Small Acts of Cosmic Congress

Why I go out to greet the rising sun at winter solstice

Winter solstice is my Easter, when god dies and is reborn. Because can there be any greater, literal expression of divinity than the sun? It is simultaneously transcendent and immanent. Without it there would be no life on Earth. It is within us. We exist because the sun exists.

As plants consume the light of the exoteric sun in order to live, so do we consume its esoteric light to stimulate the growth, unfoldment and flowering of the divine seed.

Therefore, at this critical juncture in the solar year, I will go out to meet the sun, as will many others. Maybe you will too.

As gods die and are reborn in myth, so too does the sun, so do we, and so does the day. All is contained within the other. To witness the sun’s first rays as it crests the horizon at winter solstice is to acknowledge our entanglement in the great cosmic pageant, and therefore our real humanity. Maybe the poem I’ve written below goes some way towards articulating the profundity I feel.

So let us mark this stave of reckoning with our attention and our devotion. I’ll see you on the hilltop at dawn. Winter solstice blessings.

Winter Solstice Sunrise

As a human
Your most profound act will be this:

To depart from the bright glow of your family
For the frozen exterior, where a desiccated path
Leads to a high place.
And by taking that path in pilgrimage
Your breath becomes a censer;
A signifier of devotion.

I tell you pilgrim, in ascending
You cleave yourself to the amaranthine gods,
Whose fellowship is described 
In this high and holy darkness;
Written into the sky’s gleaming register.

And they are with you in quiet communion
Because, like you, the gods do not sleep.
So be still amongst this roseate congress,
And heedful of the singular moment
That announces itself in a quivering of the spirit.

Here is that moment: the knife-edge of all things;
A vivid miracle of light and life;
A profound act of love
Told in the prophecies of fledgling days
And their ripening.

All the mysteries of existence 
Are proclaimed in this shard of menology;
In the cephalic gleam
Of tender petals,
And the resurrection of the bombus.