A homily for the Solstice on December 21, 2024.
Dearly Beloved,
A very blessed Solstice to all of you, my dear siblings. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are deep in the heart of winter, and our siblings in the global south are celebrating their longest day of Summer. On both sides of the world we are in a moment of extremes, a moment where we have been pushed to our growing edges. Such moments are often uncomfortable. We who are in the cold are shivering even as those who are in the heat are seeking coolness where they can. We are tired and we are sore as we groan in the cold of night and sigh in the heat of the day. It’s a moment where we wait with bated breath for the tide to turn.
As such, I am moved to speak of that virtue that holds us up when everything else is falling apart, that leap that we must sometimes make into the future and into our choices, that step we must sometimes take into ourselves and into the Divine in order to grow.
I am moved to speak of faith.
Faith is a loaded—perhaps even fraught—term in the modern occult and pagan community. Most mages have had various experiences that have proven the efficacy of practical magick to them, and many of us have also had mystical experiences that have given us strong convictions about topics like deities, spirits, and the ultimate nature of existence. Thus, for many of us, our relationship with spiritual and metaphysical claims is fundamentally different than that of the exoteric religions. While we do have various texts that are considered holy or inspired, such as the “Charge Of The Goddess” or “Liber AL vel Legis (The Book Of The Law)”, for the most part mages tend to feel that we don’t really need to have some sort of faith in their literal truth in order to gain value from them. The texts resonate more or less for different people and we tend to look for value through that resonance more than we tend to look for explanations for the world. When I read texts like the Hermetica, Liber AL, or the Bible, I am looking for wisdom and insights into ultimate reality, not for the sorts of explanations better left to the physical sciences, and when I read a grimoire I am generally looking for specific actionable knowledge, not for theological explanations of the world. I don’t need faith to engage with any of that. This could be considered one of the best recommendations for magick as a pursuit…we generally don’t need to have faith in the usual sense because we know. Gnosis, relationship, and personal experience is at the heart of our path.
So what do I mean by faith? To explain that I need to tell a story.
As many people know, my parents were witches. I learned my first spell (a cure for my headaches) at age ten and was given my first book on magick (“Modern Magick” by Donald Michael Kraig) by my mother for my twelfth birthday. But by the time I was 18, my life had taken a turn and I ended up homeless. I was literally living in a tent in the woods.
Then, rather suddenly, right after Samhain, I had a dream. I was confronted by a spirit that looked like a classical humanoid white-winged angel bound to a classical fiery humanoid demon at the bottoms of their feet. I would later learn that this was my “holy daimon” or “holy guardian angel” when I did the Abramelin Operation years later, in 2002-2003, but at this point all I knew was that they were a messenger and that, in my bones, I felt they were a legitimate messenger, a true angel of the Divine. This angel told me to sell everything I owned and get a one-way bus ticket to New Orleans and that the rest of my path would follow from there.
Now, I was presented with a dilemma. I was poor and homeless, but at least in my hometown I had friends and a support system. I could usually find work if I needed money, find a meal if I was hungry, and find a safe place to sleep if it was raining or cold. Sure, it was a horrid little town in southern Texas, but it was also my hometown and, at that point, it was all I knew.
So I had to make a very difficult choice. Sure, I could have played it safe, stuck with what I knew, and blew it off. After all, it was a dream, and I have always been an intense dreamer, for good and ill. But I couldn’t bring myself to let it go. The dream stuck with me. Haunted me. And so, a couple of weeks later, I sold everything except some clothes, a backpack, and my acoustic guitar, and went to New Orleans. That was the first step that led me to Santa Cruz, California, where I met my teacher and was set firmly upon the path of the Great Work. Eight years later I would meet my angel again after ten months of daily ritual and maintaining increasingly intense levels of asceticism. They haven’t left my side since.
Now, did I make the right choice? And more importantly, how did I make the choice? Did I make a cost-benefit analysis aided by evidence and reason and decide I would be better off homeless in New Orleans than I was homeless in Southern Texas? Absolutely not. And if I had, I would have been deeply mistaken…New Orleans was the first step in my path, but the place itself was horrible. I hated it there. I was definitely far more secure in my hometown. Did I know where I was going? Did I have a plan of any sort? No, I wandered the country and stopped in Santa Cruz by sheer chance while hitchhiking to San Francisco. I simply felt compelled to stay (and I met my primary teacher that night). Not a single thing about my choice was rational or based upon empirical evidence. Instead, I did it because I truly believed that, despite all reason and evidence to the contrary, I should listen to an angel who appeared to me in a dream.
I am sure there are many people who would think that this was a bad decision. That it was, in fact, a delusional decision. I can understand that. But every important choice I have made in my adult life began with that one. I stood at a fork in the road, where I had to choose between reason and faith, logos and mythos, materialism and idealism. I chose the road less traveled, and it has made all the difference.
So how should you, dear siblings, interpret this story? What is the meaning behind my tale? I can’t tell you that. Some of you, I’m sure, will scoff at my choice. And perhaps you are right. I am a fool. I am a mystic. I am a tilter at windmills and a dreamer of impossible dreams. I have dedicated myself to the spiritual life, which in this “disenchanted” 21st century might be considered quite scandalous if it weren’t so quaint. But while I have many personal regrets—letting the wrong people into my heart, mostly—I have no regrets about the choice to obey my angel. It is the second best choice I have ever made (the best one was marrying my wife, and trust me, my angel had input on that decision, too) and it has defined me. I am not ashamed to have made a leap of faith—or rather a leap into faith—in a world where faith is often a dirty word. Quite to contrary…I am proud to be the sort of person who makes such leaps.
In the Northern Hemisphere, tonight is the longest night of the year. The darkness will be deep and cold, and as I do every year, I will keep a vigil. Similarly, our world seems to be entering a time of darkness, a long, dark night of the soul where it may seem like goodness, love, and justice are nowhere to be found. Things may very well get far worse before they get better. But no matter how long, dark, or cold the night, the dawn will come. The Divine is always with us…we’ve just fallen into our own shadow for awhile. So I will stay awake through the long, cold night and greet the Sun as it is reborn, no matter how long it takes.
I will keep my commission.
So let us look hopefully towards the East and watch for the glow upon the horizon. Let us pull each other close to stay warm in the long, dark night. Let us expand into the infinite even as we push against our growing edges. Let us take a leap into the mysteries and trust that someone wonderful will be there to catch us.
Let us have faith.
Blessed Solstice.
With love,
Soror Alice
Art: James Abbot McNeill Whistler, “Nocturne In Black And Gold – The Falling Rocket”, (1875)