The True Meaning of Yule

We hear a lot about the true meaning of Christmas, and I remember when I was a practicing Christian the holiday held a deeper meaning for me. Now my spirituality includes not just mystical Christianity but also Paganism and a sprinkling of Buddhism and Taoism. So while I celebrate Christmas Day, largely this is because of family tradition, and because many Christmas traditions come from Yule traditions. I think more about Mary and her unassisted birth than about the baby she bore (at least on Christmas). As a Pagan I also celebrate Yule, the day after Winter Solstice. The holiday celebrates the return of the light through the rebirth of the Sun. As I stared at the Sun low in the sky one afternoon last week, I wondered about a deeper meaning to Yule - the real meaning of Yule, if you will. In Christianity the "reason for the season" is the promise of the baby who will grow up to save humanity from darkness. Is there a larger magic to Yule as well?

I believe that we are all on the path of the Christ. We can all become Christed, or evolve into Christ consciousness, also called non-dual consciousness (for a deeper discussion of this see Jim Marion's Putting on the Mind of Christ). The journey towards non-dual consciousness is central to our incarnating on Earth. The birth of the Christ child is a metaphor for our own continual rebirth into higher levels of consciousness. And therefore so is the story of the birth of the light at Yule. It is our own light that is reborn at Yule.

I began to see how the Wheel of the Year, the progression of holidays spiraling through time as the Earth revolves around the Sun, is a story about our evolution as souls. The story of the God and Goddess through the Sabbats is our story. In fact, not just the earth's journey around the Sun, but the universe's story is our story. Or rather, our story is the universe's. As the universe exploded into being from the void, so did our souls. As it expands into the unknown, so do we. Eventually we will rejoin with the Creator, as planets do when their star expands into a supernova. All is one Story.






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