Winter Solstice
Winter Soltice is a celestial occurrence of great significance in most religions and cultures as the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year. The Sun appears at its lowest elevation over the horizon, because the Earth's North pole has reached its maximum tilt away from the star. In modern times the event generally falls on December 21 or 22.
Theosophical viewpoints
Several Theosophists have commented on the winter solstice.
H. P. Blavatsky wrote:
Christmas comes just at the time of the winter solstice; the days then are shortest, and Darkness is more upon the face of the earth than ever. All the sun-gods were believed to be annually born at that epoch; for from this time its Light dispels more and more darkness with each succeeding day, and the power of the Sun begins to increase.[1]
We are in the Winter Solstice, the period at which the Sun entering the sign of Capricornus has already, since December 21st, ceased to advance in the Southern Hemisphere, and, cancer or crablike, begins to move back. It is at this particular time that, every year, he is born, and December 25th was the day of the birth of the Sun for those who inhabited the Northern Hemisphere. It is also on December the 25th, Christmas, the day with the Christians on which the “Saviour of the World” was born, that were born, ages before him, the Persian Mithra, the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek Bacchus, the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis. And, while at Memphis the people were shown the image of the god Day, taken out of his cradle, the Romans marked December 25th in their calendar as the day natalis solis invicti.[2]
Judaism
Christianity
Hinduism
Neolithic people
People of the Neolithic period constructed Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain of England between 3000 BCE and 2000 BCE. It is a ring of standing stones topped with lintels, with trilithons and other structures of massive size that serve as an astronomical calculator. At dawn of the Summer Solstice and sunset of the Winter Solstice, sunlight shines between the stones, and since the Stone Age, people have gathered every year to celebrate the cycle of nature.
Online resources
Articles
- Winter Solstice — Gift of Illumination by Dorothea Hamann.
- Christmas and the Winter Solstice by Alan E. Donant
- Sacred Solstice by Elsa-Brita Titchenell.
- Winter Solstice and Stonehenge at English Heritage website.
Books
- The Four Sacred Seasons Ch 1., "The Winter Solstice" by G. de Purucker