What's Illuminated by the 12 Rays of Solstice?
Newgrange, the Cailleach, and a New Winter Solstice Practice You Might Try
And here we are, at the heart of the longest, darkest nights in the northernmost parts of the globe. As ever, it’s a time of such possibility. It’s also a time of bone-deep weariness.
If you let it, I think this kind of exhaustion can feel sacred, however. We can feel hallowed rather than hollowed by the need to rest and replenish.
This year, I’m trying to do that in a slightly different way. I’ll tell you all about it below. Perhaps you’ll join me?
The final KnotWork Storytelling episode of the year is all about Newgrange, the Cailleach, and a new practice I call the Twelve Rays of Solstice
By what name did its builders know Newgrange? By what names did they know the sun, the moon, the Boyne itself? What was their word for death? In every word and work of it, was their language as hospitable to reality as Newgrange itself is hospitable to the winter-solstice sun? Was their language so open to reality that it could travel down into the roots of its seeing and know-ing, illuminating its seeing, illuminating its knowing? We do not know.
Irish mystic philosopher John Moriarty in Invoking Ireland
This is, of course, the time of Newgrange, the mysterious 5000 year-old mound of Irish stones with its stunning carved kerbstones and its 60 foot passage to the innermost burial chamber.
“Newgrange” doesn’t seem to be a magical enough sound for this ultimate womb-tomb space. Its name in Irish, Síd in Broga, gets us a bit closer. The modern Irish language evokes something of the wonder of this place of death and rebirth. It is a place to sing about, to dance about, to know through chanting, laughter, tears, and ecstatic sighs.
Síd in Broga is a place to momentarily capture the cosmic golden light, the solas ór of creation.
Because, of course, the unknown ancients built Newgrange to align with the rising winter solstice sun. For a handful of days surrounding the longest night, the sun’s rays pierce that long passage and illuminate the carvings deep inside. We can only imagine what else might have waited there, what offerings, what sacred acts might have been performed in those brief moments when the light revealed that which was (almost) always concealed.
The mythopoetics of Newgrange and all the ancient stone calendars have always captured me, but the winter solstice is taking on greater meaning for me this year
Maybe it was because I was in Ireland just before Samhain. Maybe it's because the Cailleach really did take up residence in my bones when I stood atop Slieve na Caillí in the midst of a gale. Maybe it’s part of being forty-five and consciously entering middle life and all the “now or never” questions that seem to emerge. Surely it’s the national and the global politics that have things feeling darker than ever.
No matter what, I need to do solstice differently this year.
Introducing the Twelve Rays of Solstice Practice
In the latest episode of KnotWork Storytelling, I walk you through another version of why the solstice feels so resonant right now. It has a lot to do with my relationship to “tradition” and what feels most real.
Both familial traditions and contemporary cultural convention make Christmas feel like a basic truth of the human experience.
But there’s another urge that is more foundational, more radical (from the root): the call to tell time and experience the sacred based on the very movement of the earth itself.
And so, this year, I will be trying out a practice I am calling the 12 Rays of Solstice.
On each of the twelve days stretching from December 21 to January 1, you seek out a sign that foretells of the year to come. December 21 corresponds to January, December 22 to February, all the way to January 1’s offering of what December of 2025 might look like.
This search for signs and portents was inspired by the Omen Days practice that Laura Murphy introduced me to a couple of years ago. She’d learned of it from
who describes how the medieval ancestors honored these intercalary days between Christmas and Epiphany or Twelfth Night by seeking out the augeries of each day, and, by extension, each month.There’s such magic in this practice, but somehow, this accounting for time and faith based purely on the Gregorian calendar and Christian tradition just doesn’t seem authentic to me this year.
I considered skipping it all together, and then my wise friend
mentioned how she planned to start her own omen collecting practice on the Solstice because it better fit the rhythm of her life. She wrote a wonderful piece about the power of gathering guideposts and how they’re so vital in the life of a Wildpreneur.This gave me permission to rethink and recraft the practice that allowed me to both honor its original intent and to honor my own needs and instincts.
I’m myth working according to the movement of the sun rather than the son because that’s the energy that will help me become the version of me that the world most needs in the next four seasons.
For me, I see this as a time to collect rays of illumination. I’ll be seeking out the light in the darkness, the obscure and hidden truths that want to emerge.
We live in a culture addicted to the limelight and to our glowing screens, so I want to invite you to see that collecting rays of illumination isn’t really about keeping it light, “good vibes only” bypass BS
Instead, we seek out the light so we can understand both the shadows and the source of illumination. So that we can understand the entirety of ourselves. That’s the only way we can truly commit to being a beacon in the storm, right?
I’ll be sharing my personal rays of illumination both here in Subsack notes and over on Instagram. Please tag me if you decide to try this practice. I’d love to walk beside you as we enter the solstice portal and greet the gathering light together.
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Hi Marisa, I have been practicing the 12 Sacred Nights since a child as in my mother country of Germany the tradition of the „Rauhnächte“ is still very much alive. However I too don’t agree with the Gregorian calendar association and creates a practice aligned with the old Germanic calendar and my personal practice of Celtic paganism. I’ve recently wrote about it as well as its association with the wild hunt by the German cailleach Holle/Percht - all connected of course as the Celts have journeyed through Europe before their arrival on the British isles. I live in the UK because I still feel the myth and magic stronger here but am astounded every time to find them still hidden in my German ancestral stories. I wish you a wondrous time!
Hi Marisa, I wish I had read this post earlier. I admire the work of Laura Murphy very much, she introduced me to the concept of Omen Days, but although I have tried for the last three years, they have never really worked for me. This year, I spent some time trying to work why, and thought that perhaps as a Christianity-based practice, it just didn't sit right with me. Now, having read your post, I am certain of it. I feel I am more in tune with the landscape and the natural rhythms of the land than any religion or human constructed cycle or belief system. Next year, I will follow your example and begin at the solstice and see if things fall into place. Thank you for helping me to find some clarity. 💕