Jan (JV)

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The Yule ritual is everything I ever want out of life, including happiness and abundance for me and my family, even a prayer for peace and healing for the world. It’s all the Christmas cards and well wishes out there rolled into a few lines spoken aloud like a prayer. A large part of the Yule rite is letting go of everything that didn’t work out this year in order to clean the plate for an issuing in of the new.

This is why Jesus is associated with this time of year instead of at Easter. Yule is all about getting birthed all over again (resurrected life) . . . every single year. And it’s in line with your very own personal abundance.

(Note that Oestara (or Easter) is basically the rite for sex for barnyard animals, e.g., fertilizing the egg for birth and growth during the warmer months . . . to be butchered fat in the fall and put away for storage for winter (please forgive me for blantancy animal lovers; it’s a calendar point, I love animals too.) The purpose of Oestara is to birth or make way to birth all the things that will prove fruitful (abundant) in physical and measurable form. This is known as Prosperity on the Wiccan cross.)

There are two forms of abundance in a typical Wiccan cross. There’s the prosperity of the Sun Sign of Fire (fired up). This denotes the passion of work, or production and producing. From the spring solstice to the winter solstice, it is a time for solar-driven life activities (groups and organizations, major work projects, corporations, jobs, planting, farming, and reaping, etc.).

By the Winter Solstice, Fire and Sun have had their annual shot at providing abundance for us through the fall for the winter to come. Then it’s time for another type of abundance . . .

. . . the abundance of new ideas emoted and formulated from the inside out based on what we learned in the past year and all the past years before that. And then using that information to calculate a better future.

The months following Yule are the months of internal processing and initial steps. Neither precludes Prosperity as all four corners of the Wiccan cross are always in effect at once. But winter really does usher in the hibernation effects necessary for the internal part of the process. By looking at what didn’t work the year that has just passed, we can add that to our bank of knowledge and look inside ourselves for needed improvements for a better upcoming year. This can be set down as a hard plan or just . . . felt.

That requires some introspection during the cold months and introspection requires some meditative activities and some time alone or down time. Activities can range from skiing down a slope, a more or less autonomous activity. It can certainly include cross country skiing and being one with nature (please let someone know where you’re going and when you’ll be back).

It can also include sitting around a fire, roasting chestnuts and sipping hot apple cider. Staring into flames is a meditative activity for many people, and you can do it in a group as it’s naturally meditative. It can also be done by watching a candle flame. There are countless other ways, so take your pick.

Meditation for me can also take on the form of autowriting, which is sitting down and letting the mood strike you. Plan nothing and then just start writing the first words that pop into your head. And keep on writing them down no matter how ridiculous they are or who you think is gifting them to you. (Hint: it’s likely you as you are actually the one in your head.)

It can also mean regular forms of meditation that come with intents via yoga, transcendental meditation, creative visualization, shamanic journeying, etc. I use several forms of meditation as I like to change things up and I don’t like getting bored. Some methods are just more fun than others. (As a start, I highly recommend Oak, Ash & Thorn Modern Celtic Shamanism, D.J. Conway, 1995, Llewellyn Publishing, for a good time, if you can find it.)

For Yule, I like to do one thing I don’t do most of the year. I add a Yule tarot spread, a full spread. And I take at least an hour to read it so I get all the nuances that pop into my brain.

Tarot, like anything else when done alone, is a meditation on the inner you. The cards are there. They look pretty and they might jog something in your head that will bring out your innermost thoughts and desires. There’s nothing like a good old fashioned tarot spread to make you realize what you truly desire after a life full of stressful events the prior year.

This is why New Year’s resolutions come too soon in the year. It’s doubtful you’re prepared to make them on January 1^st. Your true desires really only start to emerge around Groundhog Day. Just like the groundhog pulling himself out of his hole. (Pun intended.)

Yule, or winter solstice, is the time to let go of those things that are no longer needed. It is a time of cleansing the very air you breathe of those, every cell in your body.

This is why you burn sage, the best space and internal cleanser of all time. It’s why you add bay for introspection and why you add cinnamon to provide momentum to keep moving forward during your long winter’s “nap.” This is why you burn red, green and white candles, the very basis of prosperity and abundance on all levels. Adding a blue candle for peace. It also never hurts to burn a gold or silver candle if you’re asking for something specific.

It doesn’t mean you’ll be one hundred percent in tune with yourself on January 1^st, but because you will start looking inside once again from Yule forward, it means you may at least have some momentum well before spring solstice toward exactly what you want to accomplish during the year.

You’ll be peeking your head out of your hole like the groundhog around Imbolc and thinking like you can actually flesh out a new workable plan to put into production by Oestara. Once you have a new plan in place and have started working it, you can put some real energy behind it at Spring Solstice (according to the Wiccan calendar of prosperity).

The first day of winter on or around December 21^st celebrates a successful past year of abundance. Sadly, it isn’t always a year full of the prosperity you envisioned. Such is life. Such is humanity. You wouldn’t want it to get boring.

And it isn’t because you were bad, perhaps just not in tune with your true desires that year when you started chasing them. We all have true desires (every day all day long) and we state them to make them come true. Many do come true, especially when the pizza arrives. Any expressed desire has a lot of energy behind it to start with, if it truly is what you truly desire.

Whether you were at the height of production or in a slump this year, Yule is a feast—a taste of some of the things you’ve put away in storage for the winter, ham or dried meats, nuts, carrots, potatoes, the hard berries and seeds, flours, etc. Things that store well for months at a time. That list can be a lot more expansive now (in terms of food storage) and also in terms of cash money or savings. Your “storage” represents how successful you were that year to yourself.

Mulling over that question during this time of internal abundance and self support will help you decide how much further you want to take your energies toward next year’s prosperity. So please, enjoy your winter solstice along with your incubating time of contemplation toward next year’s fruitfulness.

Wishing you a season abundant in ideas and desires to help make the future bright for you, your friends and your family.

I’ve always been a dreamer, the kind where I had a vision of my future. The very first one came after my parents took us on a ranch vacation in Wyoming. Normally, I did a lot of housework and a lot of school work. I took care of the babies, but on this vacation I did only one thing. And I did it all day long for five days.

On the second morning, warm and clear, a fourteen year old handsome brunette with intelligent eyes took me on a ride around the ranch. He was lean, mature, older than his years. He sat on that saddle like a knight, his thighs always in control. Hey, I was twelve, what do you expect? I was enamored. I’m sure he thought me a fool and he had chores to do all day long, so after that first ride, he’d saddle up a horse for me and I would ride all day long on my own over the low desert scrub and sunbaked earth. Away from all responsibility to my family.

How could this not turn into my very first two dreams? When I got home, I wrote a story about my experience, about him and the horse. Her name was Candy or Peppermint, something like that. I found the words hard to write, which surprised me, by then I’d read thousands of books, read though an entire library. I’d thought I was going to be a writer. I thought the words lovely when I wrote them. When I read them the next day, I was disgusted at how juvenile it was and trashed the first thing I ever wrote. I wasn’t used to not being at the top of the class, ever. But that wasn’t the end of the first two dreams, there was one more.

A couple of years later while I was dating my first real boyfriend, or more precisely sneaking out to watch him and his garage band practice while my mom was recovering from yet another childbirth. He wasn’t at all like my knight, he was dark Irish beautiful, mysterious, angsty, but approachable and versatile with his voice. He could sound deep and throaty as well as high-pitched and tremulous.

After a year around the band, I started up with a dream of having a ranch they could return to after their long tours to recover and relax, live like a family. The rest of the time, I’d run the ranch like a vacation ranch. It would be isolated on top of a hilltop and overlooking valley. I’d treat it like a BnB, going beyond the normal communal atmosphere: I’d fix breakfast and guests could help me fix dinner if they wanted to stay in at night. High ambition for a girl of sixteen.

Another dream that also went somewhat off track from the beginning. The minute I announced my dream to them, the band became popular and began touring. I was sixteen and from a conservative home. I wasn’t invited along and my relationship with my first love petered out.

Many years into my research & design career, I started writing a story at nights and on weekends about a young boy who didn’t know he was actually a kidnapped king . . . and the rest is history. It’s no surprise I’ve written about variations on ranch life and stories about “knights” and rock n rollers. They were inspired by those early dreams.