The Flame of Truth: New Moon in Sagittarius & the Winter Solstice
The still point before dawn — when the Archer’s bow draws the first breath of light.
Outside, the night is wide and waiting. The New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice rise together in this breath-held darkness - two thresholds crossing, one celestial and one of the soul. The air is crystalline, alive with something unseen. The horizon seems taut, liek a bow drawn back but not yet released. This is the still point before becoming, when the Earth leans into her deepest dark and the stars seem to lean closer in return.
The New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice arrive as twin teachers of rhythm and renewal. The Solstice draws us inward, into the longest night, where every living thing slows its pulse to listen. The New Moon, invisible and tender, stirs in that same dark - a whisper of new direction beneath the hush. Together, they remind us that illumination is born from belonging to the dark long enough for light to root.
This is the season of the Archer, the truth-seeker whose fire is steady, not wild; whose aim is guided by trust. Sagittarius teaches the art of right timing. The arrow waits until breath, body, and world move as one. Somewhere inside you, that same bow is drawn. Something in you is stretching toward clarity - the kind that brings warmth, direction, breath.
When Truth Found Me in the Dark
There was a winter when I could no longer see my way forward. Not because vision had left me, but because my body was too tired to chase it. I remember sitting by a window one snow-hushed night, realizing that I no longer knew what was true. Every insight felt borrowed. Every fire, secondhand.
In that quiet unraveling, truth arrived as warmth. I felt a pulse deep in my chest, asking me to be quiet, telling me once again that wisdom grows through stillness and curiosity. Through letting the questions sit unanswered.
The New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice hold that same paradox: fire inside stillness, movement inside pause. Sagittarius draws its bow toward the unseen, but only when the archer’s bodymind is still. The Solstice holds the world in darkness, not as punishment but as promise.
Sharon Blackie writes in her book The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday (2018), “To live enchanted is to stand on the threshold, listening to the murmuring world.”
That line met me like medicine. I was reminded that truth isn’t reached by grasping - it’s heard by listening. It lives in the murmur of the body, in the breath of the Land, in the quiet yes that rises when we stop performing what we think is wise.
That winter taught me to stop aiming for enlightenment and start tending the small flame that was already alive inside me. Truth is not a destination. It is warmth we return to, over and over, when the night grows long.
The Greening Fire
Our ancestors knew this night as the turning of the world. The old Sun dying, the new one not yet born. They lit fires not to summon daylight but to echo it - to remember that even in the darkest hour, life renews itself.
The New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice meet in that same ancient rhythm. One calls us to expand, the other to root. Together they create regeneration: the flame and the soil, each depending on the other.
Even in the deep dark, life keeps its quiet pulse.
The mystic Hildegard of Bingen called this life-force viriditas - the greening power of creation. She saw it in sap rising, in the flush of leaves, in the blood’s warmth beneath skin. “A light of brilliant brightness streaming forth from the Living Light,” she wrote, seeing divinity not above the world but blooming through it.
Sagittarius burns with this same viriditas - a fire that quickens rather than consumes. Its arrow does not pierce the heavens to escape the Earth; it rises to remind us that what we seek above us is already growing within.
Step outside on Solstice night, and you can feel that greening fire humming beneath the frozen ground. The Land is resting, but not asleep. Beneath the snow, roots weave, mycelium whispers, the pulse of the Earth steady as a heartbeat. Stillness full of motion. Darkness full of light.
The New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice invite that same trust in us: to believe in the unseen work, the slow renewal beneath awareness. To remember that the divine light doesn’t descend from above - it rises from within the living.
Seeing Truly, Aiming True
There is a kind of sight that doesn’t strain ahead. It listens. It waits. It’s the vision of the archer whose eye and arrow move as one breath. The truth isn’t at the target; it lives in the moment of release.
Caitlín Matthews writes, “To see truly is to belong to what you behold.”
To belong in this way is to enter the Sagittarian fire from the inside out. The bow is not aimed at the world, but with it.
Seeing truly begins with touch.
So I wonder: where in your life are you still looking from afar, aiming at what only wants to be felt?
What if the next truth doesn’t need effort but intimacy - a quiet belonging to what already surrounds you?
I invite to for just a moment, allow your gaze soften. Notice one living thing near you - the candle’s flicker, a leaf, the slow rhythm of your own breath. Feel yourself belong to that rhythm. This is the kind of seeing Sagittarius asks of us: perception as participation, truth as touch.
The New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice join in the same gesture: to see by resting into what is real. In the darkness, the eyes of the soul adjust, and what once seemed void begins to shimmer with connection.
The Archer’s Candle
There’s something holy about the way a single flame holds its ground. No striving, no spectacle - just one steady pulse of light, alive in its own rhythm.
On the night of the New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice, create a small hearth for that kind of fire. Gather what calls to you: maybe a candle, or a feather, or a small stone pointing outward. Sit close enough to feel the heat.
The flame we carry — human warmth meeting winter dusk.
When you’re ready, whisper,
“Show me the truth that wants to live through me.”
No demand. Just listening.
This is the Sagittarian way - seeking not for conquest but for clarity. Direction comes when hand, bow, and breath are aligned.
An image or word may flicker across your inner vision. Let it come. Write it down, or trace it in color. Keep it near. It will guide your movement through the year ahead - not a plan, but a pulse.
When the candle’s light fades, close your eyes and feel its warmth remain. That warmth is the fire of truth—quiet, relational, alive.
The Wild Soul’s Strength
After ritual, the body feels both emptied and full - as if something ancient has exhaled through you. The fire quiets, yet its echo lingers beneath the skin. Strength begins there: in inhabiting what has been kindled.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés reminds us,
“To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting the world with the full force of your soul.”
Strength is presence, not performance. The courage to stay with what trembles. The New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice both reveal that we carry light only when it has first rested in darkness. The archer waits until every cell hums with alignment - then the arrow flies on its own.
Maybe this year, strength looks like softness that endures. Resting when the world demands movement. Speaking gently when everything shouts. Tending one clear flame instead of scattering sparks.
Each of our fires belongs to a greater hearth - a constellation of keepers across the Land, each remembering in their own way.
The Turning Light
Outside, the horizon softensinto the deep blue before dawn - the color that appears when the world begins to breathe again. The bow unstrings itself. The archer’s shoulders ease. Light seeps through the quiet like water through moss.
This is the promise of the New Moon in Sagittarius and the Winter Solstice: even in stillness, something within you turns toward dawn. The flame you lit, the truth you listened for - they are already at work. The light knows its own direction.
The dawn returns, carrying the promise of becoming.
At this turn of the year, when the Sun stands still, and the Earth draws closest to its source, we are invited into a pause that holds creation itself. Between the Solstice and the coming of the light lies the fertile void - a chamber of gestation where soul seeds begin to stir.
For millennia, wise ones have tended these Twelve Nights as holy time: twelve thresholds through which the light of the Soul-Sun streams into matter. Each night, a single seed is touched by fire. Each dream begins its slow spiral toward form.
If this rhythm calls to you, come sit inside the circle. Join me for The 12 Nights of Winter — a twelve-night online immersion and ritual of guidance, gestation, and becoming.
Together we’ll honor the still point, listen for the dreams that wish to be born, and walk gently with the returning light.
A ritual of remembrance for the season when darkness becomes holy ground, and every spark is a prayer for the year ahead.
Register Now: https://www.romarlen.com/the-12-nights-of-winter-2025-26
Come as you are — weary, wondering, luminous. We begin when the Sun stands still.
For Reflection
What truth is stirring within me, waiting for its own quiet dawn?
Where in my life do I confuse brightness with clarity?
How does my body recognize what is real before my mind can name it?
What would it mean to see truly - to belong to what I behold?
Which small flame in me is ready to be tended through the long winter nights?