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Happy Yule!

Today is the Winter Solstice, at 4:47 pm in the Northern hemisphere, representing the shortest day and longest night of the year.

As we continue our journey, the days will start to get longer with the promise of rebirth in the Spring and the warmth of Summer to come. I am not a winter person, I will confess. Despite being Canadian and having lived in our coldest city, Winnipeg, for part of my life I do not enjoy the cold. Being on HRT has only elevated that dislike! I am perpetually cold.

Nevertheless, Yule is a time for reflection and growth. While I may not love the cold, I can love the beauty of the Winter season and marvel at the stunning displays that Nature gives us. I celebrated Yule today with a few things that felt right to me: soup, candles, incense, and Tarot!

Soup, to me, is the ultimate in comfort food. I doesn't really matter what kind of soup it is, I just enjoy soup and never more than in the cold, short, days of Winter. Tonight I made my current favourite, The Roberto (yes, that's the name!), a deeply rich and spicy soup. It warms you well and felt perfect for the season.

Candles are always going to be part of a sabbat or holiday, so of course I had them today. I have always been big on having candles in my life, well before I transitioned. For some reason, a place never felt complete to me if it was absent of candles. A candle is light, warmth, and comfort to me. Especially in the cold, long, night of the Winter Solstice candles are a must.

I started the evening off with some cedar incense, but ultimately switched to sage. I love the scent of cedar, it's divine, but the incense itself was not so much! Just the cheap stuff you buy for those little log cabin burners. Cute, but not really good. The sage incense is something I picked up recently, I felt a need at the time. I won't do a sage smudge, it's appropriation and closed, so incense feels much better to me. When it comes to divine scents, this incense is sure it. Wow. A good thing I know of a source fifteen minutes away, I expect to burn this often.

Finally, my Tarot reading. I wanted to wait for Yule to use my new Smith-Waite (I prefer to include the name of the artist, Pamela Coleman Smith, rather than the publishing company, the art gives it life) deck for the first time. It's a classic deck, well made, and still beautiful after all these years. It felt right to wait until tonight. I did a simple four card spread and it truly resonated with me. You know that feeling you get when something lands so clearly with you on a positive emotional sense? I got that from this reading. 

Happy Yule! 

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