Guided meditations are a great practice for Wiccans. They relax the mind and let it flow into a fantasy state in which visions are possible. This guided meditation puts you into the longest night of the year, which is a place of beginnings. In ancient times, the faithful used to wait up all night on Winter Solstice to see the sun return at dawn. The hopes and prayers of the people were necessary to summon back the sun after the long, cold darkness.

Yet there is a sense of joy about the night because once the sun returns, each successive day grows longer and each night grows shorter as the Wheel of the Year turns back toward summer and the growing season. Also at Winter Solstice, the Lady gives birth to the young Lord who is reborn after his sacrifice at Samhain. This is a magical night filled with potential. As you look ahead to the year to come, feel the potential of all the wonderful projects, relationships, and spiritual evolution that you will earn for yourself in the coming year.

Record your voice reading the scenario…very slowly. When you are done recording, sit or lie down somewhere quiet, play back the recording, and allow yourself to see and feel everything it says. When spoken, the meditation is about five minutes long.

Anticipation:

You are a witch or a shaman from long ago when forests covered the land. The great Greenwood, now swathed in ice and snow, stretches around you. When you look down from the open hillside, you can see the sacred trees. Their great, snow-laden boughs blot out the stars. They creak and shift in the wind. Only the frozen river in its wide, winding track cuts through their dark, tangled majesty.

But you are above the trees. You wait in the circle of standing stones, wrapped in your furs, tucked down beneath the clutching icy fingers of the wind. At your feet burns a small fire kindled with sweet-scented wood. The sacred wood of oak and ash, harvested from the forest. In exchange, you have tied gifts into the hanging boughs…honey cakes from summer, bundles of fragrant rosemary, and bright ribbons.

At your feet smolders the embers from the fire of sacred oak and ash. Above you stretches the great vault of the heavens: black, primordial. Dusted with a thousand pinpricks of cold white light. You send your energy through this night, the longest night of the year: Goddess, hear my prayer. As you bring forth the young Lord, the newborn babe, from your womb of everlasting life, so let the sun return to kiss the earth.

As the night sails on toward daybreak, you repeat your prayer. Your face and fingers grow taut with cold, but you keep busy, snapping the twigs, the sacred oak and ash, and feeding the fire. Your breath exhales in warm plumes of mist. Your heart is filled with hope and joy as you look ahead to all the blessings that will come to you in the new year. Everything you wish to seed, to grow. Everything is possible on this night.

The black sky lightens to gray in the east. The dawn is coming at the eastern horizon of the great Greenwood. As you wait for the first ray of sunlight to touch the standing stones, you feel yourself connected to everyone who went before and everyone who will come after. Everyone who stands now with you at points near and far on Mother Earth – everyone who is standing watch, ushering in the return of the sun.

Let all bright blessings come to us. Let all potential be realized. Let the Wheel of the Year turn, and the days grow longer. Let the first shaft of sunlight touch the standing stones. Let the fire go out, and the sunlight strengthen in this, its first new day. So mote it be.

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