A Winter Solstice Soliloquy

On Calling Light Back Into the World

The Winter Solstice arrives on Sunday morning, December 21, making December 20 the Longest Night of 2025.

These days leading up to the Longest Night are always bittersweet for me. I like the night just fine, its quiet stillness, fertile darkness, invitation to rest, to sleep, to dream… And yet, as I watch the long days of summer grow shorter and long nights of late fall take center stage, I find myself longing for the light…

Which is why I always chant Gāyatrī-Mantra this time of year…

For those unfamiliar with the world of mantra, let me tell you a bit about myself. I stumbled onto the yogic path in the mid-70s. For me, a young musician interested in the healing power of sound, discovering Sanskrit mantras was revelatory. I loved the meditation practice and teachings, but the chanting stole my heart.

One of the fascinating things about the Sanskrit language is its emphasis on sonic vibration. So that with mantra, it’s less about the meaning and more about the sound. The way a mantra works inside us, opening places we didn’t realize were closed, feeding places we didn’t know were hungry, strengthening, balancing, revitalizing, regenerating, and regulating our entire mind/body system.

Anyone can chant. Sanskrit mantras cut across all boundaries of belief and supposition. They simply are. And Gāyatrī-Mantra, which is a beauty, is considered the sound form of light. Which is why, as I said above, I especially like to chant it in these days leading up to the Longest Night.

I first introduced Gāyatrī-Mantra to my meditation class in the late 90s. In those days Yoga was just beginning to go mainstream. Mantra and chanting were still in the “weird” category. When I told my class we were going to chant Gāyatrī-Mantra 108 times, there was an audible gasp in the room. Nevertheless, they were willing to try. Tentative at first, quiet and stumbling over the Sanskrit words, but then that moment when everyone got it and the room exploded in sound. Luminous sound. Watching that roomful of people that night, I could both see and feel that light, filling the room with joy.

This was many years ago. Some of those same people still chant with me every week. And we have the same experience today that we had all those many years ago.

Here it is, spelled out in its transliterated form:

Om Bhūr Bhuvaḥ Svaḥa
Tat Savitur Varen’yam
Bhargo Devasya Dhīmahī
Dhiyo Yonaḥ Pracodayāt

You can read many commentaries on this mantra, but it’s always a good idea to read between the lines. There’s a lot of jargon, doublespeak, and grandiosity out there masquerading as spiritual insight. Always best to get to know this (or any mantra) as you get to know a friend. Building relationship with a mantra is how we penetrate its meaning and receive its gifts. Which can be numerous and truly the gifts that keep on giving…

Here’s a version of Gāyatrī-Mantra from Daughter of the Mountain, an album I recorded with the great Daniel Johnson several years ago. Feel free to download it. My December gift to you.

If you’ve never done mantra practice, you might simply listen to this track, letting the mantra flow into you. If you’d like to learn it, you’ll hear us chanting Gāyatrī at the core. Just copy out those words and sing along.

Here’s a simple translation:

Let the blazing light of creation infuse my being.

May that Light break open inside me.

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I heard a quote a long time ago, attributed to Plato. It goes something like this: “Children are afraid of the dark, but adults are afraid of the light….”

What Plato (or whomever) alludes to here is the light that requires us to drop all preconception, identification, projection, assumption, and belief system. The light that wants us to see what is actually here. The light that wants us to see what hides in the darkness.

Which raises the question of the difference between what I think of as the “fertile darkness” and its evil twin, the “infernal darkness.” The fertile darkness is the womb of all creation. The more we learn to rest here, to understand its language, to navigate its terrain, the more we discover that light blazes in its primordial spaciousness.

This is the beautiful darkness. This is nothing for anyone, child or adult, to fear.

The infernal darkness however, that we should all fear. We witness it daily in the news: the cruelty justified by those in power, violence they promote, suffering they impose, their unfathomable greed with no thought to its consequences, all of this rationalized in a sociopathic dream of eternal domination. This is what lives in the infernal darkness. This is a darkness that needs serious illumination…

But I digress.

If you love the light, long for the light, want to nourish the light, spread the light, become a potent beacon of that light, try chanting Gāyatrī-Mantra for yourself, for everyone you love, for everyone you don’t love, for the world.

Start with five minutes a day. Let it grow. Take your time. Learn to rest there. See what happens.

And let us celebrate the Winter Solstice and its Longest Night, remembering that the Longest Night also marks the beginning of the Light’s return.

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Where all splendors are in the light
and all darknesses in the dark
brilliant light and fertile darkness!
I praise the transcendent light.

[from The Short Gloss on the Supreme Queen]

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With Love to you All.

[Image: Winter Light Burst by AngelzTears]