The Magic of Yule - How to Honor Winter Solstice the Pagan Way

Yule is the Pagan name for the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year. It’s dark by 4 pm and often the skies open, the rain pours and cold winds rage across the land. Frost settles on the landscape killing insects, plants, animals, birds and even old and infirm humans. If we understand the seasons as a wheel then Yule sits across from and opposite Litha. At this festival of death and quiet all the beautiful colors so prominent at the Summer Solstice have dissolved and vanished. The land and the skies are gray, the colors too have died.

The Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice sit balanced and opposite on the wheel of the year. The Law of Polarity states that everything is dual, everything has poles, pairs of opposites. This is one of the magical seven Hermetic laws. They were given to us by the Ancient Greek god Hermes or his Ancient Egyptian counterpart, the god Thoth.

In many ways the journey of the Sabbats is similar to the phases of the moon. Litha correlates with the full moon. On Summer Solstice at the height of the sun god’s power he dies and starts his journey to the underworld. We begin the inward descent toward Yule. Winter solstice is like the time of the dark moon, as we revel in the destructive power of the silent unmanifest. We await the rebirth of the sun and the cycle of growth begins anew. Like Yin and Yang, each pole contains the seed of the other. At the height of the sun god’s reign, his demise is suggested, at his lowest ebb, his greatness is realized again. Each year there is that speck of light in the sky on this dark night that promises the return of the light.

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