* Into the Stars of the Winter Triangle *
a new moon gathering
“A star will guide you to the Winter House. Between the December courtship calls of the great horned owls there is a door. It is made of smoke, it is made of bronze, it is made of bone. Take the hand of that star and he will show you how to knock and how to bow and how to cross the threshold in the old way. It is a low lintel. Only animals do not need to bow their heads.
In the darkness you could not see much of that house, for its walls in the night are made of shadows and of certain winter stars, though for stability they are stuffed with straw, they are coated with clay. Starmade but mud and sturdy, this Winterhouse as round as time.
In winter, in the year’s darkness, there is no time. The Winterhouse swallows time. You will leave time like a coat at the door when you cross the threshold, clasping a star by the hand. He too will vanish once you have stepped fully in—a glimmer of snowlight, a longing, and he is gone far up in the wheel of rafters with the smoke…”
-from “The Winter House” © Sylvia V. Linsteadt 2017
We are in the dark roots of dream-season now. We are in the winterhouse. This is the season when stories are thick in the air. The embers in my hearth are full of them. I love the early dark for this reason. When the stars are up it’s so much easier to hear them. And the winter stars! They are my favorite.
When Venus is evening star in the winter months, there is nothing more beautiful in the world— the cold seems to make her shine so big and bright, when I squint I can see the eight rays of light that the ancients depicted her with. And then there is Orion laying across the northeast with his big bright stars like Betelgeuse and Rigel, and above him the the ruddy dancing Hyades with their red-star Aldebaran, eye of the bull, and then above those the seven sisters, the “ermine fur Pleiades” (as Robinson Jeffers called them) above. Below Orion, close to the horizon, is my favorite: the winking of Sirius the Dog Star who in winter flashes sparks of blue and red and green, if you look for long enough.
The first time I noticed this was the winter I spent living in the foothills of Mt. Psiloritis in Crete. I could see the old mother mountain, achingly white with snow, from my small balcony, and to her left this twinkling star that flashed blue, then red, then green. I remember that at first I thought I was seeing a tiny airplane, or maybe I was going slightly insane (a lot of alone time in Crete can sort of have that effect, she’s a fiercely intense island). But the blue and green and red kept steadily blinking at me with such sharp, condensed clarity and beauty, like the smallest most precious jewel I had ever seen.
Finally I looked through my star-map, and lo. It was Sirius. The star whose heliacal rising in summer is so often mentioned as the cause of heat and terrible south winds and sickness at the height of July in the southern Mediterranean. Sirius whose rising precedes the annual life-giving flooding of the Nile in Egypt. There is so much written by ancient Greeks about Sirius and the heat and hell of high summer, and by the Egyptians about the blessed floods and Sirius who they called Sopdet, goddess of the fertile flood— but it is winter that I associate with Sirius. Those bright, winking colors, pressed like jewels through the black, make my heart ache. I love this star— and all the wintry luminaries out there in the dark while I dream, and write— beyond words. Especially by the dark of the moon, they feel so close, as if they are dreaming with me.
I learned recently that the second of two new moons in a month is called a black moon, and that we have one coming up at the end of December, on the 29th/30th. What a time to have a black moon! Just in step with the winter solstice, just at the hinge of the Gregorian year, in the heart of the dreaming days of winter that belong to the ancestral mothers of the world, that belong to Mary holding her bright son close. I see the black of this upcoming moon as the velvety deep of the darkest earth where seeds as bright as stars can be planted, here in the very womb of the year.
And so in honor of this moon, and in gratitude to my paid subscribers here on the Pollen Basket—you who make this work possible!— I’m going to be offering a black moon mythic writing workshop next Sunday, December 29th called “Stars of the Winter House.”
This will be an online offering, from 5:00 - 6:30 pm PST on the 29th, and **FREE**to all of my paid subscribers!
During this gathering, we will enter the starry door of the winter triangle together, into the Winter House. I will read you the entirety of my Winter House poem whose beginning I shared above, as well as some other starry poems and stories from favorite writers of mine, such as Robinson Jeffers, H.D., and Lucille Clifton. There will be flashes of Mary, of the Pleiades, of snow! Then, sitting around the imaginal hearth together, with the stars of the winter triangle blazing out the window— Sirius and Betelgeuse and Procyon, and beyond them Rigel and Aldebaran— we will look quietly and peacefully at the treasury of our year. We will look at the precious gifts we have been given this year, this turning of earth around the sun.
We will take time to really be with these gifts— to integrate and savour their scents of rose, of myrrh, of sunlight, of life, of simple goodness. We will then take time to examine which seeds we have been given— and how they shine— and which we would like to carry forward, to plant within the generous womb of winter. What does the velvet stillness of the winter want to tell each of us right now? And what does the warm, benevolent, mothering dark want to plant in us? We will spend time with all of these prompts in our notebooks, with space left at the end for sharing, for lighting our candles together and giving thanks to the beautiful heart of winter.
TO JOIN: Scroll down to the red painted necklace at the end the post, where you will see the workshop details, and the paywall — below that is your Zoom invitation and the details for next Sunday’s event. Simply mark your calendar, and I’ll see you there!
If you can’t make it live, there will be a recording available— again only for paid subscribers! So do consider upgrading your subscription in order to have access to both the live gathering & the recorded readings, creative visioning prompts, and tales. Your support for my work here on this Substack matters enormously to me as a writer.
Before the paywall, I would like to leave you all with three tales from the archives — one in song form, two told aloud— for your wintry listening pleasure.
All three are love stories. My favorite —of course. They are good starlight, fireside listening.
I wish this winter season that the deepest dreams of your hearts come true, dear readers. And that we all of us can always find our way back to the Love that has never left us, that has always surrounded us.
Tam Lin
Practiced, sung and recorded through the winter solstice, new moon and now the edge of Christmas, as the Virgin Mary swells with child and comes to the eve of birth, I offer into this moment of celestial light and earthly dark a faithful…
Morning Star Woman & Ivan the Youngest Son
This story began as a piece about Venus’ descent below the rim of the horizon a couple weeks ago, her passage into the so-called underworld, out of sight. I liked the idea of Venus passing not “behind” the Earth but inside of it, a kind of sudden radiant benevolent hearth below all of our feet.
The Six Swans
We are in the dark bowl, the earthen night-held lull, of midwinter. Here in England it feels magnetically still. We are engulfed in earth’s darkness more than eighteen hours of the day, and when the sun is up, its path feels as low as dusk. This year, the dark is especially deep, both in potency and in heaviness. There is hell split open on the ground of Bethlehem, which is, let’s remember, in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. The reverberations of this go on and on through my psyche, all of our psyches, and through the earth—this level of human death, of horror, of violence and vengeance turned to madness.
+ + + + + STARS OF THE WINTER HOUSE + + + +
a black moon mythic writing workshop
Sunday December 29th, 2024 from 5:00- 6:30 pm PST
open to all paid subscribers.
See more details and Zoom Link below