solstice feelings - golden hour in the gilded age
solstices are for creativity and magic
I am having solstice feelings.
There is incoming brilliance here, as the new season approaches, but contextually even the “good” feels poignant, more bitter than sweet against the backdrop of global events. The first part of 2026 was hard, it took most of us a lot to get here – to this halfway point in this fast year.
It is a bright, yet deep set of feelings running through my consciousness, at this - either the longest day or the longest night (depending where on earth you are).
Solstices are many things to many people. I think the simplest (and most profound) way to know their power is to understand them as moments of luminous clarity - all the marbles are to one side (daylight) or the other (night). We can then see solstices as heightened moments of peak Yang (action) energy or peak Yin (rest) energy. The summer solstice being the maximum masculine (Yang) and the winter solstice is maximum feminine (Yin)*. So the story goes that together, in their polarity, these two energies (each holding a dot of the other) combine to create all we know.
Whether we are in the southern hemisphere or the northern, the solstice is either a maximum Yang or maximum Yin check-in at the halfway point of the year. And the equinoxes of course are all about the mixing and balancing and harmonizing those polar-opposite energies. The structure of the seasons offers a time and space for everything from seed planting to fallow fields. When we work consciously with these seasonal transitions, each year itself becomes its own work of art.
All four seasonal portals create a beautiful, dancing rhythmic structure for magic and creativity.
Another practice I love at the turn of the seasons, is to feel the flow of time itself flowing through our open hands.
We can do it now, if we want -
1. turn the right hand palm up to receive the new season
2. turn the left hand down to release the old season
3. imagine the flow of time as an infinite ribbon or river
4. feel the new season flowing into and through the upturned palm
5. feel the old season being released from the palm facing the earth
6. feel the flow of the breath and notice how it affects the infinite ribbon or river of time running through our hands.
Speaking of time, I love Solstices (and Equinoxes) for great, time-based readings (i.e. past, present, future readings, this season, next season, the larger view, readings, etc).
Here is the spread I am working with at this Solstice – it will work regardless of your hemisphere. Feel free to enjoy it as is or adapt to your needs and solstice celebrations.
CARD 1 - information and symbols relating to the first half of 2026 (what has already happened)
CARD 2 - information and symbols relating to the second half of 2026 (what is on the horizon)
CARD 3 - information and symbols relating to this present moment (the solstice)
CARD 4 - information and symbols relating to energies to release
CARD 5 - information and symbols relating to energies to call in
CARD 6 - wild card! information and symbols that are good to know at this time (the solstice)
This is an interesting spread to take at face value, and then start to see the links between say - the first part of 2026 (card 1) and what we should release (card 4). Also interesting to note the “advice” that the call in position (card 5) has for the second half of 2026 position (card 2).
We all know we are in a fire horse year – and many of us sense we are now galloping into a drier, hotter terrain.
In the bright light of the sun here in Southern California, I can tell you – the rest of this year is going to go fast.
Life on earth is generally and perpetually temporal – change truly is the only constant. How things are now is different than a moment ago and different than it will be in just a little while.
The wheel always turns, the threads of fate and time are always being spun, woven and cut.
And the environment is going to feel so hot, like maybe sometimes like we can’t stand it. Lots of fire and air, lots of masculine – both the divine, elevated masculine and the low-down, toxic, sad-for-humanity kind of masculine.
So we get ourselves together.
We remind ourselves that this time will not last forever.
We don’t let them take our lives from us, our life stories, the meaning we’ve known on this earth.
At the solstice, we make a commitment to NEVER let them snuff out our light.
Solstices in many ways, are very simple and straightforward. It is ONE KIND of energy taking center stage. All the marbles rolled to one side or the other.
A solstice-simple practice for those of you enjoying a winter solstice in the southern hemisphere – I encourage you to work with candlelight or firelight. A few moments writing something by hand, on paper that you then burn and release to the fire and the longest night.
A solstice-simple practice for those of you in the northern hemisphere where it will be the summer solstice – for three days go right outside into sunlight every morning when you wake up and spend time with the sun at dusk as it sets. By the third night you will understand many secrets of the sun.
This Solstice is a good time to get your bearings, one way or another.
It’s a good time to look back over your shoulder at how far you have come.
It’s a good time to get a sense of what’s just over the horizon.
It’s a great time to call in that peak energy – maximum Yang or maximum Yin – and use it for your own greatest good and the greatest good of all.
Until next time,
Jess
*please do not misunderstand me – using terms masculine and feminine here not in terms of being a person, but instead recognizing the natural world we are a part of here on earth has Yang and Yin energies that both continuously swirl within us and one other. I am speaking of these polarities as the energies of creation.
“Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.”
- Terrance McKenna
Both Solstice meditations are in the $5 shop and The Main Wing of the Library - meditations #125 and #126
“when I can’t find myself
I start to write
and it draws a map”
- Kate Van Horn
I’ve also been really liking this meditation lately - also in the shop and in the Main part of the Library - #133
“You are your own algorithm”
- Mystic Medusa
“You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin
"The yin yang of your physiology is omnipresent. Nearly every function, hormone, neurotransmitter and cellular pathway has its counterpart. Your entire organism exists as a series of crests and troughs, yangs and yins."
- Jeff Krasno
”That’s the work we are being called to do right now. There’s a legacy here, let’s remember that when things get ugly outside we must make art that helps us move toward where we need to go. I need less lamentations and more imagination about the beautiful bounty of our Earth. We can’t liberate ourselves if we can’t liberate this Earth. Our liberation is tied to the liberation of land and water. It’s true liberation from capitalism. True liberation from greed. This is deeply entwined with both a free Congo and a free Palestine.
+
The revolution is going to happen with more sacrifice, but daily sacrifice. More space for friends, for your community, for your comrades, and more generosity in general.
Give more of your time, your energy, your resources. Push yourself to new boundaries. Learn skills that you can share with your community. Feed people, feed your friends. If you have money to give, give it to your local communities, do rent strike work or get to know the houseless folks that live around you. I’ve joined a mutual aid group and every month we choose a bunch of GoFundMes we want to donate to. I have less money than I’ve had in a while but I always buy my friends art. I always try to support the work of people and artists I admire. I become a paid subscriber to newsletters as often as I can, and I buy zines, books and all kinds of things to support comrades and orgs I trust. It’s hard out here. We need each other. What is revolutionary is how you live your life. Stop pontificating and just do good. Be good. Commit harder to the people around you. Stop lying, stop making excuses, stop talking shit. Just be a good person. It’s not hard.
We need each other. Never forget that. Make art that keeps that in mind. Make art that protects everybody. Make art that fights for a better world. We need you.”
“When an economic system actively destroys what we love, isn’t it time for a different system?”
- Robin Wall KImmerer
“Don’t let them trick you into giving up your power for their protection. They were never going to protect you anyway.”
- Eliza McLamb
“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”
- Toni Cade Bambara
“commerce is not the same as capitalism. I can and will sell my services and work so I may keep my job as well as use that job to be a beacon of light in times of darkness.”
-Bear Herbert by way of Cody Cook-Parrot
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
- Arundhati Roy
“The glue that holds the natural world together appears to be a harmonious balance of opposites: day and night, light and dark, winter and summer, liquid and solid, acidic and alkaline, male and female, wave and trough, proton and electron, etc. There prevails in our reality an explicit duality that represents an implicit unity (the “oneness” about which I’ve previously babbled), and the line of separation between those things just named is as thin as it is necessary: yang rubs up against yin, yin against yang, distinct but mutually supportive.”
― Tom Robbins, Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life