Solstice is this week. Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year. The very next day, daylight begins to lengthen again. It is a powerful time for letting go.
There is a ritual known as the Fire Ceremony that is perfect for letting go on winter Solstice.
Many winter Solstices I have spent performing a Fire Ceremony to release what is no longer serving me. We are about to enter into the new year. We are about to begin our journey back toward the Light. I do not want to carry with me spiritual and emotional baggage that is weighing me down. The Fire Ceremony invites you to let go, to offer it to the Sacred through Fire.
It is a simple Ceremony, that needs to be performed with Intention and prepared for with Intention. Intention is the key element to this Ceremony. Just doing the Ceremony will bring no letting go. The Intention and Presence you give is what creates the release, the letting go, the healing.
Through the slowing down of Advent, you have spent time listening to the Sacred. You may have begun to become aware of something in your life that is holding you back, weighing you down. Maybe there is some worry or anxiety or fear that has consistently reared its head during your times of prayer and contemplation. You feel led to release it. The first step is to be consciously aware of what you desire to let go of.
Then with that awareness, you create an organic object, or talisman, to represent and hold what you would like to let go of. It does not have to look like what you are letting go of. I usually go for a walk in the woods holding the Intention of what I desire to release, asking the Sacred to bring something I can burn into my awareness. That object, a stick, leaves, pine needles, pine cones, etc, is what I use.
I have also used my journal papers. I have written all aspects of what I want to release. I have told the story that my mind has it connected to. I have written all the ways it has reared its head in my life. I have shared in my journal how I experience it holding me back. Then I tear out all those pages and make them into a log to burn.
Once you have your object, you energetically put what you desire to release into the object. You can do this through prayer, tears, coloring, writing, dance, song, wrapping yarn around it, etc. Keep at this step until you have filled this gifted object with every last drop of what you desire to release.
Then, on Solstice, you create a safe Fire after dark. Gather friends. It is important to do this in community, to have community witness your release and celebrate it with you.
When you are ready, put the object into the Fire. Watch it burn. As it burns let your prayer be release – “O Sacred Fire, burn every aspect of this from my being. Release me fully from its grasp.”
When your object has fully burned, thank the Fire. You can offer the Fire a gift of gratitude: Native tobacco, sage, pine needles, chocolate.
The Fire carries away what you are releasing. It takes it to the Sacred to be transfigured into Healing Energy in this Universe.
I remember a powerful Fire (not Fire) Ceremony I did one year in the desert of Arizona while on Silent Retreat. I did not use fire because I was in the desert. Instead I buried it.
I spent most of the days I was on silent retreat prayerfully putting into a tiny folded piece of paper the Intention of what I was releasing. I cried over that paper. I danced and shook the energy into it. I held it and prayed the prayer into it.
The day I went to perform the Ceremony, I was alone. Yet, I was not. I did perform the Ceremony in community, just not the community I thought I would.
I found a spot with a hole already in the Earth. I stood, closed my eyes and prayed. I sang a song to align my heart with the Sacred. When I was ready, I put the folded paper into the hold. I stood up. I became aware that I was not alone. A herd of deer had gathered around for the Ceremony. They stood surrounding me, watching quietly and peacefully. When I acknowledged them, they went on their way.
The power of the release came days later when I awoke from a deep dream. I had been releasing a part of myself that kept holding me back, that kept sabotaging my dreams. I awoke from a dream where I sat at the bedside of myself as I died. I hospice chaplained this aspect of me into the beyond, encouraging it to peacefully pass into the afterlife. Since that day, what I released has been gone. There was a freedom I felt that morning that has allowed me to walk closer and closer to my dream.
Fire Ceremonies are powerful experiences when we enter them with humility and hope, when we prayerfully ask the Sacred to help us release what we know is not serving us, and yet we cannot seem to let it go.
My prayer for you this Solstice is that you are able to experience a release of something in your life that is not serving you, that is holding you back. Let it go.
Give it to God and lean into the Light that will begin to lengthen each day.
