The point of December Solstice has now passed -- and now we enter the momentous "Three-Day Pause" before the Sun's journey back towards the north is really appreciable, and during which all the world seems to hang in the balance, awaiting the great rebirth of the annual cycle.
If you have not yet gone back to re-read my earlier post entitled "The Three-Day Pause," the next few days might be an opportune time to do so.
In that post from 2016, I wrote in part:
[. . .] there is a kind of "hang time" at each of the solstices, as the sun is "reversing its course" from proceeding "downwards" (lower in the sky, and further and further south in its rising and setting points) to proceeding "upwards" (higher in the sky, and further and further north in its rising and setting points).It is a kind of "pregnant pause" -- full of anticipation -- when the sun's azimuthal rising direction barely changes at all (as opposed to the equinoxes, when the direction to the sun's rising point on the horizon is changing by a full degree every couple of days [. . .]
But the December solstice yields a harvest as bountiful as that of the equinox and the horizon. It shows soul at the nadir of its dip into matter, and all its implications bear immediately and weightily upon the human situation. [. . .] At equinoxes light and dark are equal in quantity and sovereignty. But at the solstice the two powers are stabilized for the period, albeit in unequal relation. [. . .] Heraclitus adds a most pertinent observation: "The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre." Stability is gained only by the mutual annulment of two opposite forces. The planets swing in fixed orbits because of the exact counterbalance of centrifugal and centripetal energies.
The significance of the solstice (the word meaning "sun standing still") lies in the fact that for the time both light and darkness stand still in relation to each other. The basic feature is motionlessness. Neither is losing or gaining. They are stabilized. [. . .] So the Christ was born in a stable. 475 - 477.
These days of "standing still" anticipate the moment of midnight after the third day of pause, when the Sun is at its metaphorical "lowest point" -- because at midnight, the Sun can be seen to be completely entombed and obscured by the entire bulk of our Earth, which is entirely between our point on the globe (wherever we are) and our solar star.
It is at that point -- midnight on the night of the third day in the Three-Day Pause -- at which the Sun is esoterically figured to begin its motion back towards the "upper half" of the year. It is at this moment, in some cultures, that the oldest daughter in the family places the effigy of the Christ Child in the manger scene: at midnight on December 24.
This point esoterically marks the return or arrival of Self -- Self who is so often hidden and suppressed due to alienation, but to whom we all have access.
And thus this Three-Day Pause is an opportune interval for us to pursue that appearance and return of Self from whom we become so easily estranged, and to resolve to enjoy that presence of Self more and more during the year ahead!
