualities of this Aspect could also be healed and strengthened for the great of all.
Subsequent, that is the evening once we first name within the Aspect of Hearth (the course of South). In different phrases, tonight we work with the Hearth of Hearth.
With solely your East candle burning, earlier than you gentle the second, take a while to ponder the that means of Hearth and what Hearth provides us.
It’s true that Hearth has a shadow facet: anger, vengeance, greed, violence, and damaging sexuality. Hearth actually guidelines over the fossil gasoline industries. And naturally, the tragedy of incomprehensible wildfires, drought, and even the worldwide local weather disaster itself will be seen as linked to the Aspect of Hearth.
However when in concord, Hearth cleanses, transforms, and burns away what should be given up with a view to feed the life pressure. Our ardour is known as our Hearth, and all of us expertise bodily want as a flaming vitality. Hearth is our creativity and our welcoming hospitality.
Hearth warms and illuminates. Hearth feeds us, and we feed the fires in our lives. It’s the electrochemical stream that’s the life pressure itself.
It’s the reward of Prometheus, it’s the sacred blessing of Brigid.
Tonight, then, with consciousness of its gentle and shadow, spark your second candle in thanksgiving for the reward of Hearth in your life.
Maybe you would possibly visualize bonfires lit upon historical hilltops, signaling in instances of want or celebration. Consider the hearths of our ancestors, soup effervescent, kids gathered spherical in heat and love whereas icy winds blast exterior.
Know that our Hearth candle tonight, being lit by others throughout city and the world over, chases the gloom, the dank, and the chilly darkish fears which have chilled our hearts for too lengthy. Hearth is braveness, authority, and mastery – could this candle remind us that we are empowered.
Mixed with the primary candle of Air, look how a lot brighter issues already are! That is how we’ll see the intense, inevitable dawning of the brand new beginnings forward.
If You Are Counting Right down to Christmas ONLY
Welcome to all of the households and mates who’ve begun their Introduction season immediately. For Christians not additionally counting all the way down to Solstice, tonight is your first candle. In lots of denominations, it represents Hope. Different denominations take into account the primary candle to be in honor of Isaiah and the opposite seers and prophets of the Bible.
Notice how that is in excellent concord with any Solstice celebrants in your family who see their first candle because the Aspect of Air, for at first, was the Phrase.
As you gentle your candle, suppose quietly of all it represents to you. When you have phrases, Bible verse, a prayer, or a tune to share aloud, please do. If not, merely give attention to how this one candle modifications the darkness to gentle in and of itself. Isn’t that precisely what our frequent want is, no matter denomination or religion?
Delight in its lovely gentle, giving thanks in no matter methods your coronary heart speaks to you.
For All
As talked about, there are further recommendations for different faiths and beliefs, in addition to logistical particulars through the all-purpose Solstice Solar Wreath hyperlink yow will discover both within the pull-down menu on the prime of my weblog web page, or by clicking here.
In some unspecified time in the future, you could want to repeat the overarching intention for this 12 months’s work (as posted above), or your individual needs. Take a while to open your deepest sensitivities, and really feel the presence of all of the others who’re in ceremony with you, for you might be completely NOT alone. Numerous previous contributors have advised me how palpable the expertise of the others on this prayer circle across the globe feels.
Ultimately, each time you might be prepared, gently, reverently extinguish your candles, in reverse order in case you have lit two.
Know that as you’ve stated it, so it shall be.
Blessed be!
