Happy full moon before the winter solstice earbud coven…. In this episode, we are chatting about the winter solstice
I’m hoping that this episode will be a bit like a candle of hope to you in this dark part of the year. Right now, on the west coast we might only get 6 hours of weary overcast winter light. It can feel a bit bleak with the sun so far away. I’ve been feeling slowing down and feel like I need to celebrate the return of light and the promise of new things ahead.
It’s a very powerful time of year, the last full moon of this solar cycle.
I find that the healing work we do at this time of year can be so transformative. We can shed before we go into the dark care of winter, and let go of what of all that doesn’t serve us.
Then in the cozy den of winter, we can dream and plan for the next solar cycle. If we let go of the old on this full moon, we can use the quiet of winter to reflect on what our true path is.
transcript
  Good morning or good afternoon. Maybe it's evening right now for you. Hello, my beautiful comment. How are you doing today? Happy full moon. This is the full moon before the winter solstice. This is actually probably my favorite full moon of the whole cycle of seasons. And I know those of you who are close to me will find that interesting, because I don't super love Christmas season.
I don't super love the holidays. I find them really overwhelming a lot of years. I much prefer Halloween. Everyone knows I absolutely love Halloween. So Christmas is a second best holiday for me. But this podcast is not about that. Well, it kind of is. I want to talk about solstice. We're right before solstice and the magic of it all, the real beauty and amazing things you can do in this season where we celebrate the return of light.
I know most of you probably know all about the solstice and the seasons, but just in case there's new baby witches around. I'm going to give you the littlest nutshell and then I'm going to talk to you about solstice and how I celebrate it and what I'm doing this full moon. I do have a little bit of housekeeping.
First off, I want to say thank you so very much to everyone who has subscribed. I know that I am in some of your Spotify wrap ups, and I just want to give you my gratitude. That fills me with so much emotion and joy and satisfaction at what I'm doing here. I'm As you know, a little independent podcast, the growth I see is because you are talking about the witching half hour.
So you're sharing it with your covens. You're sharing it with the other soul sisters and sweet people in your life. So thank you for that. We just continue to grow and continue to expand our coven. And I am so grateful. I'm grateful for you all. I have a class coming up in a couple days. If you are in the Lower Mainland, I will be at the First United.
I'll be co hosting the Development Circle on Wednesday night. All the details will be on the website calendar for the First United Spiritualist Church. You can Google them. And I want to remind you that the YouTube channel will have our year ahead tarot spreads. I do this spread every year as a foundation to then build our monthly tarot spreads off of.
And I do apologize for allowing the YouTube channel to fall behind I haven't posted a tarot reading there for a while. I will be posting the January one. It's my favorite one to do for you guys, so I will be posting that. And I believe that's all my housekeeping. We can get into this episode. Let's talk about winter solstice.
For the baby witches in the circle today, the winter solstice is celebrated on the 21st of December. It is the time of year where the sun rises. goes to bed the earliest. And actually, in ancient times, it used to rise and set at the same place on the horizon for three days in and around the 20th, 21st, 22nd.
Some people say the 21st, 22nd, 23rd. I don't get too caught up in the exactness of it all. Because when these traditions were created, we did not have global positioning apps of the stars and the moon and the solar system. So all of these dates came from actually watching the sun and the moon and the energies from our vantage point on earth.
So everyone was celebrating this, maybe 30 minutes or maybe a day differently, but every culture had a ritual. Celebrations around these short days of the year the ones I base my My celebrations on and my practice on now are grounded in British traditional witchcraft and Norse recreationist heathenism.
One of the things that came to the forefront for me when I was doing meditations and work on the wheel of the year, because I actually use the wheel of the year as part of how I live my life, I tune into. the flow as a witch. I do my very best in the hustle and bustle of the day to day and managing my family and working at my muggle job and still grocery shopping to tune into what's happening in the seasons in the earth and align my energy flow with that.
And that means over the last few weeks, I have watched my energy wind down. And what I find really interesting is that through November, I was getting quieter. I wanted to be home more. I wanted to produce less and curl up more and, yeah, just hibernate, really, honestly, hibernate. I could really feel every day that the days were getting shorter.
Now we're in that time of year where it's just, in North America where I live, I don't know where all of you are. I'm a West Coast, Canada girl. So, the sun rises right now, around 8 in the morning, and it sets around 4. 15. That's it. And we have mountains all around me, so as soon as that sun sinks below the ridgelines of the mountains, it's very dark.
So, it can be pitch blackout. at five o'clock at night. So there's a real feeling of wanting to curl in. And I love that because it's one of the things we don't allow ourselves to do in our culture. We're very busy this time of year. There's a real pressure to overperform, to do all the things, to create perfection and joy and merriment for everyone.
Meanwhile, our bodies and everything around us is curling inward and wanting to be cozy. Once I accept the fact that my energy output and what I can accomplish is going to look nothing like what I can accomplish in the summer, that my love is where the magic happens. I start really going inward. During this time of year and I get reflective and what I found happen is It's a great time for Creativity it's actually this is the time of year a few years ago That I decided to start the podcast It was during this phase of The wheel of the year where I get reflective and look at what I want when I want to create What is bubbling up inside my imagination and what's bubbling up in my creative sphere or energy field, I guess.
I'm not sure what to call it. I create a lot of stuff a lot of the time. So whatever is kind of Brewing and wanting to be manifested and birthed out into the world, I usually start that planning process during this solstice time, this period of darkness right before the winter solstice and then in through January is really reflective.
And so I invite you, this is such a great and powerful time to do deep work. We can get so reflective in this darkness. We can connect deeply with what our soul and our guides are trying to tell us and guide us to. When we get cozy and curl up and we are inside in our quiet spaces for these long nights, it gives us the opportunity to get into what we cannot see in the light of day.
In those bright energetic summer months, we can sometimes miss the subtle things. This time of the year is ruled by the element of Earth. And the Earth element is one of those really quiet, slow moving energies. Any of you who've been in these earbuds with me for a while know that this is one of the elements that I have to work at tuning into because I am very watery and very fiery.
I like to flare and I like to flow. So the stillness of earth energy is trickier for me. But when I surrender to it and allow myself to settle, such beautiful things come out of that connection with my truth. And that is where this podcast was birthed out of. It was birthed at this time of year, actually three years ago.
So happy anniversary, Earbud Kevin. We've been here for three years, and the podcast is actually changing this season. My outside of the podcast life has changed. So this beautiful extension of my life is going to be shifting and adjusting. The changes are more on the production end and looking at how I work and working more efficiently.
So I'll still be here. You'll still be getting your new moon and full moon dose of the witching half hour or so. And this full moon that we are on right now. And remember, we don't have to be super strict. If you're listening to this a couple days after the full moon, you can still tune into this energy.
Full moon energy has got like a window of a couple days on either side of that moon. Until in the sky, it's no longer a perfectly gorgeous disc, you can work with that energy. And even one day after, it's still okay. We do not need to be rigid with our magic. Our ancestors certainly were not rigid about it.
They were ceremonial and they were specific, but you don't have to worry if you're getting this information a day after. the full moon or even two days after the full moon, you can still tap into the magic we're going to talk about in the traditions of Yule. This is the turning of the wheel. So when we're talking about manifestation work and spell work and incubating whatever we come up with in this reflective, deep, cozy time, this full moon we're at right now is where we can Whatever is standing in our way, there is a huge oomph behind this full moon because our ancestors were going into the dark night and the releasing rituals they did around this full moon were all about letting go of anything that would not serve them in the leanest part of the year.
We are able to shed. Whatever is standing in the way of what we want to manifest for next year. And there have been some huge planetary shifts, right? This last Mercury retrograde, that trickster Mercury energy, Oh, he was showing us what we need to rework, revisit, and revise. And with Mars being retrograde, how we relate to all those Mars themes, all those fiery themes of boundaries and anger and transformation, what is really standing in our way that is keeping us from moving forward, from attaining those goals, and maybe not just attaining them from even daring to dream that they're possible.
What thought form repeats in your mind that is not helpful? What message did you pick up in your life that doesn't serve you that you are still repeating to yourself? These are the kinds of deep things we can get rid of in our rituals This full moon because we know full moons are for releasing new moons are for manifesting and between Now and the next new moon.
We also have that solar cycle mirroring what the moon does The Sun is leaving it's sinking. It's shortening. So we have that Transcribed Energy, behind this release work, we have the idea of letting go of what doesn't serve us because we're heading into the leanest part of the year. This is the time of year when our ancestors would slaughter the animals and feast on them because they were not going to feed them anymore.
It's I know it's a little grizzly loves, but That's what happens. Those last animals that they kept after the harvest, this is when they would feast on them because there is nothing left in the barren ground to feed them. We need that to sustain us through. And that's some of what happens at all the large feastings and gatherings that traditionally would happen at Yuletide.
It's a time of gathering What is important? Your family? Your friends? What is near and dear to you and letting go of anything you do not want in the darkness of this incubation period that's coming. Because although hope is returning and we know the light will start growing again, after the solstice, the days will creep longer and longer.
But it's a process of watching the light return. Everything in nature moves so much slower than what we are told in our culture. We're living in this fast paced, instant culture, full of beautiful stimulus and the quickness of our technology. But we're still creatures who move slowly. In some of the teachings I've received, this time of the year also corresponds to our Root Chakra work.
So if there is Root Chakra work, that you Have been noticing needs to be done in your life themes about self care replenishment safety Boundaries, this is a beautiful time to work at that. You can use this full moon to do the release work that you need to do in order to heal those root chakra themes.
And the benefit of doing this work is that when we get to the solstice, which is this huge night of renewal, this big night of hope, of the return of light, of the return of hope, of the promise of spring. It's not spring yet. It's the promise of spring. In this beautiful energy of rejoicing and knowing that the tide is turning, the wheel is moving, and the light will return.
In that energy, you can start the manifestation work for your next project. You can plant the seed. You can move forward. You can make the wish. You can do the little subtle things. in this dark time that will move your personal wheel of the year forward and move you closer to what you want to manifest for your life.
There's so much power in this time of year, and we know this is powerful because almost every single culture on earth has a ceremony at this time of year. We have Hanukkah, which is a ceremony of light. We have Christmas, which is the birth of a god. We have the Celtic solstice, which is the return of the Oak King.
We have the Druids out at Stonehenge celebrating the return of light. There's a Hindu celebration for Ganesh that I cannot pronounce, so I won't even try, my friends. And that takes place at this time of year as well. It's a powerful time. Everyone is celebrating light. Everyone is celebrating birth.
Everyone is celebrating the hope that's coming. So ride that energetic wave, my love, and do the work. There's so much to support you in this work right now. And maybe you're saying, but Jodi Anne, how do I do this work that you talk of? I love a fire ceremony. You could do a water release ceremony, any kind of release ceremony.
You can write it down. I give things to the elements, right? And don't worry, I'm going to be teaching classes in the new year about these things. I have so much in the works for you that I'm scribbling in my notebooks about, and I'm I'm babbling into my phone about, because I want to offer you guys more ways to connect with me and more ways to grow your practice.
Gather with your coven, do some release work. You can talk about what you want to let go, write it down, cry about it together, burn it together, rip it up, flush it down the toilet, scribble it on a rock and throw it in the river. Do the release work. Clear out what you do not want to take with you. into the cocoon of winter.
We're heading into that incubation period that that cocooning when our ideas are fragile little ideas, our little energy babies that we want to birth out into the world next year. This is where they're tended and born like a mother bear in a cave. Those precious things need to be nurtured in the darkness so that when Imbolc comes.
The Feast of Bridget and Fire and Creation. You can birth those ideas out into the world. Let this be the turning of the year, that we create beautiful things together. I know a lot of you spent time with me. We were meeting monthly and doing manifestation work together, using the energy of the new moon.
The solstice is like, The power of the winter solstice and that light coming back, that rebirthing of the sun gods themselves is so powerful. It's similar to the manifestation work we do in the new moon, but it's got more oomph. It also, like the sun cycle, is going to take more time to manifest. Every bit of magic we do moves slower than our computers around us, slower than the news cycles and the fashion cycles that we are in right now in our culture.
So remember that what you're planting, what you're working on in this beautiful incubation cave does not need to happen tomorrow. These are sparks of ideas. These are seeds of greatness you're planting. And they'll start coming into fruition in their time, but they will change and shift, especially if you're doing that deep work on the root chakra stuff.
Those deep ripples, when we change our thought patterns, when we work on the curses we have carried forward, those messages that we have adopted that don't belong in our head, they take time to shift energetically, but they're worth it. The changes that happen in our lives, the manifestations as they ripple forward are beautiful.
They're not immediate, but they're powerful and they're strong. So my beautiful coven, that's where I'm going to leave you with a whole bunch of hope in this dark night, reminding you about the power of this season and how you can use it to transform your life. Tap into this full moon that's happening.
Tap into the energy of the earth. Tap into this darkness that is cocooning around us and use it because you're powerful. That's why people don't like witches because we're powerful. We have the ability to change our lives and to shift things and to operate outside of what people consider normal behavior.
We're magic and the confines of our culture and the time we're living in do not apply to us. We are tuned in to the rhythm and flow of nature. We beat with the drum of creation. And from that rhythm, we can create any life we want. Happy winter solstice, my beautiful coven. Thank you for the time we spend together.
Have the most blessed yule season.
Jodi Anne 
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