Søren AasThe Solstice Curse
The winter solstice arrives, and with it, the longest night. For many, this moment is a quiet pivot—a point in a great, slow circle where the shadows reach their limit and the light begins its patient return. I have always seen this as a "turning of the wheel," a reliable rhythm that moves through our lives with a deep and ancient consistency. Yet, a recent encounter with a haunting poem has invited me to look at this cycle through a different lens: one of unsettling mystery and a more fragile human unease.
The poem was titled The Solstice Curse and it offered a way of relating to the solstice that felt like a shadow-version of my own. Where I see a grand, natural cycle—a pulse that has beat for eons—this poet sensed a "gate" opening, a "curse" subtly shifting the air around us. Their words conjured images of "checks and curls and promises" that felt less like a natural rhythm and more like a curious "freakshow," suggesting a world that feels "slightly rearranged" by forces we dote have names for.
This poem became a fascinating mirror. It suggests that perhaps there isn’t just one way to experience the turning of the year. While my own inclination is to trust the steady breath of the seasons, the poet speaks to a more visceral, emotional truth. It is a perspective that does seek the comfort of the routine, but instead finds a strange, dark beauty in the world a point on a circle; it’s a moment when the world might glitch, when shadows seem to carry more weight, and when our inner certainties are gently tested.
My own solstice ritual, which I recently explored in a poem titled Relight, involves a simple, grounding act: lighting a candle as the "longest dark turns towards the light," blowing it out gently to sit in the rising smoke, and then relighting it when the "darkness finally yields." For me, this is a way of participating in the cycle. It’s a testament to the belief that the light is always there, even when it is resting.
I suspect that to a mind attuned to the "unsettling certainty" of the solstice, my ritual might seem like a form of "hope in a box"—a quiet attempt to find order in a wild, uncontainable mystery. They might wonder if my calm acceptance of the "yielding" darkness misses the subtle ghosts that rise with the smoke. In their world, a single, radiant candle might seem a bit too simple to contend with the profound strangeness of the night.
But reflecting on these two views has revealed how vast the scale of human experience really is. We are situated at different ends of that scale, yet we are both looking at the same sky. One perspective finds peace in the deep, reliable breath of the earth; the other finds meaning in the tension of the shadow. Neither exists in a vacuum; they are different frequencies of the same human journey through the dark.
Ancient traditions, like the Yule Log, seemed to understand this balance. By bringing a massive piece of the wild forest into the home and lighting it with an ember from the year before, they married the "tooth and claw" of the winter with the hopeful light of the hearth. It was a way to respect the mystery of the night while still trusting the wheel to keep turning.
The poems words have been a rewarding discovery. They reminded me that the world is large enough to contain both the "freakshow" and the "procession." While I remain rooted in the comfort of the cycle, I am grateful for the pause this poem provided. It has allowed me to look at my own gentle candle, and the turning world, with a sense that while the wheel is certain, the mystery of the turn is what makes it truly beautiful.
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