Thoughts, Lessons, and a Pyre on the Tide of Yule

I've been taught a lot of things. Some of which I embrace, some I reject, and some I'm learning to question much deeper.

I mixed a bowl of mullein and sumac for my favorite pipe; a blend of a physical and an emotional healing herbs. One to soothe the lungs, and one to promote dreaming. Dreams are a way the mind heals itself, or so I've been taught. Too much mullein, and the smoke gets harsh. Not enough, and I'll regret smoking at all. I've got the balance down pretty good now.

I planned for a long time on having a fire tonight to celebrate the solstice. A little private time to apparently write a blog post and smoke some sweet sumac and mullein. A time to reflect and record.

Yule,
the darkness.
The tide of time and of turning to light.
A time, like all times, of change.

A time to reflect,
and a time to die.
And a time to grow from the dead.

I noticed earlier today that Blondie had died. The chicken that brought sickness to my flock, and the chicken that never really recovered. I usually bury my chickens in the garden, treating them how I would like to be treated; returning their physical bodies to the soil that grew them. None of my plants are vegans.

She had to have died last night, as I saw her eating yesterday. It wasn't unexpected. She's been getting weaker, and I doubted she'd survive the winter. She didn't survive the autumn.

At the last equinox, in preparation for tonight's fire, I did some reading and looking and saw that it's ritually appropriate to burn a symbol of something that's held you back in the last year. Not to put that whole burden on a chicken, but I felt it'd be fitting to make my fire into a funeral pyre. The hasty ignorance with which I brought a diseased animal here has burned in my mind since I made the realization of what I'd done. And now that consequence is on the fire.

For sake of the metaphor, I hope she's not a phoenix, though she was a pretty bird.

Yule tide is the changing from the waning of the sun to the waxing. Just like the moon, the sun has a cycle of ebb and flow. And it changes based on our own vantage. We'll add a couple minutes of daylight per day as we move into the coldest part of the Texan year. Most things will only look deader from here. It's a time to look back on the year and shed what held us back, while planning the growth of next year. A time to meditate on the growth, to ruminate on the decay of shed leaves, and to store the fruitful decay for an explosive rebirth at the climax of the sun. A time of conservation.

I'm realizing that anything can be pagan. That may be good or bad, depending on how you feel about pagans.

The farther the smoke from the pyre rises, the less I can tell if it's just more fog. Lots of fog makes for damp leaves, damp leaves make for dense smoke, which thickens the fog. I don't remember ever seeing this much fog in a season, but I never paid this much attention either.

A bit of foggy weather lore, check the comments. I like to whimsically meditate on the possibility of soil and atmosphere communicating somehow. Seasonality has brought to my attention how necessary the order of things are.

In the coming year, there's a lot I want to learn and do. Much of it centers around my new business venture, but I'm greatly looking forward to deepening my connection to this soil I live on.

It's nearly midnight now, on the longest night of the year. I'm hoping you had a good solstice, and wondering what you learned from, what you dropped, and what will fuel your next year's growth. Make an insightful, meditative post response, and I'll provide a fairly generous reward pool for anyone that participates. Quietly share your response post in the comments to enter.

All action for the good of all,

Nate