Annual Spiritual Rituals with Lara J. Day

But essentially, it's this 13 day window and the practice officially begins on the winter solstice.

So the longest, darkest night of the year, which in the northern hemisphere is December 21st and the southern hemisphere, it's June 21st.

And we essentially have an initial three days to prepare.

So the word solstice actually means sun stands still or sun standing still.

So we have sol and then sistere, sun standing still.

And so after that peak of darkness on the winter solstice itself, December 21st, there are three days where the sun appears.

appears to stand still on the horizon.

It looks like it's not moving much.

And then after that third day, it slowly begins to shift its position again on the horizon and we incrementally get more and more light from that point forward.

So the light is being reborn.

And as above, so below, as without, so within, the light or the inspiration is also being reborn within our human psyche and soul.

So we have this opportunity to, I say, plant our dream seeds in the womb of winter or in the fertile soil of the darkness so that they'll sprout in the spring.

You know, pushing through the top soil of the void into the realm of the manifest.

In the summertime, we're fully expanded.

We're in full bloom.

We are living the dream that we planted back in the darkness of the winter solstice season.

And then in the fall, we're harvesting the fruits of our labor, thinking about what we want to throw on the compost pile, what we want to keep for the coming cycle.

It's a time where we start to get a little bit more reflective.

We start to draw inward.

before diving back in for another cycle of seasons.

So the practice is really about beginning to align with and tune into these seasonal energies and this rhythm, this yearly rhythm.

So again, to go back to the structure of it, after those three days where we are in preparation mode, we're thinking about what we want to bring into the new cycle.

We are maybe gathering whatever supplies or tools we might need if we want to meditate more.

Maybe we need a new meditation cushion or a new yoga mat, or maybe we want to do more cooking and we need to buy some supplies or some ingredients or gather some recipes.

Maybe we want to have a certain person in our life for the coming cycle so we would Make sure we have maybe a date scheduled during that 13-day window or at least their contact information so we can reach out to them in some way, shape, or form.