Ecstatic Disharmony

"The longest night

The wheel is turning

What will we give to the night?"

This is the sacred Winter Solstice chant Caroline Casey included in her mythological trickster-redeemer  sharing on Tuesday night at Earthrise Retreat Center in Petaluma, CA. Situated in verdant silence far above the freeway, with a full Gemini moon casting a luminous spell, we drank deeply of the darkness with a fervent urgency. 

"Ecstatic," Caroline reminds us, literally means, to stand outside ("ex" + "stasis") — which is what those of us called to midwife this transitional time on the planet feel, to the marrow. Embodying the sacred means returning from the Otherworld with wisdom gained. "To love disharmony back into harmony creates a greater harmony than existed before," according to author Michael Gruber.

What will YOU give to the night? The old way (but not the Old Ways!), the one right answer, outmoded beliefs and behaviors, fear of the unknown? Whatever it is, toss it into the cauldron and affirm, "xxxx is gone with the night!"

~ Blessed Be ~

The Mother of All Releasings Ceremony, Winter Solstice 2011

Pixie Campbell has created a simple, sacred ceremony for December 22, 2011, the final Solstice before we enter the year that's been the subject of endless prophecy (and paranoia!). Since she asks this information be disseminated widely, I'm honored to share her elegant ritual offering:



Who: YOU, and if you wish, your circle, tribe, family, or village.

What: A fire ceremony, to release the old year and shift up into the new.

Where: In your backyard firepit, on a beach bonfire, around your fireplace, (even in your kitchen sink if you can make it scout-safe with a fireproof container).

When: Winter Solstice, December 22nd, 2011.

Why: We release what no longer serves us on the Winter Solstice, because it is the darkest day of the year. We let go so that we can step freely into what is waiting for us, as the light begins to grow brighter with each day. We're doing it as an extended community to raise the energy level of letting go, together!

How: Make a releasing bundle. Gather friends and family around a hearth (or do this in sacred solitary), set the bundle safely aflame, and let the alchemical element of fire transform the old, as it knows how to do so well. Feast on Solstice treats and celebrate the return of the light. View the video created around my tribe's ceremony:

Mother of All Releasings Ceremony: Winter Solstice, 2012 from Pixie Campbell on Vimeo.

2012 is a powerful year to let the old ways go and step fully into creative self-expression and abundant support for our dreams from All That Is. It is a time for visionaries to create reality.

Thank you, sisters. I'm so grateful that you and your energy is rippling out into the world!

Summer Solstice: An Opportunity to Become More Whole

Summer Solstice celebrates the sun at the peak of its power. Both the sun (male energy) and the moon (female energy) are waxing, or increasing, now. June 21st marks the longest day and shortest night of the year, in the northern hemisphere. (Winter Solstice for our southern hemisphere allies). It's a stillpoint. A time to reflect. A potent moment to set your intention, because the manifestation momentum is strong.

The day goes by many names: All-Couples Day, Feast of Epona, Gathering Day, Midsummer, Litha, Vestalia. In ancient times, June was a popular marriage month, since summer offered a window between the sowing and reaping seasons. The June full moon was considered the best time to harvest honey from the hives, and newlyweds were fed honey during the wedding feast to encourage love and fertility. The tradition lives on in our modern post-nuptial getaway, the honeymoon.

How might we translate our ancestors' emphasis on love and union at Solstice to our lives today? In other words, how can we best live this light?

It's a grand opportunity to burn away old patterns that no longer serve our highest good, in order to become more whole. Whole, holy and heal originate from the same root. We can use the power of Solstice to assist us in integrating the masculine and feminine energies inside ourselves. The moment is ripe for sacred reunion. What do I mean by this?

Most books, films and songs that speak of love refer to romantic love between two people. We've been taught to look outside ourselves for completion, to seek the Other and to rejoice when we connect, or to keep searching.

What we're really seeking is a part of ourselves, which is why we often feel incomplete when we hook up with someone whom we hope will fill the empty place inside us. The wedding of the light and the dark, of the magnetic, receptive, lunar, "feminine" self and the dynamic, assertive, solar, "masculine" self, has to take place first within our own being. And yet — it's through relationship that we get there!

The beloved is a catalyst to help us merge the complementary aspects of ourselves. This is a radical idea, and challenging to hold. It turns everything we believe about romantic love on its head.

One of the ways to shine your own light more brightly is to celebrate yourself and each other, through whatever art forms call to you: music, dance, poetry, painting, comedy improvisation, theatre, ritual, chanting/singing, multimedia … and silence. Enlarge the lens you look through by asking, how can I expand this experience, become inclusive rather than exclusive?

This Summer Solstice, I invite you to sound the clarion call for your own companions of destiny — those who can see and honor your authentic self. The Mayan Oracle (a book and card deck based on the Mayan sacred calendar) says, "When you have been truly seen, you feel empowered, and remembrance of a shared sacred trust is ignited."

Acknowledge your connection with all life, and allow the simple to nourish you. Sitting beneath a tree, enjoying the sun on your feet and the wind in your hair, being thankful for life itself, is wholeness exemplified. The romance of living — and the wedding — begins first within you.

The Mother of All Winter Solstices

Visionary activist astrologer Caroline Casey has been calling it, "The Mother of all Winter Solstices". This December 21st heralds a full moon / total lunar eclipse, making our inner darkness visible. What has been concealed is now revealed, and ready to be healed.

It's a galactic Dark Night of the Soul as we surge down the 2012 corridor into a brand new world, eclipsing millennia of spiritual darkness, says astrologer Allison Rae. She offers one of the more eloquent and inclusive depictions of now, and what it means for each of us. READ MORE

Two no-cost events I'm participating in that are sure to provide groundbreaking guidance and information:

Celia Fenn with Archangel Michael in conversation with Jim Self, Solstice eve webinar from 4-5:30 pm PST

And immediately following, human capacities pioneer / social architect Jean Houston, offering her signature Mystery School as a teleclass.

Join me, and invoke the 2011 you deeply desire and envision.

Summer Solstice: An Opportunity to Become More Whole

Summer Solstice celebrates the sun at the peak of its power. Both the sun (male energy) and the moon (female energy) are waxing, or increasing, now. June 21st marks the longest day and shortest night of the year, in the northern hemisphere (Winter Solstice for our southern hemisphere allies). It's a stillpoint. A time to reflect. A potent moment to set your intention, because the manifestation momentum is strong.

The day goes by many names: All-Couples Day, Feast of Epona, Gathering Day, Midsummer, Litha, Vestalia. In ancient times, June was a popular marriage month, since summer offered a window between the sowing and reaping seasons. The June full moon was considered the best time to harvest honey from the hives, and newlyweds were fed honey during the wedding feast to encourage love and fertility. The tradition lives on in our modern post-nuptial getaway, the honeymoon.

How might we translate our ancestors' emphasis on love and union at Solstice to our lives today? In other words, how can we best live this light? READ THE REST!

Arc of A New World

A full rainbow with a fainter secondary rainbow appeared in today's multifaceted sky, signifying (to me) the return of the Light, and blessings for humanity's abundance. They materialized in the East, place of new beginnings ~ here, one day after Winter Solstice. And within the hour, I witnessed a woman at the grocery store openheartedly offer a woman who had just lost a $20 bill one from her own purse, explaining when the latter demurred, "I've been there."

As have we all, in one form or another. The sharing across borders and boundaries and beliefs will only grow stronger with time. It's a full spectrum awakening, as all the colors of our immanent beauty shine forth, refracting clarity.

Blessed Be!

Caroline Casey's Winter Solstice Guide

From Coyote Network Newswire, the reverently irreverent, always topical, brilliantly quirky Caroline Casey, this take on Solstice as our ultimate turning point:

"Let's keep our appointment with this Mother of All Winter Solstices December 21st, when, for the first time in 248 years (last time, we didn't know about it, so we couldn't collaborate with the deftness available to us now) the Sun conjoins Pluto, (Mr./Ms. Death and Re-birth) at the Trickster Leader Redeemer degree, quickening customized dedication in each one of us.

This is the midnight hour of the year, and of 8,000 years of Empire in which humans had ceded authority (Saturn) to socio-pathic dingbats. Until now!

This Solstice poses the question: 'What must we die to, within and without, lest we die from.'

The I Ching chimes in: 24. The Turning Point - Winter Solstice

'After a time of decay comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement but it is not brought about by force. Societies of people with a unifying vision are formed. But since these groups come together in full public knowledge and are in harmony with the time, all selfish tendencies are excluded, and no mistake is made. Everything comes of itself at the appointed time.'

From deep stillness comes replenishment and the gathering of strategy and wits. Not striving, but calm and merriment.

'The Winter Solstice has always been celebrated as the resting time of the year. In Winter the life energy is still underground. Movement is just at its beginning; therefore it must be strengthened by rest, so that it will not be dissipated by being used prematurely...

The return of health after illness, the return of understanding after an estrangement; everything must be treated tenderly and with care at the beginning, so that the return may lead to flowering.'

Now more than ever.

All of Creation is holding its breath, at this deep time, anticipating the birth, within each human heart, of wonder and willingness to cooperate with everything. May we kindle the warm glow of Trickster kindness, within us all, transform our emotional default setting to one of 'Woof Woof, wanna play!?!' Each moment awaits our imaginative dedication.

So let's toss all that is neither beautiful nor useful into the roiling cauldron of re-birth, that Time is so kindly providing us. (Let's compost all past-patterns of self-sabotage, personal and collective, for starters.)

Let's bow at the threshold of this New Year, to release and redeem all that we do not wish to take with us through the door. Remorse is said to be the highest of the negative states, the closest to clarity - because we see and feel all those times when we didn't respond to life's 'woof woof wanna play?!' When we fell for the compelling illusion of separateness, and forgot that we are all in one large, pulsing, shape-shifting according to collaborative intent, dream.

The Sufi, and we with her, gently pats her heart and whispers 'estafirahlah': forgiveness of self and others. And may 'forgive' mean 'to give energy for change.'

The protoplasm of reality is particularly susceptible to imprint now, by the power of word, language, story and metaphor. Allowing ourselves one true hyperbole: never before has the power of human storytelling been so essential in determining what dies and what lives.

Let us dedicate to animating the desirable story (to do otherwise would be complicitous with the evolutionary dead-end of empire. We suck the chi of our complicity from that which is dying, and exhale into the blooming of dynamic collaborative kinship We are here to re-dedicate to the responsibility of dreaming the desirable world into being.

Saturnalia: Deeper Dedication is the anti-dote to fear, as feeling useful is the anti-dote to depression. There - that's handled.

So, let's visualize and dedicate, wherever we are on Solstice, and journeying on into this powerful winter, that we are offering our unique and necessary Medicine, into the collective cauldron brew, and ladling ourselves a cup of All-Heal.

Trickster Medicine is really the sine qua non that brings all the other medicines into bubbling accord to produce the elixir of Dynamic Reverent Ingenuity."

Why Winter Solstice 2008 is Significant

Patti Cota Robles has written a vital Solstice message. It's not posted to her website, so I am reprinting it below in its entirety. While most of us realize we are in the midst of an intense purge/purification period, Patti illuminates this particular moment with great clarity and faith.


"The Winter Solstice is considered one of the most powerful times of the year by many cultures around the world. In the Northern Hemisphere this celestial event usually occurs on December 21st. The timing of the solstice this year will be Sunday, December 21, at 7:04 a.m. EST, 4:04 a.m. PST, or 12:04 p.m. Universal Time.

The Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year, and it heralds the initial impulse of the annual return of the Sun, the Light, to the Earth. This year the spiritual effects of the Solstice will be more powerful than ever before. This is due to the incredible influx of Light that is pouring into the planet through the heartfelt pleas of people everywhere.

Humanity is experiencing the most intensified purging of the economic system, and the various other social structures that do not operate with a consciousness of the highest good for all concerned, that we have ever endured. This is a necessary cleansing that is paving the way for the physical manifestation of the patterns of perfection for the New Earth. The difficult part of this process is that the masses of Humanity do not see the bigger picture. Millions of people see only the painful situations that are happening in their lives. As a result of this limited perception, they feel overwhelmed and hopeless. This is very hard to observe, but it is not all bad.

After our fall from Grace aeons ago, we became so numb to the discord in our lives that we just muddled through our Earthly experiences accepting mediocrity as a natural state of being. We fell into the terrible habit of using pain as our motivator. Unless we were writhing in agony, we did not feel that it would help to take action or to ask for assistance from our Father-Mother God. For millions of people on Earth, prayer and an invocation for Light from our God Parents occurs only when they are brought to their knees by their life situations. This is exactly what is happening at this time for millions of people all over the world.

The Company of Heaven is revealing to us now that more people than ever before are reaching a critical moment in their life experiences. Consequently, millions of people are asking God for Divine Intervention. Many of them are praying for the very first time. This powerful event, in unison with the millions of Lightworkers who daily invoke the Light of God, has created the greatest influx of Light the Earth has ever experienced during a Winter Solstice. This Heavenly assistance will greatly empower the patterns of perfection for the New Earth, and it will accelerate our individual hopes and dreams by leaps and bounds.

Beginning now, and continuing for the next 72 hours, focus intently on the vision of what you want to manifest in your life and the lives of your loved ones. Focus on your visions for the New Earth and the harmony and balance you wish for all Humanity. This is a rare opportunity, and we are being called to action by our God Selves — our I AM Presence — and the Company of Heaven. Be sure your visions and your intentions always reflect our Oneness and the Reverence of ALL Life.

This event will pave the way for a God Victorious New Year. 2009 is going to be a year of miraculous changes. These changes have been in the works for quite some time, and now we are going to experience them tangibly in the world of form. These changes will not happen by chance. They will occur through the unified efforts of Lightworkers all over the world and the Company of Heaven.

I know there are a lot of dire predictions regarding the global economy and the challenges Humanity is going through, but we are not the victims of circumstance. We are the cocreators of our Earthly experiences. If we do not like the way things are going in our lives, we have the ability to change our circumstances. This is what we have been preparing for aeons to accomplish — and now is the time.

As the Hopi prophecy states: 'We are the ones we have been waiting for.'

2009 numerically is an 11 year. Eleven is the master number that reflects the transformation of the physical into the Divine. The archetypes for the patterns of perfection for the New Earth were securely anchored into the physical plane in August 2008. In 2009, through our creative faculties of thought and feeling, we will expand these patterns into our daily experiences.

The purging and cleansing of the obsolete behavior patterns that have caused the maladies existing in Humanity’s lives will continue. But the wonderful news is, as these old archetypes crumble away, the expansion of the patterns of perfection for the New Earth will begin to manifest in ways that will bring joy, fulfillment and great expectations into the hearts and minds of people everywhere.

There is a new sense of hope flooding through the hearts of people around the world. Humanity’s hope is magnetizing Legions of Light from the Realms of Perfection into the atmosphere of Earth in ways we have never experienced. The Divine Intent of these Messengers of God is to assist Humanity to move quickly through the cleansing process so that the bliss of the New Earth will manifest in the twinkling of an eye.

2009 is going to be whatever we cocreate together. Do not let this opportunity pass you by."