See previous festivals: Samhain & Wuruma Samhain
In 2010 in Australia, Winter Solstice fell at 9.28pm on the 21st of June in 2010. (For information on the Southern Wheel of the Year, click label at end of post.) This year’s Winter Solstice article is late because I am still quite sick.
Winter Solstice is also known as Longest Night, Midwinter and Yule.
In Australia and all the Southern Hemisphere, Winter Solstice falls around the 21st of June and Summer Solstice around the 21st of December.
At Winter Solstice the god returns, having died at Samhain, and the year begins a-new. The god is represented or symbolised as the sun and the renewed strength of the sun warms the earth as winter declines.
In Europe and Britain, where my ancestors come from, this is a very obvious change of season. In Australia it is not.
I have tried to celebrate only the European-based Wheel and only the Wheel of the local natural seasons. Celebrating only one leaves me with a sense of a yawning gap in my ritual year.
Synthesis of the two Wheels is the only thing that makes sense to me, putting the two Wheels together. This is an ongoing process.
This year I discovered that my favourite local native snake, the red-bellied black snake, goes into hibernation at Winter Solstice and so does not make a good symbol of the god returning at Winter Solstice.
Instead I opted for red and gold as my Solstice symbols. Red for the birth labour of the Great Mother as the god is born a-new and gold for the returning sun as returning god.
I also extinguished the black candle for the end of the dark half of the year and lit the gold one for the beginning of the light half.
When I was a child I had the usual Christmas thing of gold coins and an orange (symbolising the sun) in the bottom of my Christmas stocking so I put them in the bottom of my Solstice sock, along with some sugary treats.
I sang the Beatles' song Here comes the sun and Wiccan Wonderland by Stephanie Barclay, Storm Bear & Jimmy Williams.
I saw a friend the day after the Solstice and took along some of the sugary treats to share and gave her a small present. She is not a Neopagan but was happy with the treats and the present.
My Winter Solstice seems be remaining entirely European/British in form and function. Unless I can find the right native plant or animal as a symbol of the returning god, it is likely to remain so and that is fine.
The Southern Wheel & the Wuruma Wheel
Winter Solstice is not marked on the Wuruma Wheel.
It is not the return of the sun that drives the Australian climate (and therefore the Wuruma Wheel). Rain drives the Australian climate. Sun we have in abundance, rain is scarce.
For a fuller explanation of this read the relevant article in Southern Echoes, a Druidry text.
The next festival on the Southern Wheel is Bride's Day (Imbolc) at the beginning of August.
It is unlikely that I will celebrate Bride's Day. I may go to a circle (if I'm well enough) but I doubt I'll celebrate it at home.
It makes more sense to me, personally, to celebrate the blooming of the golden wattles, our national flower. The yellow balls of the wattle blooms come as the weather warms up again after the winter and symbolise the return of the sun and the sun warms the earth and so we get spring.
Wattle Day, our national day celebrating the blooming of the golden wattle, comes on the 1st of September. The Queensland wattles planted locally are flowering now but the local wattle species are just getting ready to flower. They usually flower in August.
So this year I am plumping for celebrating the local wattle species blooming in the next Full Moon, which is on the 26th of July and close to the beghinning of August. I don’t know if that makes sense to everyone but my own personal Wheel, with its synthesis of the European Wheels of my ancestors and the Wheel of the local natural seasons, is still under construction. Who knows what next year will bring?
The Wuruma Wheel festival called Wuruma Begins (the windy season) falls around the same time.
Golden Wattle
Wuruma Wheel explanation & dates
Southern Wheel explanation & dates
