Rome Lucien Ragnor

12/17/2025

Rome’s Lanterns Through Winter

December 17
Winter Tea

Herbal brewing was winter medicine.

Yarrow for fever.
Mint for breath.
Fennel for the stomach.
Cinnamon for warmth.
Elder for cough.

Before pharmacies, the kitchen kept people alive.

Tonight, make yourself something warm.

Tea.
Broth.
Spiced water.

Not as comfort.

As tradition.

12/16/2025

Rome’s Lanterns Through Winter

December 16
Candle Night

Candle customs go back centuries, long before factories or switches.

In winter, fires were counted at night because one missed flame meant death. Candles were prayers with no words. Each wick was insurance.

In some traditions, a new candle was lit at Yule and kept burning until it died on its own.

If you have a candle, light it intentionally tonight.

Not to wish.

To witness how fragile light really is.

12/16/2025

I’ll be at Moon Bees LLC tonight, 4-6pm.

If you’ve been carrying a lot quietly, you don’t have to unpack it alone.

Readings until close.
Come by if you need the space.

Light and Flame,
Rome

12/16/2025

/ Euripides /
"When one with honeyed words but evil mind Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state."
"Euripides , (born c. 484 bc, Athens—died 406 bc, Macedonia), Greek playwright. With Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is recognized as one of Athens’s three great tragic dramatists. An associate of the philosopher Anaxagoras, he expressed his questions about Greek religion in his plays. Beginning in 455, he was repeatedly chosen to compete in the dramatic festival of Dionysus; he won his first victory in 441. He competed 22 times, writing four plays for each occasion. Of his 92 plays, about 19 survive, including Medea (431), Hippolytus (428), Electra (418), The Trojan Women (415), Ion (413), Iphigenia at Aulis (406), and The Bacchae (406). Many of his plays include prologues and rely on a deus ex machina. Unlike Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides made his characters’ tragic fates stem almost entirely from their own flawed natures and uncontrolled passions. In his plays chance, disorder, and human irrationality and immorality frequently result in apparently meaningless suffering that is looked on with indifference by the gods." (Britannica)
"Orestes". Play by Euripides, 408 BCE.

12/15/2025

Rome’s Lanterns Through Winter

December 15
Protection at the Threshold

In much of Europe, winter wards were physical.

Horseshoes nailed above doors. Rowan branches tied with red thread. Iron placed near windows. Not symbols. Barriers.

People believed winter thinned the veil between worlds and houses needed reinforcement like coats.

If you can, place something simple near your door tonight.

Iron.
Salt.
Branches.

Not as spellwork.

As echo.

They believed homes had borders.
They treated them.

12/14/2025

Friedrich Nietzsche /
"I measure the strength of a spirit by how much truth it can take."
"Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 45, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after many strokes and pneumonia. Nietzsche's writing spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony."
W

12/14/2025

12/14/2025

Rome’s Lanterns Through Winter

December 14
The Sun’s Turning

The oldest Yule rites were not feasts.

They were fires.

Burning wheels. Torch runs. Hilltop flames.

People did not celebrate that the sun had returned.
They celebrated that it had not abandoned them.

Even now, light changes here.

If tomorrow is brighter by even a breath, notice it.

Ancestors watched the horizon with fear.

You get to watch it with certainty.

12/13/2025

Rome’s Lanterns Through Winter

December 13
Hel and the Winter Dead

In Scandinavia, winter was the dead season.

Not because people feared death here.
Because they remembered it.

The dead were believed to walk closer in winter. In some regions, shoes were placed by graves so spirits would not walk barefoot through frost. Tables were left set overnight during Yule to share warmth with the unseen.

If you light a candle tonight, do not name anything.

Let it be for those whose names are already ash.

12/13/2025

/ Carl Sagan /
"If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves."
"Carl Sagan, (born Nov. 9, 1934, Brooklyn, N.Y., N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 20, 1996, Seattle, Wash.), U.S. astronomer and science writer. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. At the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (1962–68), he focused on planetary astronomy and on SETI efforts to find extraterrestrial life. He gained prominence as a popular science writer and commentator noted for his clear writing and enthusiasm; his Dragons of Eden (1977) won a Pulitzer Prize. He coproduced and narrated the television series Cosmos (1980); its companion book became the best-selling English-language science book of all time. In the 1980s he studied the environmental effects of nuclear war and helped popularize the term nuclear winter." (Britannica)
Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.354, Ballantine Books

12/12/2025

Rome’s Lanterns Through Winter

December 12
Crom Dubh nan Nollaig

In Highland folklore, winter had a voice.

When the wind screamed down the chimney, people said it was Crom Dubh nan Nollaig, the Dark One of Yule, crying through the hearth. The sound of the cold finding its way inside.

He was not imagined as a spirit with gifts or blessings.

He was winter, given a name.

Children were warned not to waste food or mock hunger, because Crom Dubh listened from the roof. The storm did not come by accident. It was believed to know which homes were careless and which remembered how to share.

On some nights, bread was left by the fire.

Not out of fear.

Out of knowing what winter asks.

If you hear the wind tonight, don’t hurry to quiet it.

For a long time, people believed it was the season speaking.