Yule

Respect for the Dark Momma

From December 14 through December 29, The Sun will transit at 30 degrees above the horizon. This is the lowest transit of the year with the Winter Solstice falling almost perfectly in the middle of this 15 day period. These will also be the shortest days and longest nights. Tis’ the season of Yule.

At Yule we are confronted with the mystery of continuity in change. We who seek to integrate the cycles in nature into our spiritual practice see things constantly returning to the place where they began. The waxing and waning of Moons and Tides remind us always to remember where we have come from for it is there to which we will return. And yet, each time we start anew we carry with us something of the last round. This day, this year, this life looks like the last but is unique unto itself. Life and history appear to us in tree rings and spreading ripples upon the peaceful face of water.

We tell ourselves that the more things change the more they stay them same. This truth runs deeper than we know. In order for a thing to change there must be something durable which recognizes itself as self. I am the person I was as a child and who I will become in future incarnations. So what has changed and what remains the same and how can these two things remain as one?

Some say that we are body, soul and spirit. Spiritus is said to be like wind. Some folks call it prana and others call it chi. Some say it is a form of light which suits our purpose nicely as we tie this mystery back to Yule. Soul is the share of Spirit that each of us posses, the deference is as wind to breath. The body, the material world, this is what remembers how to breath. This is true for

individual thing and the world as whole. The body, whether animal plant or mineral, is the mother/matter of the soul.

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Before reading any further, take a few moments to simply breathe. Fill your lungs completely and allow them to empty naturally. Allow yourself to become aware of the rhythm of your breathing. After several normal breaths, allow your lungs to empty completely and try to resist the urge to inhale for a moment. Note that it is almost more difficult to resist the inhalation than it is to hold breath in. Try to really focus on the little tickle of desperation you feel. Don’t hurt yourself :). Now, when you inhale, notice how your body welcomes the air. This moment between breaths is like the winter solstice.

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Many spiritual traditions treat the body as an after thought at best, a hindrance at worse. Yet the body is where breathing happens. Likewise, the material world of death and change is where all of our spiritual lessons take place. It is where we live. As we watch the seasons wax and wane it is as though the whole green world were breathing light. Fire and water unite within the leaves of plants and the world becomes a burning emerald. Then in autumn leaves fall to the ground with the perfume of decay and the crumbling of their bodies into dust. A rosary of seeds connecting seasons and filling time like mantras. Each seed is a womb of light - of Summers remembered. The world itself the graveyard of the past, The Madonna of Tomorrow.

The Sun is the Son of the Mother Earth. She holds him in her womb at Winter Solstice. He Grows into the God she beds by Summer. By Autumn he is dead and she is pregnant. The Mother Goddess breaths the Father Spirit. The memory in her body is the blue print of his form. The world of Mother/Matter is the land where souls are born. Her body shaping spirit into life.

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We light a fire at Yule and when we do, we release the energy of summers past. The body of the logs is light remembered. Our bodies too are light and spirit breath remembered. This memory becomes longing at the nadir of our breath. We call to the Sun, to the spirit of life at Yule. The pregnancy of earth is the ripening of her memory into longing for another year, another Son/Sun, another dance of mating of mating matter to spirit world. She is not dead! She calls him back from far away, a far away within. The outer world that blooms from inner darkness. How will we tell this mystery.

A jar of oil which will not be exhausted, a Virgin who holds holiness in her body and gives the world its Son/Sun. A pile of logs that turn a ring of winter darkness into bright remembrance of what has gone and what is still to come. This world is begotten not made. She calls him back for yet another round.

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If you have read this far, I salute you. I have found this story difficult to tell. What I want to impress upon you is simply this. Here in the west we have inherited a tradition that sees the material world as an artifact, a clay pot or a clock. This idea preserves the notion of a maker and a made, an active agent and a passive substance upon which He (and it usually is a He) who imposes the design of his will upon it. We see this in The Book of Genesis with the Breath of God (his spirit) moving upon the face of some mysterious “deep”. Later, during the so called “enlightenment” or “scientific revolution” we we were told that The Creator was a Clock Smith who formed the gears of nature based on pure mathematical purpose. Once again, the matter of the world has no say in what it must become. This is really the same story as the first with a bit more technological sophistication.

Returning to the first story, Gods breath upon the deep, it is worthy of note that some scholars have suggested that the word “Tehom” (the word which English translations of Genesis render as “deep” as in “In the beginning, the world was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep” Gen 1:2) is the Hebrew word for the Babylonian Tiamat. According to the Babylonian creation myth, Tiamat is the primordial salt water sea from which all the world is born. Tiamat is NOT simply passive matter shaped into the forms of nature, she is a very living MOTHER who gives birth to the world (until she is felled by one of her male decedents, that is another story). The material world is our Mother, not simply dead matter shaped by some far away Sky Daddy. In fact, if you have ever wondered how it is that God is the “Father” with no Mother in sight, this might shed some light upon the Matter/Mother.

In fact, we might say that the Christmas story that shares this season provides a bit of corrective to the mystery of a universe with a Father but no Mother. Remember that God had to find a living WOMAN in whom to plant the seed that would grow into the SON. The Son, the Sun, you see the pattern.

So what if the breath (spirit) of life blows across a vessel, something like a flute. The shape and size of the flute creates the basic sound, the spacing of the holes determine the scale of its music. The scale is determined by tradition so that old songs can be played on new instruments and new songs can be built from old scales – everything played with Soul. We see a cooperation between the flute which would be silent without breath and the breath which could only whisper or wail without coherent form with out the flute. This is, of course, just another story.

The moral of the story is that the world is not mere dust or water which takes no part in what it will become. It holds memories of all that it has already been. These memories determine what it might become. In other words, life is a cooperative dance between the Spirit World of abstract shapes and form and the Matter world of stones and plants and people.

On the coldest, longest night of winter, step into the dark for a moment. Note that while the sun and warmth of summer seems a world away, the Earth beneath your feet is solid as ever. This Earth will support you and shelter you as it does the seed that waits for spring. It is a good time, the best time to remember your Mother.

Blessed Yule