HOT SOLSTICE

We now reach another of the four major points in the yearly sun cycle of birth, growth, decay and rebirth. It is the Solstice point of December 21 to 23^rd  2010. Although officially declared to be an event of the 21^st, the solstice actually covers 3 days as the sun-earth make a readjustment in their relationship.

Half the world has reached its peak in the natural cycle of yearly full bloom, the other half of the world has reached its hidden beginning once again. This is the high and low point of the cycle of Nature.

At the Solstice points, the two points in the 12 month cycle where the sun appears to stand still before reversing its direction, all of nature is poised to start on the second half of its cycle. Thus nature responds to the sun, which is either taking a direction up into the sky towards the zenith or taking the other direction down in the sky towards the nadir depending on which side of the globe you find yourself on.

The sun now stands on the cusp of the sign of Capricorn, one of two cosmic gateways, the other being Cancer.

In the Northern Hemisphere this is to go from the death of winter to the quickening of new seed waiting to burst up through the ground in the coming spring.

In the Southern Hemisphere it marks the time of going from full bloom to bloated growth before commencing the decline towards autumn.

In human affairs it could well mark a time of social-political crisis in response to the pain that has been building through the year. But ‘Crisis’ doesn’t need to be disaster, it just means reaching a peak or point where serious decision making has to be initiated, and that can go either way depending on the motives of those making and taking the lead. There is quite a stressful build up of world tensions in the week before the Solstice when circumstances can be quite explosive as Mars meets Pluto, and then again in the following week as the Sun meets Pluto. Just to complicate things there is a Full Moon eclipse across the Solstice points adding to the darkness and confusion. Watch the acts of governments, big corporations and financial institutions and try to duck out of the way of any backwash as things gear up again following the Christmas break. Maybe it is time to think about the true meaning of this festival.

In ancient Egypt the sun was appreciated for its recognised source of life for the creatures of earth, and it was given reverence at the four points of the year as well as all year round. A pharaoh of about 1358 BCE called Akhenaten wrote a hymn to the sun, which he called ‘The Aten’ another name for the ancient sun god Re.

SUN HYMN OF THE ATEN

Splendid you rise in heaven’s lightland,

O living Aten, creator of life!

When you have dawned in eastern lightland,

You fill every land with your beauty.

You are beauteous, great, radiant,

High over every land;

Your rays embrace the lands

To the limit of all that you made.

Being Re, you reach their limits,

You bend them for the son whom you love;

Though you are far, your rays are on earth,

Though ones sees you, your strides are unseen. [Lichtheim translation]

Sun disk icon from Cyril Aldred ‘Akhenaten, King of Egypt’ Akhenaten: King of Egypt