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Looking to ramp up your Winter Solstice shindig this year? I personally always like to adapt a theme to center it around. That keeps it fresh and interesting for your return guests and a welcome surprise for new faces. This year the First Day of Winter falls on a Saturday, which makes it a perfect time to hold your Solstice celebration on the actual day. If you go with an “around the world” theme, you can invite each of your guests to bring a dish or beverage to share, unique to their cultural heritage or family. This way you’ll also gain an eclectic smorgasbord of a menu! Since I’m enjoying my new position as associate digital editor at Taste of Home Magazine so much, I had to try out some of their culturally diverse recipes from the December issue.

Every successful soiree should have a signature punch. Here’s a fun one from Chile:

There aren't many Yule decorations that would make me consider theft.

In fact, I can only think of one.

My friend Sirius found the Yule Stag years ago, half-price at an after-holiday sale. He's your usual made-in-China, dressed-up Santa maquette of the kind that one sees in the stores by the scores at this time of year: the porcelain head, the red robe trimmed with faux fur, the shouldered sack of toys.

Oh, but he's got the head and hooves of a stag: Santa and Reindeer in one.

Oh my Hornèd God.

The Kalasha of what is now northwestern Pakistan are the only Indo-European-speaking people who have practiced their traditional religion continuously since antiquity. Their most important holiday of the year is—surprise—the Winter Solstice. During the most sacred days of the festival, the rider god Balumáin descends to visit the Kalasha valleys, accompanied by his boon companion, a god named Púshau.

Students of ancient religion have long wondered if the famed Horned God of antiquity finds a reflex in proto-Indo-European religion. Such would, in fact, seem to have been the case.

The start of a new decade also marks a new era for the Aquarian Tabernacle Church of Canada (ATCC). Nearly three decades after its inception as a registered institution, ATCC is appointing a new Archpriestess in April, 2020 at the annual Spring Mysteries Festival hosted by the ATC Mother Church. High Priestess Mary Malinski of Circle of the Sacred Muse, Vancouver Island, Canada, will be joined by her husband High Priest David Malinski and many of her family and friends from Canada and the US to receive her elevation to Archpriestess of ATC Canada.

The Aquarian Tabernacle Church of Canada was established by the outgoing Archpriestess Michèle Favarger at the request of the former Archpriest and Founder of the Mother Church, Pete Pathfinder Davis, in 1990. Michèle, originally a solitary and eclectic practitioner, has a long history within the pagan community of Vancouver Island, circling with many who went on to form the renowned 13th House Mystery School.  Michèle received her Third Degree in the British Family Tradition in which she was trained, the Aquarian Tabernacle Church Tradition, and was also recognized as a Third Degree by Shadowhawk and Blacksun in their Star-Wyrm tradition. Michèle and her spouse Third Degree Priest Erik Lindblad, along with the Elders of ATCC, Heather Botting O’Brien, Gary Botting, and Doris Windrim, saw to it that ATCC was officially incorporated under the Societies Act of BC, recognized by Vital Statistics to sanctify marriage in the province, and authorized to allow Wiccan clergy to minister to the inmates at William Head Institution, where Michèle volunteered for 14 years. These accomplishments, along with many other great successes and achievements, have ensured that Mary’s induction into Archpriesthood will be a smooth transition.

Observing the cycle of changing light on our dear planet all year long has brought us to Winter Solstice, the simultaneous ending and beginning of the solar year. A blessed poise suspends us.

The Great Mother gives birth to the first speck of reborn light, barely believable after its agonizing absence. The longest night and the start of incense was originally called Yule, from the Anglo-Saxon Iul, wheel. At the center of the Wheel we look in the mirror. We see the seeds of our intentions, our hopes for Gaia's future. 

The labyrinth: that winding, twisting, single-path maze that takes you surely into the center and out again. Ariadne, the Lady of the Labyrinth, leads us onward and inward, to our own shadow self where the Minotaur helps us face our inner darkness. The labyrinth is a place of exploration and discovery, full of shadows and strange turnings. Let's see where the labyrinth of mythos takes us today.

As we approach the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, darkness is very much on my mind, as is the labyrinth. In a sense, the labyrinth is a kind of cave. Caves were important sacred sites to the ancient Minoans, and they're important symbols in Modern Minoan Paganism.

A local festival asked a friend of mine if he would write a ritual for them.

“We can't guarantee that it's going to be in any particular location,” they told him.

“Sorry,” was his reply. “If you can't give me a place, I can't give you a ritual.”

Corollaries:

• There are no generic pagan rituals.
• All pagan ritual is place specific.

Take, for example, the kachina religions of the American Southwest. You couldn't really pick these religions up and practice them in, say, Minneapolis. They've evolved as a perfect unity of place, people, and religion: what in Witch we would call Land, Lede (“tribe”) and Lore. This unity constitutes the pagan ideal.

I look at my coven's Wheel of the Year. Nearly every one of our rituals has evolved to fit a specific place. You could, theoretically, enact them elsewhere, but it would require a re-envisioning and a recasting of the rites to fit the new location.

The Paganicon 2020 committee asked if I would be interested in crafting Opening and Closing rituals for the upcoming event. As you'll have gathered, I'm not much one for casting circles and calling corners in ballrooms, but if things were to go as I foresee, our rites would mark the tribal Ingathering with what heathens call a “land-take."