Winter solstice

Winter solstice 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.

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:

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!

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.

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.

Sources

Holy Days Calendar, December 1993.