Taoist Holy Days, December 21st-23rd

The time of the winter solstice, December 21st-23rd, was a most sacred time in the ancient Taoist calendar. The solstice marks the shortest days of the year, which were revered by the Taoists as the end of the old sun and the birth of the new.

My old teacher told me a story of how the Taoist monks would fast at the winter solstice on plum wine and they would gather and hum in unison, while rapping on a refectory table with a bone knocker that looks like a pawn from a chess board in today’s terms. The vigil lasted for three days.

I tried the fast. It was very beautiful. You drink about a sherry glass of plum wine every four hours. It’s about three quarters of a shot-glass. And you also drink two pints of water in the four hours interval between each plum wine drink. I thought I’d soon be drunk for a lack of food but that didn’t happen. You just go very quiet and soft and yin, and you feel as if you are spreading out etherically, left and right. Your perception becomes acute.

You continue the fast day and night. I just set my alarm to get up every four hours. I’d drink the wine and the water and go back to bed. I found I didn’t sleep very much anyway. I had loads of energy. I didn’t do the rapping as there were no others to help me with the vigil but I did meditate and walk in the forest and I aligned with the spirit of the eternal Tao as best as I knew how.

It was said that if you had a question that you had saved all year, you could ask the Bodhisattva Kuan-Yin at the winter solstice and she would answer you. For the solstice is the time of the feminine spirit. This year will be different to a thousand others, as the Goddess has finally arrived here on earth after a long, hard fight to get in. She is not really a person more a hyper-dimensional geometry that has a sacred identity. A yin being that straddles the entire universe. But we see her in human terms as a female. She will walk into our world sometime during the three holy days. I’m not sure if people will see her immediately but she will certainly appear on earth. You will first see a lively etheric haze and gradually from within the haze the body shape of her appears, and she’ll be there hovering in front of you, as clear as day. You may see her on a throne or in a chariot or standing on her own. Some will think she is the Virgin Mary and that is okay. The Goddess represents the holy mother, the keeper of the universe, here to gather us in her arms and tell us she loves us and make us feel safe once more.

It’s been a long year.