The Weekly Rune – December Solstice Season

For 13 December 2025 – 4 January 2026

Winter Solstice, Mother’s Night, Yule, and through Twelfth Night

The Medicine of Shadow

Every year I make the Solstice runecast publicly available to anyone who wants to read it, partly for folx to see what a full runecast comprises, and also because the runes in these casts hold impact not just for this week, but throughout this half of the year. If you receive guidance from this runecast, join Runes for Change to receive the runecast in full every week, as well as other discounts on soultending services and other membership perques. You can join at soulintentarts.com/join.

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This Solstice runecast covers the full Yule season, 13 December  through 4 January. Observations vary by tradition.

• Modranight/Mother’s Night/Holle/Hulda’s Eve
• Winter Solstice 21 December 10:02am EST
• Yule Eve
• beginning of 12th Night 24 December
• Yule 25+ December
• End of Yule/ 12th Night 4 January

Jera is the half-month rune through 28 December, at which point we move into Eihwaz until 13 January.  The ecosystem allies include our seasonal Death helping spirits holding space as we delve into The Dark Time and approach The Wild Hunt. We are held by direction Within, with element Plant tending our agency, and season Winter setting the pace. From right to left is Jera, then Eihwaz.

It’s curious that we do this abundant sojourn after the harsh introduction to the second aett. I made a video on the winter runes last week, in which I discuss how they set our tone for the remainder of the Futhark. We exit the first aett somewhat blissful, assured, and feeling held. Then we immediately drop into the second aett with Hagalaz and abrupt change, only to require deep ritual with Nauthiz to mend ourSelves through it. The chill of Isa leaves us still, quite possibly restless, and needing to be fully prepared before we take on the rest of that aett.

What’s more curious is that we come through that jolt and aren’t met with the medicine and nurture of Berkana, or the community, empowerment, or interdependence of other runes. No. We have Jera–year. Cyclicity. Seasonality. We’re met with a supportive reprieve, sure enough, but one that comes with the reminder that this will happen again, so be prepared. Take the lulls. Store the spoils, and lay out the plans for the next time we get dropped into something way over our heads.

What does that say about life as we’re meeting it now? Where are the places that we can reserve a little, put some back for a rainy day? Or the lessons we’ve learned about what to never do again, or what we should do more or, even often? 

Jera is the time to sit with the fruit of the year, to enjoy it as we do our Winter deathwalking and shadow work. It’s sustenance for the job, and this season helps us feel aligned with sacred order, when we likely feel anything but, after the winter trio. It helps us re-acclimate with place and timing, which is a deep honoring of cycle at the most divine levels. In Runic Book of Days I call Jera “a second wind, the reprieve before spring, [the time] to get things in order to plan for the next year.” 

Solstice 21 December

More on pointe, Jera is the rune of December Solstice. It is the rune of finding the light in the darkness, which we may do well to apply to our experience with the winter runes. We survived. We have options before us. We are the ones who must choose the way we go forward.

Solstices represents a suspension of time, as well as certain tension. In the north December Solstice is the day of least sunlight, most darkness, while in the south it’s the day of most sunlight, the shortest darkness. Because we track time by these light and dark opposites, we forget to be attentive to what exists between these polarities, which is what Solstice really epitomizes. We emphasize the length or shortness of day at Solstice, though what makes Solstice truly special is its focus on those protracted moments between light and darkness. It is a space of time-untime connecting our old relationship with timing to a new one. But in order to do that, we must be willing to let go of our expectations of time and timing, and instead embrace cyclicity and what it needs of us.

Thus, when we work with Jera as the rune for December Solstice, it encompasses not just the full spectrum of Solstice day, as in both extremes of light and darkness, but also neither, and something Other, all at once. That something Other is a gap between the known, with unique qualities we can tap into. Everything we have been, everything we are, and everything we are becoming is in that gap.

December Solstice dials that in a bit further in that it’s focused beyond the light and dark of the day. It’s also focused on the light and dark of the year. For this reason, it’s a good time to examine what has been before. Let the healing power of darkness do its job to deathwalk what must go, center shadow parts that need expression, and to allow the forces of Nature to clean it all out on the Wild Hunt. These ancient observations and rituals around darkness gave us the opportunity– while held safely in Nature’s long night–to do that soul excavation, so that we wouldn’t carry those heavier aspects of Self into the light of the new year, into the planning of our next harvest.

Half-moon Prompts with Jera

• What came up around Summer Solstice that is coming to fruition now?
• What is dawning in life that needs focus now?

Eihwaz 28 December-13 January

We move into Eihwaz after Solstice, on 28 December. It’s that murky time where the bright festivities of Jera lull momentarily, we remember just how dark it really is, and are charged further with remembering we have to rise to the occasion. Again. Given that timing and seasonal demand, that Eihwaz follows is serendipitous.

Eihwaz means yew, which is steeped in lore around life, death, and something between. Yew is an evergreen said to defy death, yet so poisonous that it can kill. It bounds graveyards to protect the dead, and was used to make the strongest of arrows. 

As animists we can faithfully take from that amalgamation of features that Yew, thus Eihwaz, were strong presences. Literally. They would have been acknowledged beings in their own right. 

In many ways Eihwaz brings the more mature take on the entire first aett: we are soul in form. Initially our experience of the first-aett is new, shiny, and very likely fun. It’s the epitome of innocent frolicking to hone how we apply our agency.  It is the ‘play is work’ of childhood. 

But we can’t come through entry into the second aett with only poetry and glittering agency. We can’t enter the hardship of life without realizing there’s a great deal more demanded of us, and despite how fondly we may look back on our formative runes, we now are charged with holding that bright optimism amidst really challenging times. Through Hagalaz, Nauthiz, and Isa, we learn how little control we have over the external world, how much attention our internal world requires, and how imperative it is that we learn what it needs and to give it.

By the time we get to Eihwaz, we can’t think of our mortality without thinking of our divinity, and we can’t think of our divinity without thinking of our mortality. They are inseparable.

This ties into a subtler aspect of Eihwaz that I think makes folx uncomfortable: sometimes poison is needed. We have to acknowledge our Shadow Selves. We have to acknowledge the Shadow of the world, of being, of Other. We have to realize that sometimes we are required to be the poison in order to evoke the change needed for ourselves, communities, or the collective. That kind of thinking isn’t comfortable to our naive first-aett Selves, yet it is exactly what Eihwaz teaches us to embrace. It is neither bad nor good, shadow or light. It is. And we are. 

That is the mid-point Futhark lesson of Eihwaz. We are not the pretty babies of the first aett, though we are savvy darlings who know how to set boundaries, look out the window and see the weather, engage our cosmological resources to stay the course of what we came here to do, come what may. We are now prepared. We are now willing to be who we truly are, not what we wish ourSelves to be.

Half-month Prompts with Eihwaz

• What facets of Self were highlighted at Summer/June Solstice?
• What acceptance and tending do they need now?

The Cosmology Scape

Luckily we have strong Allies helping us hold our polarities this week. Direction indicates how we best ground for our work at this time. The primary four directions uphold the connection between Earth and Other. They are our safe space. They are our highway to what lies beyond our five senses. When a Direction beyond these cardinal directions shows up for us in the runecast, we are being directed to relationships beyond Midgard, and are encouraged to explore our roots, bonds, and Ancestors in those spaces.

Within is the direction holding space for us this week. Some folx may call this Center. It is the direction focusing who we most deeply are. Within is who we are beyond the rising sign, beyond the face we present to the world. It represents the secret tunnels within us. It represents our torso, nervous system, our gut instinct. It speaks directly to our animism, our personal relationship with being on the planet, and our capability of allowing Body to be both the boundary for and determiner of our experience here. 

If Within is a verb, I think of it along the lines of to orient, or get our bearings. Center does not act outward. It aligns. It is the verb that tells us where we are in relation to everything else. To center is to locate Self honestly, to feel the pull of all directions at once without being dragged by any single one. Center makes the map usable.

Within reinforces that we have to take that initiative, we have to set the parameters. In other words, our agency doesn’t just do; we must do agency. It informs us that there are parameters to be set, as well as we have to take action on them–as in, if we don’t allow the examination of Jera and the willingness to do what must be done of Eihwaz, we become more likely to lose the thread of what we came here to do. We have to confront what holds us back from that introspection and choice in moving on. Our spirit helpers can’t do it for us. It was never their job to do on our behalf, but apparently now more than ever, they aren’t in a place to intervene.

Within is the direction of the center of who we are–our center of personal cosmology, stretching out into All Things. It is soul in form. It is animisming in interdependence and belonging. It is our direct personal relationship to being here, now, embodied. It reiterates our accountability to formed being, the reminder that we have foot in both worlds that meet at the heart. Despite that the heart and passion can easily dictate how we move among, we are challenged to remember to move with our whole Selves, with our whole Within. 

It both exalts what is wonderful about being in form, while fully honors that we are also Other. It fosters us to remember that we do not and cannot forego honoring all of who we are. We literally do not have to choose.

Elements are the active components of everything; they are how things get done.They facilitate our agency. This week our elemental ally is Plant. Plant in many ancient creation myths, is the first ally of humans. In fact, in many creation stories, humans were made from Plant. Plant is food, medicine, protection, and conduit to the godden. Plant has feelings, intelligence, and awareness, and the ability to sense our intentions and respond to our actions. When Plant visits it’s time to bring our awareness in closer, quieter, and listen to what the smaller voices of our ecosystem are saying. 

This Plant, caloglossa red moss,  as the best elemental influence for how we choose our Eihwaz (poison), so to speak, suggests our best efforts will be behind the scenes. Moss isn’t a center-stage life force. It’s liminal, and as such, it occupies diverse space at once, and demonstrates comfort with both light and shadow, and everything between. It exudes calmness and soothing. This elemental support accepts all of who we are and encourages us to do the same.

Season is the tone of the moment at hand and the resources we can best access for support, as well as respond to what support our ecosystem needs from us. Winter—Vetr— is a time of rest, diligently grounding, testing endurance, measuring resourcefulness. It is the time of the Wild Hunt and standing in the danger of our dead. It’s a time when the forest becomes less approachable and perhaps even hostile toward human-persons. We are less involved with the outdoors, and must pay closer attention to our reserves. Because of that the world gets smaller in winter. It’s stay-inside-and-read-a-book energy that can easily be consumed with anxiety or despair. For this reason, a Winter survival kit of Dream Team and creature comforts may just be the thing to make use of the indoor time and stave off distress.

This week Winter brings a cloistered space to examine how we’re in relationship with how we’re holding our unique gift alongside our actual experience of being here. That’s a mouthful.  In Winter we move slower. We’re huddled for warmth, and have ample stillness. We also may have a little too much family time happening, or perhaps we’re cut off and lonely. Winter, in terms of pushing or diving into extremes, means go slow. Be methodic. Be thorough and intentional in self-care. Winter also expresses the intimacy that is created when we do that self-focused work and bring that version of who we are into community.

This Winter Solstice encourages us to acknowledge the places in which we’re ready to press on into the second aett, and to be honest about the places that we aren’t. This progression isn’t about perfection or rushing. It’s about thoroughness and honesty. Jera gives us the discernment to assess the situation and get together our plans and tools for how we go forward. It is a point of re-membering, to put a soul tending spin on the aftermath of surviving the winter trio. Eihwaz gives us the moxy to live out loud the version of us that was created in this experience of the second aett, and the preparedness to hold onto that version with whatever comes, after.

Galdr

• Jera – Yer, Yeruh, Yarrow, Yair, Yairuh,Yairaw
• Eihwaz – Eye, Eyewuh, Yew, Yewuh, Eoh

Thank you for walking with me and the runes on this crazy calendar year. It’s been something, and I don’t know about you but I’m going in hiding through this Yule season. I wish you and yours the best. Be safe. Be blessed in this holiday season, and if these are the kinds of runecasts you want every week, join my Runes for Change community at soulintentarts.conm/join

Prompts for Working with Isa

• What was happening in your life during our time with Kenaz (mid-late September)?

• What did you gain from darkness then that may shed light on what you need now?

• Are you comfortable with clarity coming on levels other than intellectual?

The Weekly Rune Galdr

• Isa – Eess, Eesuh
• Kenaz – Kehn, Kenuh, Kawn, Kawnuh, Kain, Kainuh

Tiwaz Happens – We Grieve, We Grow

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S. Kelley Harrell, M. Div.

Kelley Harrell is an animist, author, deathwalker, and death doula held by Tuscarora, Woccon, and Sissipihaw land. For the last 30 years, through Soul Intent Arts she’s helped others ethically build thriving spiritual paths. Her work is Nature-based, and centers soul tending through the Elder Futhark runes, animism, ancestral tending, and deathwork. She hosts the podcast, What in the Wyrd, and also writes The Weekly Rune as a celebration of the Elder Futhark in season. Work with her in the Runes for Change community or in her intensive soul tending training, The Spirited Path.  Full bio.

#beyourcommunity ~ #youareecosystem

elder well, die well, ancestor well

@kelleysoularts