Part Four: Winter Solstice Prayer Meditation

NORTH GUARDIAN:

I am the North, the place of midnight, ruled by the Element of Earth. I am the place of the ancestors and ancient wisdom, of all that has walked the Wheel through millennia and knows the way. I rule the time of Winter.

The time of Darkness is now upon us. A time of cold and scarcity when the northern-most Earth leans farthest from the Sun. The Sun gives brief light and little warmth. The life that was lies shattered and still - retreated like refugees in the migration of herds, the flight of the flocks. The trees stand stripped and naked in their poverty, imprisoned in ice, bowed and broken by storms. In suffering and hardship you learn what is essential. Your wealth is taken, your weakness exposed, your dreams perish. Even the God, too, dies!

(Mary Marsh, 1994, link contains solstice ritual.)