We are truly living in transformative times. In many ways, our world is changing faster than the human mind can keep up with. In other ways, it appears to cycle round and round, repeating endlessly. I think we can all agree that the world is a mess right now and it is often difficult to find our way through the chaos.
All of this change requires a new way to review the old year and look ahead to the coming year. Humans are obviously having a difficult time figuring things out these days, so why not ask our animal friends and guides for their perspective?
I am cordially inviting you to the third annual 13 Magical Nights of Yuletide program.
We are entering one of the most sacred and magical times of the year, a time celebrated by people all around the world, from different cultures, religious faiths, and lineages.
At the center of this time is the great pause and turning of the Sun at the Solstice, the darkest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, where the sun appears to stop in the sky before it is “reborn” and the days begin to grow longer. Without the sun, we would not have life on Earth, a fact acknowledged by all of the ancestral traditions around this time of year.
It is over the next few weeks that we track the path of life-giving light through the ritual of Advent, as the days grow shorter and the nights longer until we reach the Solstice. On the night before Solstice, the far northern peoples celebrated Mōdraniht or Modranicht, “the night of the mother’s”, as everything birthed comes from a mother.
The 13 Nights of Yuletide, 13 for the number of lunar months in a year, begins with Mother’s Night and continues from Solstice on December 21 through to January 1st, a period of time referred to by some as “the time out of time”.
To this day, we still take this time off as a holiday and even pause the wars. The world becomes still under the blanket of darkness and cold. It is a time to be quiet and go inward, between years, between stories, to look back at where we were, what we have become, and what paths we might want to walk in the coming year.
For the third year, I will be turning to the Animal Realm and asking them to give us a daily message as we move through these 13 nights of Yuletide.
We live in a holographic universe, hence each one of these messages can be said to apply to the coming 13 lunar months. They can be used as a tool to both review the previous year and look ahead to 2024.
I have a very special bonus to add to this year’s program. I will be joined by a dear friend, an animal communicator, dog trainer, and holistic health consultant for animals, Norma Caesar. We have been meditating together for the past year and seem to receive such similar messages - mine visual, hers verbal - that it is truly uncanny, but perfect for this event!
We will be kicking it off on December 20 with Mother’s Night. The daily message and card from our animal guide will be posted on a private platform, taking no more than 10 minutes to read. There will also be a private community feed to share our reflections, dreams, synchronicities, and our own visitations by the animals.
The program can also be gifted to the animal lover in your life who would appreciate this.
I do hope you can join us to rediscover the magic of the holiday and hear what the animals have to tell us.
Many holiday blessings.
Dr. Josie
P.S. This offering may be straying far, far away from the linear, mechanistic world of science and medicine, perhaps too far for some people. But there is a much larger world out there, of unexplainable encounters, imaginary friends, the household animals and wildlife in the backyard who were our friends as kids. Opening our hearts, and listening to our inner voices and intuition may just be part of the solution to the predicament we currently find ourselves in. Indigenous peoples, and our ancestors long ago, spoke to trees and clouds and animals. They knew they were an intrinsic part of their own survival. And they treated all living things as their relations.