Happy December solstice, everyone

Happy December solstice, everyone

Tonight for December 21, 2014

Courtesy U.S. Naval Observatory


The December solstice is when the sun reaches its southernmost point for the year. In 2014, it happens at 23:03 Universal Time on December 21. Here, in the mainland United States, the solstice falls on December 21 at 6:03 p.m. EST, 5:03 p.m. CST, 4:03 p.m. MST and 3:03 p.m. PST. Translate to your time zone here.
Looking at the world map below, you can see that the 2014 December solstice happens at sunset for North and South America, sunrise for far-eastern Asia, midnight in Europe and Africa and noontime for the Pacific Ocean.

Day and night sides of Earth at the instant of the December 2014 solstice (2014 December 21 at 23:03 Universal Time). Note that the north polar region of Earth must endure 24 hours of night, while the south polar region gets to bask in 24 hours of daylight. Image credit: Earth and Moon Viewer
On the December solstice, we celebrate the (unofficial) first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and first day of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Unofficial? Yes. Winter and summer start at the solstices by tradition, not official decree.
Yet these solstices bring very real occurrences to our sky, which you can witness for yourself. In both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the December solstice brings the southernmost sunrise and the southernmost sunset of the year. If you stand in one spot day after day, week after week – for example, gazing out a window toward the sunrise or sunset on the horizon – you will surely notice the sunset’s northward trek along the horizon over the coming months. From time to time, try fixing a bit of tape to the window on which you’ve written the date, to help you mark the sun’s passage.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the southernmost sunrise and sunset usher in the year’s shortest day and the longest night. In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the exact opposite, for the year’s southernmost sunrise and sunset give the Southern Hemisphere its longest day and shortest night.
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View larger. | Attila Kalman in Littlehampton, UK create this solargraph (in this case, a simple pinhole camera made of a beer can ) between June 21 and December 20, 2012. The camera was fixed to a single spot for the entire exposure time, and it continuously recorded the sun’s path as a glowing trail burned into the photosensitive paper inside of it. The breaks and gaps between the lines are caused by clouds. It shows the path of the sun over the months between a June and December solstice. As seen from the Northern Hemisphere, the sun’s path gets lower each day.

Earth has seasons because our world is tilted on its axis with respect to our orbit around the sun. Image via NASA.
Not everyplace worldwide has a sunrise and a sunset on the day of the December solstice. North of the Arctic Circle – or north of 66.5^o north latitude – there is no sunrise or sunset today, because the sun stays beneath the horizon all day long. South of the Antarctic Circle – at 66.5^o south of the equator – you won’t see a sunrise or sunset either, because the sun stays above the horizon all day.

The 2004 winter solstice viewed at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, California, USA. Photo via Wikimedia. View larger.
After the sun reaches its southernmost point on the sky’s dome on the December solstice, watch as the sun seems to pause for a number of days before it starts its northward trajectory on the sky’s dome once again.
Bottom line: In 2014, the December solstice comes on December 21 at 5:03 p.m. CST. That’s December 21 at 23:03 Universal Time. It’s when the sun on our sky’s dome reaches its farthest southward point for the year. At this solstice, the Northern Hemisphere has its shortest day and longest night of the year. Happy solstice, everyone!
How do I translate Universal Time to my time?
Winter solstice from Stonehenge
Want more? Everything you need to know: winter solstice


Thanks to: http://earthsky.org

Empaths, winter solstice

Happy Winter Solstice: Bring Back the Treasures of Darkness!

December 21, 2014 amandaflaker Leave a comment

Can you feel it? We’re Shifting in life-altering ways. As we’ve put our focus on empowering ourselves/taking back our energy/untangling our thoughts and emotions from other people and giving ourselves what we need to be healthy and thrive, a certain inner clarity is arising. The Universal OM is emerging from our inner-most places of darkness.
In my experience, it feels like my inner Shaman is unusually active and helping me go through some of the deepest realms of my subconscious fears. These Shamanic journeys into my own inner realms have also shown me the vibrational boarders of many of my defense mechanisms (after all, we have come to realize that much of our “empathic ability” developed as a form of survival in this world). In other words, I’ve been exploring/healing/and integrating trigger points on my emotional body, and to be honest, there have been moments where it is scary as f**k!
BUT, through all of this, I am finding my inner-strength — the Goddess — the Mother and protector of the sacred realms of emotions, the Wise Crone, the Hag — all the treasures of my inner-world (the Underworld) and all the most valuable secrets of femininity. I can honestly say I am going through a level of empowerment that I have NEVER felt in this lifetime. Ever. It is amazing and terrifying all at the same time. The Universe is asking me to redefine all of my relationships, to evaluate my sense of worth, and to “unplug” as much as humanly possible from diving into other people’s emotional bodies. It is only in THIS way that I am TRULY seeing who I am, what I *really* feel, and what I truly need.
I am strengthening my vibrational boarders — meaning ANY vibrational resonances that is close/similar to past relational tendencies I am healing, clearing, shifting out of (and sometimes, even having to lay the smack down with).
During one mediation I saw a black leopard come out of me — a power animal aspect that I have LONG suppressed (and she’s SO badass — with a type of strength and sense of personal boundaries that I was unable to access until now). When she came out, she stretched (the way cats do) and then started “patrolling” my vibrational boarders. A few times old vibrations (tendencies/relational stuff) have come-up — and she just knocks them out — the way a cat will bat things out of their way. She gracefully and unapologetically says “No. You don’t belong here.” I have felt so empowered by her presence — so inspired by her grace and form.
This is what we’re doing. We’re waking up. We’re connecting to our inner-strength (and our MAGIC). We’re healing. And we’re changing — for the better. For the SHIFT.
I’ll be talking a lot more about vibrational boarders in my “Healing and Empowering the Emotional Body” class, and sharing how I have accessed my inner Shaman, working with power animals to go into our “otherworlds,” and empowering ourselves through our OWN emotional bodies (taking our focus back). I feel this is THE MOST IMPORTANT work I’ve done to date in my life and I’m curious to hear how it’s going for all of you, too.
I’ll do a video on this in the next day or so. In the meantime I just wanted to share a bit about my travels through my inner-dimensions — and I’m bringing back with me all the treasures of darkness.
Happy Solstice!

Thanks to: http://chakracenter.org

December 21, 2014 by Cnawan Fahey

Into the Dark of the Dark

The Earth has turned it’s face from the Sun, and the Moon has turned its face from us.  It is a rare convergence, the dark of the Year coinciding with the dark of the Moon, but in the Northern Hemisphere this is our experience as the Winter Solstice aligns with the New Moon.   The darkest night, made all the darker with no Moon to shine.
The dark of course, has two faces.  In the closing lines of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”, Dylan Thomas writes of himself as a young boy saying his prayers at the end of Christmas Day, “I said some words to the close and holy darkness.”   This may be my favorite line from the entire story.  It is such a moving sentiment.  So often I have loved the holy embrace of the dark, that mysterious void in which one feels intimately connected to the Divine Source, in which magick is conceived. But there is the other face of the dark, the free fall into the abyss, in which there is no embrace and all hope seems lost.
Some people live with chronic physical pain.  Some live with chronic emotional pain.  Some live with both.   My heart goes out to them all. While I count myself fortunate that I live with only the chronic emotional pain, it is still a hard truth.  My daily universe is punctuated with multiple black holes of hurt.
So it is another interesting convergence that in this season of dark speaking unto dark, I have experienced another deep wound. There are those moments that one feels utterly betrayed by the Universe, that just the simple desire to be loved is denied one. Those moments when not only the light of the Sun and the light of the Moon are gone, but even the star shine has been torn from the sky. Those moments when the void is devoid of mystery, and there is no heart in the darkness.  
Too many times in my life I have been brought to identify with the poignant message of  the song “For Vincent”, by Don McLean.  Paraphrasing its central line, “This world was never meant for one as gentle as you.” As gently as I seek to touch others, too often I have been roughly handled.  So many dark nights.
Though, bringing to mind words from my invocation of the Sacred Directions that I’ve shared before, North, the direction whose energy we are now immersed in, is the direction that challenges us – and through that challenge instills Faith:
~ Faith that the light will return after the dark.
~ Faith that warmth will return after the cold.
~ Faith that life will return after death.
One of the great mysteries of the cyclic nature of the phases of the Moon, of the seasons of the Year, of the flow of the Universe, is the simultaneity of endings and beginnings.  The moment that one cycle ends is the same moment that another cycle begins. The solstice is at once the point in our orbit that we face the furthest away from the light and the point at which we turn back to the light. The dark of the moon is the cusp between its waning and its waxing.
The interesting thing is that the physical cycle cannot be disrupted. The light simply will not return until the lowest point and utter darkness has been reached.  In some cases, the same may be said for the emotional cycle.  As has been said, “The only way past the pain is through the pain”.   So, if one finds oneself being sucked into the abyss of a black hole, sometimes, rather than finessing one’s way out of it, the best thing to do is plunge in, and allow it to shred you apart.  Eckhart Tolle said it best:

Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego–but not until you suffer consciously…. Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego….
As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously…. In the midst of conscious suffering there is already the transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.

Marilynne Robinson, in her novel “Gilead” explored this another way:  “To be blessed is to be broken, and to be broken is to be blessed.”
In this moment of the nadir of the Sun and the hiding of the Moon, in which we all are plunged into the dark of the dark, for some it is an encounter with the close and holy darkness, for some it is an encounter with the heartless abyss.  In either case, we are blessed with the opportunity to do some work at the deepest of levels, enabling us to bring renewed life into the new cycle.
Which ever darkness one is facing, as always, let us be gentle with experience of others, for, as Bob Dylan wrote, “You’ll never know the hurt I suffered, nor the pain I rise above, and I’ll never know the same about you.”




Thanks to: http://etherealnature.com