image: Fajada Butte sun dagger, winter solstice. Don Perry (link).
The earth and sun pass through the point of December solstice in a few more hours, at 02:02 am on 21 December (Pacific time), or 05:02 am on 21 December (Eastern time), which is 10:02 am on 21 December UMT.
This relationship creates the shortest day of the year for the northern hemisphere, after which days will grow successively longer until reaching the June solstice: thus, the esoteric system of celestial metaphor underlying the world's ancient myths imbue the winter solstice with tremendous significance, including with the recovery or the "rebirth" of the suppressed and buried Self, from whom we become alienated during our descent into this lower realm through which we sojourn in this incarnate life.
Numerous previous posts, many of them published for December solstices in years passed, discuss the ancient significance of this supremely important day in the annual cycle as used in the world's myths and sacred traditions, including:
This year, the December solstice takes on even greater significance with the occurrence of a Great Conjunction, an alignment of the planets Jupiter and Saturn with our earth such that the two great orbs will pass within a fraction of a degree of one another, closer than they have appeared in the sky since 1623! Here is a link to a recent video in which I discuss this Great Conjunction of 2020.
While many media outlets and stories are declaring that the Great Conjunction represents a "return of the Christmas Star" (or "Star of Bethlehem") described in the gospel accounts of the Nativity story, I disagree with this interpretation. I agree with the interpretation put forth by Robert Taylor (1784 - 1844) who argues that the star referred to in those accounts is almost certainly the star Vindemiatrix, marking the distinctive "outstretched arm" of Virgo the Virgin, as I have explained in numerous previous posts (see for example here) and also recently in an interview on the Tin Foil Hat podcastwith Sam Tripoli, Xavier Guerrero, and Johnny Woodard (see discussion beginning at approximately 0:42:30 of that video).
I have also recently published a video refuting some of the sensational claims by irresponsible persons promoting the narrative that the 21st of December 2020 represents a prophesied "end of the world" (here is a link to that video).
However, as the authors of Hamlet's Mill argue in their seminal 1969 text, the movement of the Great Conjunction through the background signs of the zodiac, through the slow rotation of the triangular pattern of these conjunctions (known as the "Trigon") was anciently seen as a kind of "vernier" or "caliper scale for more precise measurement" which subdivided the much slower turning of the gears of precession, and which served as an indicator for the end of one precessional age and the arrival of the next.
For instance, on page 244 of Hamlet's Mill, the authors declare that the Age of Pisces "was introduced by the thrice-repeated Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces in the year 6 BC, the star of Bethlehem."
Although Saturn and Jupiter are presently coming into alignment in the space in between the zodiac constellations of Sagittarius and Capricorn (and closer to Capricorn than to Sagittarius), due to the action of precession which "delays" the background of stars and which thus separates the traditional astrological sign from the current constellational setting, most western astrologers would assert that this year's conjunction is occurring in the very beginning degree of Aquarius (for the first time for this point of the Trigon in thousands of years).
Thus, one could argue that this Great Conjunction could mark the beginning of the Age of Aquarius -- and you can find many astrologers who are arguing just that, pointing to the Great Conjunction of 2020 as evidence -- although note that in the quotation from Hamlet's Mill cited above that the year they argue as marking the start of the Age of Pisces was a year in which a point on the Trigon of the Great Conjunction occurred in the sign of Pisces for the third consecutive time, and they cite a well-known text from the ancient poet Virgil as evidence that the ancients agreed that this particular third time marked the dawning of that new precessional age. Therefore, we could point to ancient precedent which argues that the Age of Aquarius will not begin for another 120 years, when this point on the Trigon brings a Great Conjunction in the sign of Aquarius for the third time in a row.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the criminal oligarchs who wish to employ the ancient teachings in order to wrongly seize the gifts of nature and the gods for their own enrichment, while simultaneously seeking to impoverish, oppress, and inflict trauma upon the men and women of the nations of earth to whom those gifts are rightly given, place great stock in the heavenly cycles and alignments, and that they may well see this year's significant Great Conjunction as an important turning-point.
For evidence which suggests that previous criminal operations designed to deceive and traumatize humanity may have been timed to coincide with specific planetary alignments, see for example this previous post entitled "The gods are real."
The dawning of a new precessional age was encoded within the world's ancient myths as the end of one "world" and the birth of a new one -- and as I have explained in many of my previous books including my most-recent book Myth and Trauma, the "displacement" created by the grinding gears of precession is used by the ancient myths as representative of our own displacement, and separation from our Self. The myths can be definitively shown to have as a central theme and message the recovery of the Self and the repair of this displacement.
However, there are clearly forces who wish to invert the positive purpose of the ancient myths and to use them instead to inflict displacement and trauma, rather than to heal those conditions. Such behavior would be akin to a skilled psychologist, having at his or her disposal the tools and skills needed to help other men and women to overcome psychological injury, instead using those tools and skills to inflict more injury and harm.
We are presently witnessing unprecedented actions designed to inflict economic and psychological harm on billions of men and women and children world-wide, under the guise of a "pandemic," alongside calls for a "Great Reset" by well-connected proponents of oligarchy and austerity in the so-called World Economic Forum. For a discussion of the connection between policies designed to impose greater and greater austerity on the people and the seizing of the public domain by oligarchs and monopolists, see this blog post and video from August of this year entitled "Austerity and Rent-Seeking vs Public Infrastructure and Prosperity."
Professor Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research has just published a new online essay in nine chapters entitled "The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d'Etat and the Great Reset," which details the evidence that measures and policies being rolled out this year were planned well before the purported first discovery of a new virus, and which argues that the agenda we are seeing unfold before our eyes must be confronted and opposed for the preservation of life on earth.
I would urge everyone to take the time this December Solstice 2020 to carefully and thoroughly consider the possibility that malevolent actors would very much like to usher in a "new age" of darkness and oppression. In my most-recent book, Myth and Trauma, I argue that these actors are following a playbook which stretches back to the overthrow of the ancient wisdom during the time of the Roman Empire.
The good news is that the winter solstice itself along with the shifting of the ages-long cycle of precession were both employed in the world's ancient wisdom as pointing towards the recovery of Self and the repair of trauma and separation -- recovery which is urgently needed, both within ourselves and within society at large, and this December Solstice is an excellent time to commit ourselves to both of them.