It’s funny. We think of Winter Solstice, Christmas, New Year’s Day and Epiphany as different holidays, but they all celebrate the same thing: the return of the Light. Whether we gather to give thanks for the Sun returning or the Son arriving, the feeling inside is the same. Whether we celebrate the beginning of a new year or a new era, we feel exhilaration, hope, new possibility. What all these holidays, Holy Days, share is an awareness that a period of darkness is ending and a new period of light is beginning.
In December, my mother fell and broke her hip. Because I lived nearest to her, I was the first to go to her bedside in the hospital. By odd coincidence, iishana and I had already planned to stay at her house that same night: it was the eve of the Winter Solstice and we had made special plans.
Near where my mother lives is Calendar II, one of the biggest and best-known stone chambers in New England, measuring ten feet by twenty feet. This ratio of 2:1 is found in the King’s chamber of the Great Pyramid. Its ceiling is formed from seven massive lintel stones, the largest weighing three tons. No one knows who built it or why anyone would carry such huge stones to the top of a hill. But one fact is known: the door to the chamber is oriented so that the rising sun shines directly inside on the Winter Solstice.
Two months earlier, iishana and I planned with a couple of friends to make a pilgrimage to Calendar II on this most holy morning. So I was struck to get my mother’s call the day before the winter solstice with her unfortunate news. My mother and I had visited this site a couple of times before during warmer times of year. She believed it was a Goddess Temple, a relic of an earlier matriarchal period.
So when she broke her hip, I was concerned and also grateful that iishana and I could stay at her home to be near her. And, following my mother’s earlier inspiration regarding myth and ancient wisdom, iishana and I arose in the freezing dark on Solstice morning and made our way to the top of a hill in South Woodstock, Vermont. There was already a small group gathered around the chamber’s entrance when we arrived. It was a little below zero and everyone stomped their feet and hugged themselves to stay warm in front of the small black opening to the chamber.
It looked just like one of the megalithic ceremonial chambers I had always been drawn to in England and Ireland. The doorway was a black hole which also reminded me of the door to a sweat lodge, an opening to the unconscious or the Lower World. Around the opening, the earth swelled like an enormous loaf of bread, its top covered with snow, large rocks peeking out from the sides. One by one, we went into the darkness.
There were a dozen of us, each drawn by some kind of mystery. I spotted a couple of folks I knew outside, but inside we were all strangers and family. I couldn’t see anyone’s face in the gloom, but only kin would be crazy enough to be sitting here in the predawn cold and darkness. As we sat together in the freezing silence, a gray light began to appear outside the entrance. Trees took shape and color began to glimmer in the sky beyond, pinks and oranges.
When the moment came, there was a collective gasp. An enormous pot of molten honey was slowly lifted from below the horizon and tipped, poured in a stream toward the chamber entrance. This brilliant, golden light came in a flood across the snow, straight between the great stones at the entrance, straight down the center of the chamber, until it hit the stone wall at the western end. As it first turned the entrance stones into glowing gold, everyone pulled back against the side walls as if they feared they would be burned. As the liquid light ran across the floor, we pulled our feet even further back. It looked like it could set you on fire.
One person summoned up the courage to crane forward to catch a glimpse of the rising sun and her darkened features were suddenly caught in a brilliance that was hard to look at. This light was nothing like the light I was familiar with. The contrast between fathomless, icy darkness and sudden illumination gave the light a palpable quality, as if you could catch it with a spoon, plunge your hands into it.
Words formed in my mind, a prayer:
Impregnate me with thy light, that I might shine unto the people and bid them do likewise.
I had no idea what these words meant, but I repeated them in my mind as I watched my companions take turns leaning their heads forward to behold the sun and be transformed. It was as if I had never really known what light actually was until this moment, never known what it could do.
