On the intelligence of the holy nights…

I always wonder about the thinning of the veils in the dark months, and the medicine of the dark in general, as a doorway into the subtle worlds. In the Dzogchen lineage of advanced Tibetan Buddhism, practitioners utilize dark room retreats as a technology of recognition of the non-dual state, and apparently so did the ancient Egyptians, Mayans and Taoists in their own ways. The Kogi people of Columbia raise their spiritual leaders in dark caves from birth, to commune with a hidden dimension “Aluna”. You find traditions all around the globe working with the dark as a teacher and a gateway between the worlds…

I try my best to align myself with the earth’s natural dark immersions, by using as little artificial light as I can manage after the sun goes down, and sitting mostly by candlelight before sunrise and after sunset, welcoming the visions and deeper inner spiritual insights that arise from the darkened days… I try to go for little walks at nightfall, to befriend the mystery of the dark. To rest my gaze of knowing, and to let myself slip into the liminal dimensions of unknowing.

And specifically in my own lineage I have been wondering about the various ancient divination and oracular practices that surround the traditions around Yuletide and the Holy Nights. Northern Europeans for example believed that the dreams you had on Mōdraniht (Mother’s Night, celebrated on the longest night of the year) and the following 12 Holy Nights foretold events for the upcoming year…

I wonder, in the darkest days of the Northern Hemisphere, what if we treated also our waking hours in these days, as equally symbolic to our dream world? What if the invisible threads of this web of life are speaking to us from every angle, wanting to make contact? Wanting to guide us into greater symbiosis with the dreaming earth in this time? What if we interpret the themes coming up during these Holy Nights as we would interpret symbolism arising in dreams?