2021 WINTER SOLSTICE

TIMING THE 2021 WINTER SOLSTICE

Southward Solstice
Capricorn Ingress

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

 

UTC
(Time Zone)
3:59:00 pm GMT/Zulu

London
(United Kingdom – England)
3:59:00 pm GMT UTC

Washington DC
(District of Columbia)
10:59:00 am EST UTC-5 hours

New Orleans
(Louisiana)
9:59:00 am CST UTC-6 hours

Denver
(Colorado)
8:59:00 am MST UTC-7 hours

Seattle
(Washington)
7:59:00 am PST UTC-8 hours

Wailuku
(Hawaii)
5:59:00 am HST UTC-10 hours


“The days have decreased in length as much as they ever will [or increased that much south of the equator]. Life surges once more with the Sun from its southern decline. The Sun moves northward, its daily arc of light becomes slowly tauter and more radiant. The promise of spring spreads like a mystic fire over the earth to tell ‘men of good will’ that the New Life has begun to win over arrested death.”
-- Dane Rudhyar, The Pulse of Life, 1963

By the awesome Francis Donald Grabau. starpath visions dot com

 

 

At Winter Solstice, the realm of the night has reached its maximum. The day begins increasing in length. Sol comes his furthest south and has his shortest period in the day sky, while the night is the longest of the year. From the point of the Solstice onward to the Summer Solstice, there is an increase of light.

The Sun and Moon are the basis for most calendars. Astronomical events keyed to the Sun (a few include the Moon) determine many holidays and holy days. The Winter Solstice marks the Sun’s entry into the sign, Capricorn ruled by the planet Saturn. It is also known as the Capricorn ingress. Winter celebrations include Saturnalia, a week-long Roman festival of the god Saturn. While the precise solstice time is given here for the Sun’s standstill moment, it seems to rise and set from the same point for three days or so. There is a more extended festival of Germanic people called by the Norse word for wheel, “Yule,” and of course, Christmas Eve and Day, and New Year’s Eve and Day. Karolina Markovic offers the feast day of St. Nicholas (Nikoljdan, December 19).

NASA

Donna Henes has a poetic take on the still moment that eruptions may punctuate from the depths of undifferentiated potential. On the day of the Solstice, and aware of the precise timing, one may take some time to meditate and reflect.

“The year is a wheel with eight spokes. Each circuit is comparable to the cycle of a human life. The Winter Solstice is the time before we were born, the great dark uterine void from which all is formed. The vast black ring around all possibility, its perimeter bulging with promise. Light is conceived in the cold dark at the time of the Winter Solstice. The smallest spark, the most tentative hint of a glow, is imagined in the dense ambiance of its absence. The Sun is a mere gleam in the eye of eternity. Light, no matter how tiny, equals life.”

-- Donna Henes, Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles & Celebrations. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1966, p. 5. Thanks to Astrolabe.

When does the year begin?

“...in very ancient times, the most important yearly turning points were considered to be the summer and winter solstices. Later, in the 4th century AD, Emperor Julian opted for the Winter Solstice in particular, “when King Helios returns to us again, and leaving the region furthest south and rounding Capricorn as though it were a goal-post, advances from the south to the north to give us our share of blessings of the year.”
--- Quoted by Charles Harvey in Michael Baigent, Nicholas Campion, and Charles Harvey, Mundane Astrology, 2nd ed. London, Aquarian Press, 1992.

“In the 20th century, Charles Carter in England, and Alfred Witte in Germany, both echoed Emperor Julian’s sentiments and made a persuasive case for the Capricorn ingress to be regarded as the beginning, or the start of the year. The consensus among most “Western” astrologers is that the Vernal Equinox (Spring) begins the astrological year. Witte saw the Capricorn ingress as the beginning of the solar cycle. In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the time when the old Sun dies, and a new one is born, and, as Chinese astrologers saw it, increasing yin switches over to increasing yang. Like the New Moon, which most astrologers acknowledge as the beginning of the lunar cycle, the Winter Solstice marks the end of the waning half of the cycle and the beginning of a new waxing half.

“In Northern latitudes, Capricorn is probably the most emotionally laden of the four Cardinal ingresses – the one that brings up primal fears of darkness, cold, hunger, and the cessation of all life. Will the light return? Will the round of life continue? For peoples who routinely experienced cold, famine, and nights lit only by firelight, seeing the waning of the Sun’s strength finally reverse itself must have genuinely seemed like a rebirth and must have been an occasion for heartfelt rejoicing.

“Today, around the time of the Winter Solstice we still compensate for the withdrawal of the Sun’s light and heat by cozily nesting indoors, stoking the fire, festooning trees with lights, and warming ourselves with food, strong spirits and the company of others. To counter nature’s threat of scarcity, we invoke a great-bellied saint clad in the color of fire, whose pack brims with human-made abundance. Our thoughts turn from fresh-picked food toward what is preserved and stored, from the vanished lushness of the natural world toward the human-created social order with its own ingenious methods for sustaining life and hope.”
--- https://alabe.com/AUG2.htm (TR edited)

The idea that the Sun does not move from rising at the same point for three days is an observed one, not a factual reality. One may calculate the precise standstill moment to the second. Astrologers use the timing of solstices and equinoxes for mundane appraisal of the period to follow. Gary Christen, a well-known practitioner of Uranian Astrology (now referred to as Symmetrical Astrology), does a mind-bendingly good job of using the ingress chart to forecast world events and trends. For Christen’s annual report, go to alabe .com. I use the precision personally and privately to honor the moment.