It’s Damn Dark Out There by Mama Donna Henes, Urban Shaman

The week leading up to the Winter Solstice is the darkest of the year. True, the week following the solstice is just as dark, but the energy is different. After the solstice, the dark gets a tiny bit lighter each day as the world as we know it on the Northern Hemisphere turns toward spring. But as I write this, pre-solstice, we are spinning further and further into the dark.

The Winter Solstice is the shortest day, the longest night of the year. Since the summer solstice, the longest day and shortest night, six months before, the light has been steadily retreating each day. Tip toeing slowly, silently away. The decrease is so gradual that we barely notice the almost imperceptible shift, the subtle loss, until we have nearly reached the autumn equinox when the light of the day and the dark of the night are of the same duration. Equinox in Latin means “equal night.”

Come the fall, there is no denying the apparent disappearance of the sun. It is most definitely getting darker and darker. And the rays of light are becoming ever more indirect. They skim by overhead at an almost horizontal angle, their energy and warmth barely reaching us below. Their glow is weak and wan, a diluted wash. Insipid. Depressing. All season long, the sun continues on its wayward course, slithering ever further south. Further and further away from us. Until we are left standing here in the dark.

The Winter Solstice is as dark as it gets. The sun is now at its nadir, the furthest southern limit of its range, its terminus. And there it seems to want to stay for a while. At the solstice, the sun rises and sets at the identical time day after day. The length of the daylight hours remains the same. The sun is standing absolutely still. It has stopped retreating, and yet hasn’t begun to come back.
Solstice, in Latin, means just that — “the sun stands still.” For three days it remains motionless, riveted. Pausing, it hovers in pregnant hesitation before it gets back on track again, resting before it begins its annual return trip across the equator into the Northern Hemisphere for its homecoming. Back to us waiting here hoping.

Tromso, Norway, population 40,000, situated on the Arctic coast just two hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, is the furthest north settlement of any size in the world. The winter sun sets there in November and doesn’t rise again until late January. This sunless period is called by the citizens, Mórketiden, the murky time, and is marked by dramatic increases of mental instability, physical illness, domestic violence, suicides, arrests, alcoholism, drug abuse and poor school performance. One resident reported, “Morketiden brings out the worst qualities in people: envy, jealousy, suspicion. People get tense, restless and fearful. They become preoccupied with thoughts of death and suicide. They lose the ability to concentrate and work slows down. People talk about the light constantly and long for the sun to come back.”

For us, too, it's dark. It's dismal. It's cold. It's bleak. And winter is only just beginning. It will be long months before we can expect to smell the advance of spring in the air again. But the consolation is that even though the cold season is just starting, the sun will soon turn its face toward us and begin its return approach. The light will return in its wake, increasing constantly so that by the vernal equinox the light of day is once again equal to the dark of night. And it keeps increasing until the summer solstice when again the sun stands still — this time for three days at the northern pinnacle of it's path.

But in the meantime it's damn dark out there. The days have shriveled to a skeleton flicker of light. The frozen nights are endless. These are dim, drab times. No flowers, no foliage. No insects, few birds. No animals out and about. The earth itself is congealed with cold. Dark death and Arctic gloom surrounds us. How do we know that the sun, too, won't die, its flame of life extinguished forever? How do we know that it won’t just go off and leave us, abandon us to the night?

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Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman,
award-winning author, popular speaker, and workshop leader
whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced
ancient traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies to
millions of people in more than 100 cities since 1972. She
has published four books, a CD, an acclaimed quarterly journal
and writes a column for UPI (United Press International) Religion
and Spirituality Forum. Mama Donna, as she is affectionately called,
maintains a ceremonial center, spirit shop, ritual practice and consultancy
in Exotic Brooklyn, NY where she works with individuals, groups,
institutions, municipalities and corporations to create meaningful
ceremonies for every imaginable occasion.

For information about upcoming events and services contact:

Mama Donna's Tea Garden & Healing Haven
PO Box 380403
Exotic Brooklyn, New York, NY 11238-0403
Phone: 718/857-1343
Email: CityShaman@aol.com
www.DonnaHenes.net
www.MamaDonnasSpiritShop.com/
www.TheQueenofMySelf.com

Read her blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/queenmamadonna
http://queenmamadonna.blogspot.com