The Wheel of the Year

From Darkness back to Light

The final four points on the Wheel of the Year take us on the slow descent into the darker, colder days and eventually back to light. This descending part of the wheel belongs to the ancestors and to reconciliation and integration of the past with the present so that we can face the future and the lighter times feeling both rested and restored.

The wise ancestors

The ancestors are an essential part of the Samhain or Halloween festival, not as spooks but as wise and beloved family members who are deceased but still welcome.

Yet even in the festivals of the ascending or growing light, the ancestors were invited and asked for blessings as a continuing part of the family. This is very different from the modern concept of deceased relatives as ghosts only to be contacted through mediums for messages.

Whatever point of the wheel's turning you are celebrating or indeed on any family occasions, I believe it is important to remember your personal ancestors who once gathered in the harvest or danced round the maypole in the sunshine or picked a few flowers from the soot-covered hedgerows on the way to the factory at the beginning of spring.

I believe also that as we celebrate the festivals in the present we make psychic and not just genetic markers as the future ancestors of our descendants. In this way, hundreds of years from now people who will still notice the nights getting darker, can tune into our feelings in the places where we are dancing or lighting our fires.

The essential personalities of the more recently deceased were still regarded as part of the living family as recently as early Victorian times. It is only in the modern world that the idea of the family ghosts celebrating the passing of the year with you is sometimes thought strange.

In earlier times, what could have been more natural, as the herds were brought down from the hills and the fields for the winter, and the herdsmen and women huddled close to the hearth, than the family ancestors also moving close to the fire for warmth? It would not have seemed strange to our forebears that deceased great grandparents would want to be present at the birth of a new family member, or at a christening or a wedding.

Even in today's world, a number of people have told me how a friend or newcomer at a family christening or wedding has asked about an older man or woman who was peeping into the infant's cradle or watching the bride throw her bouquet, with a proud smile. Invariably the description of the older relative matches a deceased relative who has returned to share the occasion.

The ancestors in societies ancient and modern

Norse neopaganism echoes the early forms of the Viking ceremonies described in the sagas such as the Prose Edda recorded by the Icelandic Christian historian and statesman Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241).

He portrayed the Viking ancestors as an integral part of the interwoven web of every person's fate and so they were routinely welcomed and honoured at the harrow or family or tribal outdoor stone altar.

The same is true in modern druidry and Wicca where the ancestors are invited as guests to all seasonal celebrations and to special rituals. Indeed, at a Wiccan funeral the priest or priestess officiating ends by telling the deceased person that they always have a place in the circle and in the hearts of those present.

In indigenous societies the ancestors are still regularly consulted in divination about the growth of the crops, the welfare of the animals and other matters of daily life.

For example, among the Maoris of New Zealand, it is believed ancestors appear in the form of animals or particular birds, whose presence and behaviour indicates, for example, that a new home is blessed or that it is unsafe to travel.

In other societies, too, from Africa to the Orient, wrongdoing by a family member is seen as offensive to the ancestors. Indeed the societies where the ancestors still play a significant role are usually those where the living elderly are well cared for and respected by younger members of the family.

According to evidence pieced together from archaeological artefacts and by studying contemporary societies who practise the older ways, the wise ancestors featured strongly in many of the old seasonal celebrations, since it was thought that they would send help to make the crops grow and to bring a good harvest.

From about 3500 BCE it seems a number of these agricultural rituals centred on long barrows and passage graves. You can still visit some of these old sites, for example, West Kennet Long Barrow tomb near Marlborough in Wiltshire.

This is the largest chambered long barrow in Britain and was built about 3600 BCE. In Neolithic times, the grave was used for ceremonies in which the bones of the ancestors were carried with great reverence from the long barrow, where they were carefully preserved, to nearby Windmill Hill.

These rituals were carried out especially at Samhain (Halloween) and in the springtime to ask favour on the sowing. It was thought that the ancestors could intervene directly with the deities on behalf of the living and so the burial mounds had doors in them, a kind of halfway house where the ancestors could be visited and asked for advice.

You can still follow the route on foot today and picture how the tribes must have felt as they walked along the windswept tracks.

The wise ancestors and the changing year

As you travel through your personal wheel of the year, recalling your personal ancestors and perhaps people from past times in cultures to which you feel an instinctive connection, you can draw on their experiences and strengths in your imagination.

For the seasonal connection with the past is not only through your genes, but spiritually as you use the same herbs and flowers that people have worked with through centuries at the same time of the year.

Within the eight spokes of the wheel there is a more detailed interconnected web of experiences past and present that is at the heart of both older and modern paganism and is an antidote to the isolation and impersonal nature of both rural and urban living.

There may be a particular relative you associate with each festival. For example, for me, Lughnassadh, the first corn harvest at the beginning of August is the festival of my late father Jack. Jack worked in a factory in the centre of industrial Birmingham.

Every year at the beginning of August we went to Wales for two weeks to stay in a caravan. Rain or shine, and wearing his cap to hide his bald patch, my father would pick his way over the stony beach every morning and paddle in the sea.

Then, for Lughnassadh holiday feast we would go in the afternoon to what I thought was an amazingly posh hotel on the seafront in the nearby town for what was called a plain tea (I think basically bread and jam) with the tea in a silver teapot.

So bread and jam is always part of my Lughnassadh feast, plus a trip on 1 August when possible to paddle in the sea in honour of Jack, for whom the harvest of a year's work was being able to pay for the holiday.

Lughnassadh or Lammas
(31 July-2 August)

Focus of the period: Justice and natural justice or karma; human and personal rights issues; freedom from abuse of any kind; for partnerships, both personal and legal or business; for signing contracts or property matters; promotion and career advancement and the regularising of personal finances; for holidays and journeys to see friends and family or on business; for the renewal of promises, loyalty and fidelity; for willing sacrifice for a long-term gain or made in love, trusting the cosmos to provide by giving without seeking immediate return; also for all matters concerning people in their forties and fifties

Key words: Justice, fulfilment, sacrifice

Emphasis of the festival: Transformation, bread

Energies of the season: Waning

Symbols: Any straw object such as a corn dolly, a corn knot, a straw hat or a straw animal tied with red ribbon; harvest flowers such as poppies or cornflowers (they can be silk or dried); a container of mixed cereals; dried grasses or long ears of grain; stones with natural holes; bread and dough

Tree: Alder

Incense, flower and herbs: Cedarwood, cinnamon, fenugreek, ginger and heather, myrtle, poppies and sunflowers, any dark yellow, deep blue or brown-gold flowers

Candle colours: Golden brown or dark yellow

Crystals: Banded agates, dark yellow and any brown jasper, fossils, fossilised wood, titanium aura

Festival foods: Homemade bread, milk, cereal products, elderberry and fruit wines, strawberries, berry pies, fruit juices, potato soup, popcorn, chicken

Angel: Sachiel, archangel of the grain harvest and of abundance. He wears robes of deep blue and purple, carries sheaves of corn and baskets of food, and has a rich purple and golden halo and blue and purple wings

God and goddess: Eriu/Macha as Irish goddess of the land. As Lugh or Llew (sun and grain god) was dying, the earth goddess symbolically accepted his power and so ensured that the sun would continue to shine even after he had died

The place on the wheel

This is the festival of the first grain harvest.

The god promises to defend and die for the land. The sun or grain god agrees to be cut down in the form of the last sheaf of grain to be harvested and his spirit descends into the earth, back into the mother's womb, to be reborn on the midwinter celebration as the infant sun king.

The decisive battle of the light and dark twin cannot take place until the autumn equinox six weeks later and so the myths divide again. Some versions say the fatal blow to the light twin is delivered at Lughnassadh but the light twin lingers wounded for another six weeks until the autumn equinox.

In both the pre-Christian and Christian tradition called Lammas or loaf mass, a loaf baked from the first harvested sheaf was offered on the altar.

In Celtic-influenced lands on 15 August, at the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, a bannock was made from bread and milk to be broken by the father of the household and given to the family to ensure sufficient bread throughout the year on the family table (and his willingness to work to provide it).

Marking the festival in the modern world

• Bake your own bread on Lughnassadh Eve, forming the loaf in the shape of a figure who can either represent the grain or corn spirit or the grain mother. Add milk to the mix and as you stir it in turn with friends and family or alone, make wishes for abundance and the harvest you wish to reap during the coming months. Ask also, if appropriate, for suitable employment.
• When your bread is cooked, eat or share it and name the transformations you seek in your life or the world. At dawn put out any remaining crumbs for the wild birds to eat.
• Bake extra bread or fruit pies to give to neighbours and colleagues who live alone and may not often cook for themselves.
• Cut down an area of weeds or overgrown grass in your garden or tidy up indoor plants. Alternatively, spend a day on an organised project clearing a local wilderness. This symbolically generates the energies to clear the way ahead in your life and relationships.
• Light an orange candle every evening for a week around the festival. Sprinkle a pinch of salt in the flame to let go of any injustice that cannot be put right but which needs to be released from your mind in order to set you free. Then add a small pinch of dried sage to the flame and name a blessing, however small, or an unexpected kindness you have received in the previous few months. At the end of the week, make a practical gesture or spoken small blessing to someone who does not merit it.
• Alternatively, if you feel you have been unjustly treated and cannot put matters right, knot dried grasses or pluck the petals of a dying flower, one for each injustice, and cast them into running water or bury them when planting late-flowering seeds or autumn flowers.
• Use corn or dried grasses to create corn knots and corn mother figures (with featureless head, arms, body and legs) tied with red and blue threads. Hang them in the home through the winter to bring protection and burn them on the first Monday after Twelfth Night (6 January) or on next year's spring equinox fires.
• Make a corn spirit by creating an abstract shape from ears of corn tied together. Burn him on the last day of Lughnassadh, just before dusk on 2 August, and scatter some of the ashes in your garden or on indoor plants to bring abundance to the home during the winter.
• Arrange journeys to see friends and relations or write or telephone, making definite plans to meet, as this is a time when tribes would get together before the long winter. Try to take an impromptu weekend away to fill you with energy for the coming months.
• Make a final effort to resolve an unfair official or neighbourhood dispute or a disagreement over an inheritance or property matter, if necessary by changing tactic or the person representing you.

Alban Elued or autumn equinox
(21-23 September)

Focus of the period: The completion of tasks; the fruition of long-term goals; for mending quarrels and forgiving yourself for past mistakes; for recovering money owed and overcoming debt problems; for assessing gain and loss; for family relationships and friendships; for material security for the months ahead; for abundance in all aspects of your life; for issues of job security or the need to consolidate finances; for all matters concerning retirement and older people; for the resolution or management of chronic heath problems

Key words: Reconciliation, assessment, storing assets

Emphasis of the festival: Reconciliation, fruit and nuts

Energies of the season: Balanced

Symbols: Copper-coloured, yellow or orange leaves, willow boughs, harvest fruits such as apples, berries, nuts, copper or bronze coins, pottery geese

Tree: Apple

Incenses, flower and herbs: Ferns, geranium, Michaelmas daisies, myrrh, pine, sandalwood, Solomon's seal, all small-petalled purple and blue flowers

Candle colours: Blue and green

Crystals: Aqua aura, blue lace agate, all calcites, chalcedony, rose quartz

Festival foods: The finest of the harvest, fruits, vegetables, jam, nuts, apple pies, geese (sacred to St Michael whose festival falls on 29 September), game, cider, barley wine and ale

Angel: Rismuch, angel of agriculture and cultivated land, wearing every imaginable shade of brown, carrying a scythe and a hoe as symbol that he is conserver of the land and the crops. His symbols are sheaves of wheat and ears of corn, and dishes of seeds and nuts

God and goddess: A sad pairing. The twin god myth blames Llew the Welsh god of light's faithless wife Blodeuwedd or Arthur the Sun King's Queen Guinevere for the king's demise. This was because the queen transferred her love to the dark twin, called here Goronwy or Lancelot. She is said to have given the dark twin the secret of the light twin's fatal weakness and so brought about his destruction.

But even these treachery myths reflect the need for the earth goddess to mate with the dark twin at the autumn equinox so the new dark twin can be born at the summer solstice and the wheel continue to turn.

The wounded Llew is left waiting in the body of a dying eagle to be released by death, while Arthur is carried to Avalon by the ladies of the lake (including, in some myths, Guinevere herself).

Blodeuwedd takes the form of an owl, the grandmother of winter, which links her with the old goddess who predominates at the next change point on the wheel.

Place on the wheel

Alban Elued is Gaelic for 'light on the water' and refers to the sun moving away over the water to shine on the Isles of the Blest, leaving the world with encroaching darkness.

Ancient tales tell of the death of the old hunter god at the hands of his successor or by offering himself to the huntsmen in the form of a magnificent stag. The early hunter gods were often portrayed with antlers, for example the Celtic and Gallic Cernunnos.

If you follow the other myth, the slain corn god is now in the underworld, the womb of the mother, awaiting rebirth.

While the goddess of the slain grain god mourns for her love she must prepare for the harvest over which she presides. But she is tired herself and getting heavier with the light child.

The dark twin finally challenges and kills the light brother who returns to the earth or the womb, as the two legends merge again.

The gathering of the second or green harvest of fruit, nuts and vegetables takes place at this time; also the final grain harvest, the storing of resources for the winter and barter for goods not available or scarce.

The forerunner of the modern harvest festival, these feasts of abundance and the offering of the finest of the harvest to the deities were considered part of the bargain between humans and deities.

Marking the festival in the modern world

• Make a list of what needs to be done urgently, a second list of less pressing but necessary tasks and a final list of those matters that are best left, some of which may be things you did not want to do anyway. Throw away the third list and draw up a realistic timescale for the completion of the other tasks.
• Contact an old friend or a family member with whom you have lost touch. Also decide if there is anyone with whom you would like to reduce or cease communication who is undermining your confidence or making you feel unnecessarily guilty.
• Give up a bad habit or work to overcome a fear or phobia that is holding you back from doing things.
• Buy or make seasonal fruit jam and hold an old-fashioned tea or coffee party to bring different generations together.
• Visit a seasonal farmers' market or art and craft fair and maybe take along something you have created to sell.
• Have a sale on eBay, go to a local car boot sale or set up a garage sale to offload items you do not want to dust or store through the winter (a pre-winter clear-out).
• Hold an auction of hoarded personal treasures and send the money to a charity that relieves famine.
• Stand by the sea or flowing water at sunset and cast pebbles or shells into the dying light on the water to cast off all regrets, resentments, sorrows, failures and unfinished business from the previous months that you do not wish to carry forward into the winter.
• Look for something on the shore or riverbank to take home as a token of the gifts you carry forward with you from the previous months.
• Take a bowl containing equal numbers of nuts or berries and seeds and work outdoors. Name a success or achievement from the previous months that has materialised by the autumn equinox and eat a nut or berry; then name a failure or loss and cast a seed into the ground.

• Continue until you have eaten and shed the same number and can think of no more; bury the rest beneath a fruit or nut-bearing tree.
• Sweep up autumn leaves into a pile; jump up and down in it as you did when a child, expressing joy at the promise of the coming days, naming opportunities and all you can and will achieve in winter. Finally, scatter the leaves and let the good and the bad, the gains and the losses be carried equally on the wind.
• Prepare a feast of fruit and vegetables, of bread, cider and barley wine or fruit cup and warming soups and hold an equinox party. Make offerings to the land of barley wine, ale or mead and bread by scattering a little on the ground.
• Pass round a communal cup to everyone present or fill everyone's glasses and ask them to drink and make a blessing on the occasion or on people and places where there is hunger or poverty.
• Contact anyone from whom you are estranged, sending autumn flowers or a plant you have nurtured or a small basket of produce as a peace offering. If your reconciliatory gestures are rejected, at least you can move forward, knowing you have tried. Alternatively, help an organisation concerned with peace.
• Climb to the top of a hill at sunset on equinox night and, as the ancients did, say goodbye to the animals who will soon be hibernating and to any birds who are or will be migrating, and wish them well.

Samhain, the beginning of the Celtic winter
and the Celtic New Year
(31 October-2 November)

Focus of the period: Remembering the family ancestors; for looking both backwards to the past and into the future; for protection, psychic and physical; for overcoming fears, especially of ageing and mortality; for retired people and those in their 70s and 80s; for marking the natural transition between one stage of life and the next; for laying old ghosts, psychological as well as psychic

Key words: Letting go of the need for total control, mortality and immortality

Emphasis of the festival: Honouring and learning from the past, nature spirits, fey energies

Energies of the season: Waning, the temporary rule of chaos over order

Symbols: Apples, pumpkins, nuts and autumn leaves, mingled with evergreens as a promise that life continues, salt, scary masks, fantastic costumes and lanterns, statues of fairies and magical animals like unicorns

Tree: Silver fir

Incenses, flower and herbs: Cypress, dittany, ferns, garlic, nutmeg, pine, sage, thyme; large white flowers, rose petals and rose fragrances, spices

Candle colour: Orange, purple

Crystals: Dark amethyst, jet, lapis lazuli, obsidian (apache tear), smoky quartz, sodalite

Festival foods: Roast beef, salted fish and pickles, pumpkin pie and soup, baked and toffee apples with spices, baked potatoes, spiced or mulled wine, candies and sweets of all kinds in dishes. Cook and eat the favourite foods of relatives who have died or use old family recipes

Angel: Cassiel, archangel of compassion and silence. He is pictured as bearded, riding a dragon and wearing dark robes, with indigo flames sparking from his halo. He rules over good luck and games of chance, so competitive games and divination are popular at this time

God and goddess: The crone or grandmother goddess, for example the Scottish and Irish goddess Caillieach who rules the winter months. She cares for the animals that live on open moorlands during the winter and older people who may feel the cold but do not have enough money for adequate heating.

The god energy is divided between the slain grain lord in the underworld awaiting rebirth and the trickster twin Goronwy. Goronwy takes advantage of the goddess's absence from the world when she visits the underworld to share the sorrows of death with her man, to ascend the throne, misrule and cause chaos through the world

The place on the wheel

Samhain means summer's end, the time when the herds were brought down from the hills and family members returned to the homestead for the winter. It was believed the ancestors would likewise return and be welcomed at the family hearth.

The animals were either slaughtered or cleansed ritually by the Halloween fires and then kept in barns. Being the Celtic New Year and the time when the Goddess leaves her creation for three days (all the time that is allowed to her), this is when the otherworld releases fairies and mischievous spirits not just the benign family ancestors.

The Christianised Halloween is called All Hallows Eve. This and the following two days, All Saints and All Souls days (1 and 2 November), are, especially in lands where Catholicism is strong, occasions when the family dead are remembered and honoured.

For example, in France families dress in their finest clothes and visit cemeteries where graves are adorned with displays of flowers and photographs. It was once believed the dead returned to the Isle of Mont St Michel in Brittany on 1 November as what is now the church on top of the mount and the golden statue of Michael was once considered an entrance to the Celtic otherworld guarded by the wise druidesses who made their home on the island for hundreds of years.

It is this reverence for the ancestors that neopagans emphasise on Halloween and the days after, though some still have a fun spooky party for children and friends. So too do many neopagans practise divination on Halloween night to discover the opportunities for the year ahead at a time when past, present and future are so close.

Marking the festival in the modern world

• In traditional style, hollow out a pumpkin and place a lighted candle inside. Set the pumpkin in a window facing the road for the three days until dusk on 2 November.
• This will protect you from all harm but will welcome home the family ancestors. The light will connect you emotionally with living relatives who are far away.

• It was believed that if you listened to the wind at a crossroads on Halloween just before midnight you would hear all you needed to know for the year ahead.
• Spend time outdoors on Halloween Eve, listening to the wind in the trees, the sound of the sea, water running over stones or birdsong. You may hear words in the leaves or wind or in your mind that explain matters that have been troubling you.
• Alternatively, stay indoors and make eight holes (instead of a face) in the sides of a second hollowed-out pumpkin. Each window represents one of the eight festivals. Place a lighted candle inside.
• Peer through each hole to see into other dimensions and receive wisdom about each of the six-week periods in turn, beginning with Halloween. Revolve the pumpkin anticlockwise to look into each.
• Stare hard into each window, blink and an image will flash before you to reveal an opportunity or unexpected assistance or strengths for the approximate six-week period ahead. Begin with the six weeks after Halloween.
• If you are seeking love, eat salted herring before bed and it is said you will dream of your true love bringing you a drink of water in your dream.
• Alternatively, play the traditional druid apple-bobbing game of picking an apple by its stalk with your teeth from a bucket of water. Take the apple home and at midnight eat the apple while brushing your hair and looking into a mirror by candlelight. It is said that the image of your true love will appear in the glass at the first stroke of midnight.
• If you are playing apple bobbing with others, the first to pick an apple will be the first married.
• You can, of course, use your favourite form of divination, such as Tarot cards or runes, to ask questions about the 12 months ahead. Do this at 10 pm or just before midnight as these are the most potent times.
• Find out about a family ancestor with whom you feel a strong connection. During the week before Halloween, try to visit the place where the person lived, to connect with your historical roots. Alternatively, go to an industrial or local history museum where you can see the kind of implements and tools your chosen ancestor would have used and the clothes and shoes they would have worn. Either in the place they came from or once lived, or in the museum, sit quietly and picture your ancestor in your mind. Focus especially on an image of their feet and shoes, and say softly or think,

May I walk in your shoes for a while?

• Stand up and begin to walk slowly, imagining your ancestor walking beside you until gradually your footsteps and feet merge. You may experience flashes of scenes from their life that you never knew about before and you may share their emotions.
• Finally, you will feel the connection fading and your footsteps separating. Say,

Go in peace and with thanks and blessings.

• If you have not already started to do so, resolve to research your family tree in the days after Halloween or find a family member who would enjoy doing so. Then, by next Halloween, you will have a much fuller picture of your roots.
• On Halloween Eve or on one of the two evenings afterwards, cook favourite family recipes passed down through the generations, get out old photographs and tell family stories and legends. If you are alone, recall these stories or record some of them for the future, maybe even as the basis for a short story or novel. The recipes and customs could be written down as a cookery book.
• At a quiet time on the evening of 1 November, place a protective clove of garlic on a west-facing window and light an orange candle, saying,

May only goodness and love enter here.

• Hold a favourite possession of a beloved deceased relative and speak words of love. Then ask the relative to give you a sign that they are with you. The candle may flicker or you may feel their presence or a soft touch on your shoulder or hair.
• Your relative will not frighten you by appearing unless this is what you want but you may hear soft words in your mind. After a few moments the connection will fade. Blow out the candle and say,

Go in peace and blessings and with my love.

• You may dream of the person during the night or hear their favourite music or smell their favourite flowers somewhere unexpectedly the following day.
• Gaze into a fire or candle flame and sprinkle sandalwood, cedar and juniper berries on to the flame or flames. Images of past worlds and maybe past lives will emerge spontaneously in the embers or flame or in your mind. These fragrances are believed to have been used to bring visions of the past from the Archangel Azrael.
• On 2 November, if you do not have one already, set up a small table covered by a white cloth where you can keep mementoes of loved ones who have passed on. For example, you could display a piece of jewellery or watch belonging to the loved one and pictures of your family ancestors.
• Keep fresh fragrant flowers there and on a special family anniversary, at Halloween or, if you wish, once a week on a Friday or Saturday light a white candle, send your deceased relatives blessings, perhaps read aloud their favourite poem or prayer or play their favourite music and ask for their blessings on your life and family.
• The Ancient Egyptians had altars where they left offerings for the Ka or soul of their deceased relatives and sent blessings that the ancestor's name might live on.

Alban Arthuran, Yule or midwinter solstice
(20-22 December)

Focus of the festival: The rebirth of light and hope; for domestic happiness and security, family togetherness, anything to do with the home and property and for financial security; for long-term money ventures; for patience and accepting what cannot be changed; for very old people; for carers of the elderly, sick or vulnerable; for welcoming home travellers and the return of people you miss from the past; for restoring enthusiasm and health in those worn down by illness or lack of hope

Key words: Hope, security and stability

Emphasis of the festival: Rekindling extinguished flames, light in the darkness

Energies of the season: Turning point as the energies begin to rise again from the lowest point

Symbols: Evergreen boughs, especially pine or fir; small logs of wood, especially oak, pine and ash; holly and ivy sprigs; gold coins and jewellery; red, green, white and gold candles; silver, red, green and gold ribbons and baubles; tiny wrapped presents to be opened on the solstice or a pre-Christmas celebration

Tree: Holly

Incenses, flowers and herbs: Bay, cedar, feverfew, frankincense and myrrh mixed, holly, juniper, pine, rosemary, sage and all spices, poinsettias, scarlet and white flowers

Candle colours: White, scarlet, gold, green, purple

Crystals: Amazonite, garnet, malachite, opal aura, snowflake obsidian, snow quartz

Festival foods: Roast pork (more recently turkey), thick meat and vegetables stews, mulled wine, cakes with marzipan and icing, rich fruit cake and puddings to represent the fruits, grains and riches of the Earth Mother (traditionally with silver and gold charms or coins hidden within), mince pies (in Christian tradition to represent the crib of Jesus), marzipan, a sweet rice and cinnamon pudding mix for the nature spirits (in Scandinavian countries), dates, small oranges, figs

Angel: Gabriel, archangel of the moon, who took the news to Mary that she would have a son, Jesus. Picture him in silver or clothed in the blue of the night sky with a mantle of stars and a crescent moon for his halo, holding a golden horn and a white lily or, alternatively, a lantern in his right hand and a mirror made of jasper in his left

God and goddess: The three sisters of Fate, known in different traditions as the Matrones in Ancient Rome, the Norns in Scandinavia or the midwives who deliver the new sun king. In some legends the Celtic maiden goddess or Saint Brighid acts as midwife.

The infant sun king or light twin and his mother, the Virgin Mary of Christianity, or the Ancient Egyptian Isis who gave birth to her son Horus in a cave in secrecy on the midwinter solstice

The place on the wheel

Alban Arthuran is Gaelic for 'the light of Arthur' and refers to the rebirth of Arthur as the divine child called the Mabon in Celtic spirituality.

The festival celebrates the restoration of the power of the sun and the almost imperceptible return of the light and with it hope of lighter and longer days and even spring.

The sun god is reborn after the fear that the world will be overwhelmed by darkness on the shortest day of the year.

As the dark twin knows his power is on the wane, he watches jealously the attention being paid to his newborn brother.

At this time, in hunting and agricultural societies, there was a natural fear about food supplies not lasting the rest of the winter, especially if the weather ahead was hard.

At the midwinter solstice and during the later 12 days of Christmas, people held feasts of the finest of the food as a magical gesture to attract abundance.

In the Norse tradition, this feast was shared with the deities and ancestors. People from time immemorial hung lights from evergreen branches to encourage the trees and vegetation to sprout greenery again and to give power to the sun.

In passage graves throughout the world, such as at Newgrange in Ireland, people waited in darkness for the first shaft of light on the solstice morning to illuminate the inner shrine. Their lanterns were then relit from a single flint.

Marking the festival in the modern world

• On the shortest day, as the day fades, either alone or with a group of friends or family, light from a small central gold candle, a circle of white candles. Light one from the other and say,

I/we will walk into the darkness in total trust, knowing that the light will return.

• Blow out the candles one by one round the circle in reverse order of lighting until only the central candle is alight. Wait in the growing darkness, trusting that all will be well and not worrying about the future.
• I once did this in the old stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire with other druids. The only sound was the sheep and the only light a small flickering one in the centre of the shadowy stones. One of the three druidesses acting as the midwives asked,

Who will walk into the darkness with me?
Who will take my hand?

• When you are ready, relight each candle, one from the other, beginning from the central gold one, naming for each candle relit what you seek as enlightenment, and the light you will offer the world in return.
• Alternatively, light a dark-coloured candle on the solstice eve or the night of the solstice day to represent the past that is gone or matters that now must be accepted. From it, light a white or gold candle for the future and then extinguish the dark candle. Let the white or gold candle burn, allowing the cosmos to send what you most need.
• Make or buy small dried herb sachets or bath products for friends and family as a gift in the build-up to Christmas, just to say 'I appreciate you'.
• Leave the Christmas shopping and, on the day of the solstice, go out into the countryside or local urban woodland and, if allowed, gather evergreen boughs with friends and family. Alternatively, find or buy sprigs of holly, ivy and mistletoe to represent the potential of new life.
• Make this also the evening you put up and decorate your solstice or Christmas tree, rather than doing it weeks beforehand, and mark the tree decorating and lighting as a special occasion. Choose a tree with roots that you can plant outdoors after Christmas. I have several of our family Christmas memory trees in the garden that I adorn with outdoor fairy lights.

• As you decorate the house, sing your favourite Christmas carols from childhood and some of the old songs with pagan overtones, such as 'The Holly and the Ivy', 'The Cherry Tree Carol' and 'Green Grow the Rushes'.
• Some of the modern commercialised recorded Christmas music has little to do with the old festival but is often taught, even in schools, instead of more popular folk heritage songs that span different religions and cultures. Learn and sing songs from other winter festivals of light such as the Hindu Divali.
• As darkness falls on the day of the solstice, create a small fire outdoors or in a tiny metal pot and burn sprigs of yew, oak and holly. Alternatively, indoors, light a big white candle embedded in soil from Mother Earth and burn pine needles and rosemary.
• As you toss on each fragrant handful of sprigs or pinches of herbs, name someone who cannot be with you and those causes dear to your heart that will benefit from the renewed power of the sun.
• On solstice night also fill a metal bowl with cold water and either alone or with friends or family, in the age-old tradition, take it in turns to drip wax from the Christmas candles on to the surface of the water. Use candles that are the same colour all the way through, and hold one in each hand.
• Either ask specific questions or allow the images that appear to suggest opportunities in the weeks ahead. You will see a moving image as the molten wax falls on the surface of the water and a second more permanent image as the wax sets.
• The first will indicate an area of life or situation that will bear fruit over the coming days and weeks; the second will show ways in which you can maximise the energies of the ascending light of the season. Wash out the bowl between readings if you want to ask more questions.
• If you are seeking love, on solstice or Christmas Eve walk upstairs backwards while eating a piece of Christmas cake and place the crumbs beneath your pillow. You will dream of your true love or a secret admirer.
• French villagers, especially in Provence, once created their own santons, tiny nativity figures made from clay and often including village characters and local tradespeople. Take time with children or friends and family to fashion from self-hardening clay your own santons to paint and display.
• Include family members, pets and local characters. The scene can be adapted to illustrate the rebirth of the sun king or goddess myths. Set the santons around your tree or in a cave made from rocks and crystals.