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Mystic Soul Essentials

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Mystic Soul Essentials

A seasonal record of old ways and ancestral memory. What is shared here is observed, remembered, and tended like a hearth. I am not a teacher or authority.

Mystic Soul Essentials is a seasonal record of old ways, ancestral memory, and the quiet movements of time. What is shared here follows the turning of the moon, the shifting of the heavens, and the rhythms that shape daily life. I walk my own path, rooted in reconstructionist study, lived experience, and respect for what is known and what is not. I name what can be traced, what has been carried forward, and where the record grows thin. This page is kept like a hearth. Nothing here is a directive. Nothing is required. These are observations, fragments of memory, and moments set down as they are noticed. This is not about perfection. It is about presence. Rooted. Sacred. Tended.

12/24/2025

Christmas Eve: The Vendegum

In a certain time, in a certain place, so far north most folks never thought about it at all, there was a land that looked like nothing but ice. That’s all anyone ever saw. Ice piled on ice. Snow on top of snow. Cold enough to make the world feel empty. But that wasn’t the whole truth.

Because on certain nights, not every night, just the right ones, when the sky was clear and the stars burned sharp and bright, something else happened. The north star would shine harder than the rest, like it knew a secret. And then the light would come. First a shimmer, then a glow, then colors spilling across the sky. Blues and golds and reds and greens, and a few colors that never did have names.

That’s when the ice would open. Not breaking. Opening. And out they would come. The Vendegum. Hundreds of them, dressed bright against the snow, small folk with quick hands and knowing smiles, stepping out from inside the mountains as if the cold had never bothered them at all.

The Vendegum were the little ones who lived beneath the ice, right under the north star, long before anyone else thought to go there. Some of them were small. Some of them were even smaller than you. And all they ever did, all they ever cared to do, was make toys. Good toys. Solid toys. Wood smoothed down careful. Paint laid on slow. Things meant to last through hard winters and hard play.

Most grown folks never saw them. Couldn’t, really. But children did. That’s because, the old stories said, goodness is what lets you see the Vendegum. Not being perfect. Not being quiet all the time. Just having a heart that’s still open enough for wonder to slip through. That’s why they showed themselves to children first.

Now, the winters grew colder as time went on. Colder than even the Vendegum liked. And the world above forgot them for a while. But they didn’t stop working. They never did. They kept at it by lamplight, deep in the ice, counting and carving and painting, getting things ready for children who were waiting even if they didn’t know what they were waiting for yet.

Wouldn’t be Christmas without them, would it?
No. It wouldn’t.

And that’s why, on Christmas Eve, when the house is quiet and the night feels full, you can almost sense it. The work finished. The waiting nearly over.
So sleep now. The road is long, but it’s never been missed yet.

12/23/2025

Christmas Day Feast

This is a table meant to warm everyone who comes to it.

Food prepared with care, not for display but for comfort.
Bread set out to be broken and passed.
A roast made generous, so no one wonders if there will be enough.
Greens, roots, and potatoes warmed by the hearth.
Gravy poured because it softens, because it brings things together.

This is a meal that asks people to stay a little longer.
To rest their hands.
To lean back into their chairs.
To feel held by the house and by one another.

Sweetness comes later, when the fire has burned low
and the room is quiet in that particular way only Christmas knows.

This is love made practical.
This is care made visible.
This is Christmas at the hearth
For those who are planning, for those who are gathering, and for those who simply like to imagine a warm table.
May you all have a Happy Christmas.

12/22/2025

The Wild Hunt

Come closer to the fire and hear what is told of these long dark nights.

In the nights after Yule,
when the sun has turned but the dark still holds the land,
there are winds that do not rise by chance.

It is said the Hunt rides then.
Storm and shadow moving as one.
Hooves in the sky.
Voices carried on the cold.

Some say Odin leads it,
cloak snapping in the wind,
one eye on the living, one on the dead.
Some say it is the ancestors themselves,
riding the paths they once walked,
gathering what was left undone.

Names change.
The knowing does not.

This is not a thing to call.
Not a thing to follow.

When the Hunt is abroad,
wise folk keep close to the hearth.
Doors are shut.
Fires are fed, not flared.
Bread and ale are set at the edge of light,
so what passes may pass on.

The Hunt does not come for those who stay where they belong.
It moves through the wild places,
through storm and forest and sky,
through the long night that still owns its power.

Remember this.

There are nights meant for wandering,
and nights meant for staying.
The Hunt teaches the difference.

So hold to warmth.
Hold to kin.
Let the wind ride where it will.

Reflection
What am I wise enough to leave alone?

12/22/2025

From the Hearth, After Yule

I have kept Yule close, as it asks to be kept, through the longest nights when the dark pressed hard against the land and the fire could not be left unattended. Night by night, the keeping mattered. Each small tending carried weight.

But Yule was never bound to a neat counting of days. That way of keeping time came later, when seasons were pressed into rows and numbers. Long before that, Yule was held until it loosened, and then it was lived.

When the sun has turned and the worst of the dark is secured, the keeping changes. The fire is still fed. The land is still listened to. Winter still has its say. But the days no longer need to be named one by one.

The season moves more quietly now. It is noticed in intervals rather than increments, in the way the light lingers a little longer, in the way the cold no longer tightens its grip at every hour, in the way attention softens without breaking.

So, this hearth will be kept as it always has been. I will return to it over the coming days, leaving space between the tending's, as was done before things were hurried. After a few days’ passing, when something true has settled, it will be laid upon the fire.

The rhythm widens. The watching eases. The keeping remains.

Yule does not end when the days grow longer. It simply steps back and leaves us room to breathe, to work, to notice what follows.

In this space, the hearth fire is held.

12/21/2025

Blessed Winter Solstice

This is the longest night,
the one the year leans into and holds.

The work has already been done.
Wood gathered.
Stores counted.
Shelter made ready against the dark.

Tonight is not for calling the light back.
The old ones knew better than that.
Light does not answer demands.
It returns when it is ready,
drawn by patience, not force.

So the fire is kept low and steady.
The ground is quiet.
Nothing is hurried.
Nothing is wasted.

Stories are told slowly now,
the kind meant to last the night.
Hands warm themselves.
Eyes rest on the embers.
And in that watching, trust is kept.

This is how Yule begins.
Not with triumph,
but with staying.
With waiting together through the deepest dark,
knowing the turning has already begun.

Reflection
What do I release to the dark,
and what do I keep as the light begins its return?

12/21/2025

Good Jul - Winter Solstice

This is the night the year holds still.
The shortest day has passed.
The longest night has come.

From the dark days, the Yule log is brought forth
and laid upon the fire.
It is not burned in triumph, but in trust,
for the old ones knew the light does not return all at once.
It begins here, in flame kept through the deepest dark.

The fire is shared.
The keeping is shared.
So it has always been.

Hands warm themselves and wait. Stories are not hurried.
The embers are watched.

From this fire, an ember is kept,
carried forward to light the hearth of the days to come,
so that what was tended here is not lost
when the night loosens its hold.

The turning does not shout.
It breathes.

Here, at the heart of the longest night,
the wheel begins its slow return.

Reflection:
What does this moment ask me to notice, not change?

Good Jul.

12/21/2025

What was set aside long ago is ready now.
Honey gathered when the fields were alive.
Water drawn and kept clean.
Time given freely, without force.

Mead is not hurried.
It ferments in darkness.
It waits while other things fall away.
It becomes itself only by being left alone.

This is how the old ones marked the turning.
Not with noise, but with readiness.
Not with demands, but with trust.

Tonight, the fire is fed.
The wheel turns.
The light begins its slow return.

What was tended holds.
What was kept is enough.

Shared as a traditional recipe and reflection. There are many modern variations and readers are encouraged to explore what works best for them.

12/20/2025

1 Day Until Yule

What was gathered earlier is brought out now.
Fruit dried when the sun was still willing.
Nuts kept through long weeks of cold.
Cream poured last, not to sweeten,
but to soften what time has already done.

This is the food of waiting.
Of restraint.
Of knowing the difference between hunger
and need.

Nothing new is made tonight.
What was saved is shared.
What remains is tended carefully.

Tomorrow, the fire turns.

12/20/2025

1 Day Until Yule — Mother’s Night

Before Yule began, the Mothers were remembered, because nothing turns forward without first looking back. This night was set aside for the women who carried the line, the ones who bore children, kept the household standing, and learned how to endure what winter demanded year after year.

Their work was not written down, but it was known. It lived in hands that knew how much grain to save, how long firewood would last, and what could be carried through the dark without breaking the household. Survival was not luck. It was learned.

On Mother’s Night, the house was put in order and the hearth was fed. Food was set aside, not to summon or ask, but to acknowledge that the household did not stand by chance. It stood because someone before had learned how to make it stand.

Before the feasting of Yule, before the oaths, before the year turned forward, the Mothers came first. This was the old knowing: we are carried by work done long before we arrive, and what endures is never accidental.

Reflection:
Whose endurance made my life possible?

12/19/2025

2 Days Until Yule
The Yule Log

Before the longest night, a log was chosen.
Not the prettiest one.
Not the one that burned too fast.
The one that would last.

It was carried in and set aside, close to the hearth.
It would be fed to the fire slowly,
night after night,
when the dark pressed close and winter still had its say.

This was the fire that stayed when the talking was done.
The fire kept through sleep.
The fire that held yesterday and made room for tomorrow.

In some homes, a coal from the old year was saved,
so the new one would not begin cold.
The flame mattered.
Where it came from mattered.

The Yule Log was not about brightness.
It was about keeping.
About patience.
About tending what already lived.

The longest night was near now.
What endured would carry them through.

Reflection:
What am I tending quietly now, so it will still be warm when the light returns?

12/19/2025

2 Days Until Yule

Bitter leaves meet the pot.
Greens gathered from frost-hard ground,
set low with fat and water,
time doing what fire alone cannot.

This is how winter was softened.
Not by sweetness,
but by patience.
By slow heat and a covered pot,
by learning which edges could be eased
and which must be endured.

Nothing here was wasted.
Nothing hurried.

The old ways do not hide bitterness.
They teach how to live with it.
The table is nearly set.

12/19/2025

THE TRUE SCOTTISH ORIGIN OF SANTA’S REINDEER
(A historical tale quietly ignored by the global community)

Long before the world had even heard of reindeer, Santa Claus or Santy MacLaus, as he was known throughout the Highlands, travelled the world every Christmas in a sleigh powered entirely by pure Scottish unicorn magic.

His team consisted of nine wild Highland unicorns, galloping across the sky at speeds measurable only in gusts per glen, the traditional unicorn measure of speed in the Highlands.

They were majestic beasts,
hooves like polished silver,
manes flowing like ribbons in the wind,
and horns sharper than a north wind in winter.

At the front of the pack was the most powerful unicorn of them all, Rudyhorn the Red Tipped Unicorn.

His horn glowed like a freshly lit coal in a pub fire, guiding Santy MacLaus through blizzards, haar, and sudden gusts whipped up by the Highlands themselves. But tragedy struck…

As the centuries passed, the unicorn herds began to thin, and their numbers began to dwindle. Some blamed poachers, but many theorised that as belief in unicorns began to fade, so too did their magic.

Fearing his kind would vanish forever, old Rudyhorn gathered what remained of the unicorn herd on a snowy Cairngorm cliff and made his decision.

To keep Christmas alive and Santy MacLaus’s sleigh flying, the magic had to be passed on.

In a ceremony later described by witnesses as “fairly mystical, but also quite emotional”, Rudyhorn leaned down and gently tipped his head and pointed his glowing red horn towards the nose of a young reindeer. There was a spark. There was a rumble. The magic swirled, building into a pulsing ball of red energy before bursting outward in a sudden wave, across the glens.

When the smoke cleared, the reindeer blinked, sniffed, and his nose glowed bright red, burning steady in the cold air. He was christened Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and from that moment his role was sealed, he was to lead Santy MacLaus’s sleigh, touching noses with the other reindeer in the glens, sharing the magic that allowed them to fly.

Rudolph selected eight other reindeer to help him pull Santy MacLaus’s sleigh. They were Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, followed by Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen, flying close behind through the winter night.

To this day, Santy MacLaus tips his hat when he passes the Highlands, remembering the unicorns who powered his sleigh for hundreds of years, and who made it possible for his reindeer to continue to spread the magic of Christmas throughout the world.

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