Winter solstice

Winter solstice sunrise at the Karnak Temple, at Luxor, Egypt. The main axis of the temple is aligned with the solstice sunrise.

The winter solstice, which occurs annually when the Sun enters Capricorn (around December 21), is the first day of winter and the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

The dark night of the Spirit in the earth takes place during the weeks preceding and following winter solstice.

Setting the pattern of the year

Winter solstice is the time of year when the days are the shortest—when we have the least amount of daylight. It is, conversely, the time of the greatest release of the light from the Great Central Sun to the earth. As the hour approaches winter solstice, a sphere of light is released from the Great Central Sun for the nourishing of the evolutions of earth for that year. It comes forth in a spiral to converge with the fiery core of the world—the sun of even pressure.

There is that great event of the fusion of this sphere of light with the sphere of the earth, and it is a great influx of light that is felt by all of nature, by the souls of all evolving here. And then there is released at the hour of winter solstice that increment of light which is for the first quarter of the year, the first three months, which in our year would be the etheric cycle and that contains the fire element, the blueprint, the etheric memory of the pattern of the world held in the heart of the Solar Logoi in the heart of the fiery core.

In times past the light that was released to the earth was wasted by a majority of the people. Most people took the fresh new light—the new wine of the Spirit—and put it into the old bottles of their human consciousness. So at least nine-tenths of the light immediately went into the old patterns. In recent years, with the spiritual revival that has taken place on the planet—starting with the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875 and continuing to the present—devotees of the Masters have been better able to receive and absorb the light that is released.

When El Morya founded The Summit Lighthouse, one of the assignments he gave us was to convene four quarterly conferences for the purpose of anchoring the incoming light. He told us that our participation at these conferences “intensifies the action of the sacred fire that can be released to the planet.” El Morya has described the four quarterly conferences as the four paddle wheels of the year. Like a giant propeller, each conference propels us forward for the next three months.

So, the first increment of light—at winter solstice—contains the blueprint for the entire year for the planet and the individual. It is a time to rededicate our souls to our highest purpose and to set the matrix for what we want to accomplish in the coming year. You can also see why it has always been an important tradition to make New Year’s resolutions during this time. On a spiritual level, we are setting the blueprint for the whole year. We are deciding how to steer the course of events.

It is the time to ask yourself: What do I want to see take place this year—for myself, for my community, for my nation? Where do I want to see myself, my community, my nation and my church by the end of this year? What needs to take place on planet earth in this year?

Winter solstice is also a time to clear the channels in our etheric body and in our chakras so that the light that is released will be allowed to form its perfect pattern as the cycles of the year unfold.

A time of testing

► Main article: Final exams

The ascended masters teach that everyone on earth receives a yearly final exam at summer and winter solstice. Lord Lanto warns us to prepare for the winter solstice exam. He says:

You have been told that at winter and summer solstice you receive final exams. Each year you must prepare for those exams. The Christmas season is particularly difficult because of records of ancient pagan rites and the world in merrymaking. What with the populace entering more into ... sensuality and the misuse of the sacred fire, surfeiting themselves in all manner of drugs and alcohol and sweets, it is a precarious time of the year for the devotee.

Do not get caught in the vortex! For I, Lanto, am your Mentor and Guru and I tell you that many a chela has regularly failed the December tests in the name of family and family mesmerism. Therefore I warn you in advance that these failures go on your record and it does take some doing to scrub that record until you can get out that spot.

The dark night of the Spirit

Kuthumi speaks of the challenges of winter solstice:

Beloved ones, I bring the good tidings of eternal renewal which come forth in the hour calculated as winter solstice from the point of the North, from the heart of the God Star and the center of the Father. Thus, the Light of winter solstice is like unto none other, for its descent leadeth thee in the way of the law of righteousness as exemplified in the Son. Thus, the Father’s Light shines in the Son, and ye are that Son when ye are that sun! Thus, I come to admonish you by the sword of Maitreya to enter into the fire infolding itself of the mighty heart flame of thy being....

The dark night of the Spirit in the earth takes place during the weeks preceding and following winter solstice. Thus, during this period, from this hour through the New Year celebration, discover and understand the records upon records of the acts not of the apostles but of the fallen angels—the false apostles who have come to eclipse the Light of each one’s God Star, each one’s focus of Sirius, each one’s I AM Presence. This is the hour when the Son of man cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Beloved ones, wars have begun; extreme forms of torture, terrorism, and torment have been heaped upon the body of Christ in these very dates and hours, century upon century—the mockery of the birth of the Son in the heart of His little ones, betrayals of nations in every form, and the sadistic rites of the denizens of hell.

These weeks are fraught with burden to the soul, for the god of lust stalks the earth. Witness the intensification of red as the anger of hell presenting itself as the joy of angels. Witness the greed in the marketplace and the leading of the little children with Christmas carols to the slaughter, where they empty their pockets for the treasures of the world and gain not the single light atop the tree which often goes unnoticed—even as they do not reckon with nor recognize the star of the I AM Presence.

Thus, according to the misuses of the Light by those on the left-handed path, the bowels of hell erupt in this season and many souls find themselves scattered hither and yon. Many pass from the screen of life, as it is also the end of the year and the harvest of souls through the same winter-solstice Light. That which descends from the Father may return to the Father in that hour.

Even so, the descent of your beloved Mark on Christmas Eve was to that same purpose that Christ did come: to hold the balance of Light in a period of the year when, by the magnetism of bodies planetary and systems of energy, there is an increase in the challenge and the trial through each one’s own karmic cycles and ‘electronic belt,’ as you have called it.

Thus, you can expect to find heightened emotions surfacing, the energizing of the astral body, and the coming to the fore of old momentums like “Old Nick”—that is another name for the dweller-on-the-threshold. These must be slain once again, with the sounding of the final death knell upon that carnal mind, by your own enlightened spirits which take the sword of Maitreya and stand guard in the Church Universal and Triumphant and in the heart of the mystical body.

Christmas and winter solstice

Amaryllis, the Goddess of Spring, has explained why Christmas is celebrated at winter solstice:

Christmas, you know, is also the eternal spring. For Christ was born in the spring of the year and we do celebrate our Christmas on the very first day of spring, as the hierarchies of Pisces pass the torch of God-mastery to the hierarchies of Aries. At that point of the release of the Christ consciousness the Manchild is born and the angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

The celebration of the birth of Christ came to be at winter solstice, at the darkest hour of the year, when those wise intelligences who govern the cycles of initiation of mankind observed that the satanic rites, the pagan cultures, had the celebration of their feasts of the carnal mind during this period of darkness. This is when they would take the burst of energy of winter solstice and use it to the perversion of the flame of Mother and Child.

And therefore, while the fallen ones and these archenemies of the Christ yet lurked across the planetary body, seeking whom they might devour up until the hour of their being taken by Michael the Archangel, it was seen by the ascended masters that mankind needed a focal point of the Christ consciousness, a rallying point, a point of elevation of consciousness in this darkest hour of the year.

Therefore the celebration of Christmas has been for the exaltation of that flame, and many among mankind have communed and have found the most precious entering in to the heart of Jesus and Mary and Joseph at that season of the year, while others have made of it an even greater cult of the senses, of partying and frolicking and of misusing the light of the Christ.

But now that the sons and daughters of God are coming into their own dominion and are teaching the children of God how to take that dominion, we of the angelic hosts and of the beings of the elements, we of the ascended masters look forward to a more holy Christmas that is celebrated not only at winter solstice, not only at the spring equinox, but also at summer solstice and at the autumnal equinox. For we desire to see the bursting forth of the white light at these cardinal points of the year be accompanied by the celebration of the birth of the Divine Manchild within each of the four lower bodies.

Preparation for the New Year

Saint Germain explains the opportunity for transmutation in the final six weeks of the year:

We come to the close of 1982 and I stand once again pleading with the Lords of Karma. And they have said to me: Go and plead with the Keepers of the Flame, Saint Germain. For you know that the dispensation can only come from their hearts and their will to dedicate this final month of the year to the violet-flame transmutation of those conditions in the earth which will surely result in cataclysm, even in the next twenty-four months, unless some extraordinary release and momentum of violet flame, and therefore of intercession by the legions of the seventh ray, stand between mankind and their returning infamy....

Therefore, I do plead before the altar of your heart. And I give you, from my own momentum of service, vision and a staying action against the tides of your own forgetfulness, that you might remember and not forget that in the turning of the cycle of this year and every year until the year 2001, what must come to pass in the year next is largely determined by what can be transmuted in the final six weeks of the conclusion of the previous year.

Therefore, to each and every one of you—you who have appointments here and there during this Christmas season, you who will tarry at Camelot or in the teaching centers, you who truly understand what the violet flame has meant in your life, I say: It is vital to your security and that of this movement that you understand that the cycles are tight and the coils are wound tightly....

While the body and the heart are chained to the Rock of Christ in his worship and deliverance and grace of the ages, the mind and the soul can soar to the Central Sun. Therefore, we understand the meaning of the alchemy of service and we understand the sine wave of returning karma that is the mandate of the age.

I will give you a clue to the science of transmutation that is needed. It is needed that the ritual of our cloud, yours and mine together, and the decrees to the violet flame be given for each century and half a century of history, beginning with the very birth of the living Christ, who marks the point of the beginning of the spiral of the Light’s release and the Star that was seen over Bethlehem—not only the star of his causal body but his causal body magnified by the Cosmic Christs and the Buddhas and the Seven Holy Kumaras. For it contained the mandate of a two-thousand-year cycle and the divine plan for every lightbearer on earth.

Passing the tests of winter solstice

To be victorious during the Christmas season, often a time of deaths, suicides and accidents

• Give decree 10.14 to beloved Astrea daily
• Call to the Goddess of Light, the Queen of Light and the Goddess of Purity, whose Light is amplified at winter solstice, to help you pass your tests.
• Give decree 8.00, “O Mighty Light,” by the Goddess of Light.

For more information

For more on the meaning of winter solstice, see Kuthumi, “The Light of Winter Solstice,” Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 27, no. 58, December 9, 1984.

See also

Final exams

Sources

Holy Days Calendar, December 1993.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Astrology of the Four Horsemen.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, December 8, 1974.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, December 30, 1998.