Yule

By Speculation Publications

During the cold winter months, we mirror the Earth as she lies quiet, waiting for the return of warm days. We gather around yule fires and perform rituals to lure back the sun. Drinking wassail, singing songs and exchanging gifts, some of us tell stories of the longest night.

Stories of new love and old magick.

Stories of the Holly King and his fight for the season.

Of death and lives well lived.

Of succumbing to the most feral parts of ourselves.

Of the Wild Hunt, and the wrath of Perchta.

And of fey magicks and sacrifices made for love.

Light a candle and bundle up. Within these pages you will find what you need for a hale and hearty Yule, a reconciliation with the shadows and a joyful return to the light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Speculation Publications
• Release date: Mar 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224908981

Book preview

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Yule

Tales for the Winter Solstice

Edited by River Eno, LCW Allingham and Susan Tulio

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Speculation Publications

Copyright © 2023 Speculation Publications / L.C. Allingham and Ruth Fortino

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted into any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

ISBN: 979-8-9868879-4-4

Edited by River Eno, LCW Allingham and Susan Tulio

Original cover art Copyright © L.C. Allingham, All Rights Reserved.

Original Illustrations Copyright © L.C. Allingham, All Rights Reserved

Published by Speculation Publications

Contents

Dedication

1.Foreword

2.An Turas

3.This Longest Winter’s Night

4.Yule Blessings

5.Yule Gifts

6.By the Blades of Grass and Knife

7.Home Sweet Home

8.The Wild Hunt

9.The Changeling

10.Yule Log

11.Yule Candle Ritual

12.About the Authors

13.Chapter 13

To our shadows

and the time given to embrace them

Foreword

Until my late twenties, I described myself as a city girl. The only green space I knew was a small park around the corner from my inner-city home. And yet, to this day, my most vivid childhood memory is of that park—the earth, the grass, the flowers, the weeds and trees. The sun shining through a canopy of leaves in summer. The rain. The shifting fragrances, autumn to winter to spring to summer. Each season has its own magnificent feel and texture. The color-scape their biggest individuality, but their scents being as true an indication as the new spring foliage, summer’s lush fruits, autumn’s golden leaves and the red of winter holly.

Our home was small, in a long block of houses in a row. The second floor back bedroom, my room, overlooked the narrow kitchen roof and a small half-concrete, half-cobblestoned yard where dandelions and sweet grass grew in the spaces between the uneven red bricks. Across from that was another small yard and another back bedroom. But the house next door, which changed hands often, had a beautiful Red Maple growing in the tiny yard, its thick, heavy roots upended the cobblestone, and it towered over the two-story homes. Long branches stretched over our kitchen roof hanging lazily in front of my bedroom window. As a child, in spring and summer, I would push up the creaky wooden frame to touch the wide, soft leaves. And when I got older, I’d stare through the crooked leafless branches into the darkness of winter. 

Winter. 

There was something special about the blackness of a cold, winter night that rivaled any other type of darkness. That kind of dark brought back the voices I’d heard since I was a toddler. The breeze was clean, crisp and thin enough to carry words or songs into the night. The air was quick to sting your face and chill your bones, leaving an imprint of winter’s deepest questions to root and roll around your subconscious. 

The dark of winter became a deep unlit closet. Something you could walk into, engulfing you in shadow as you wandered inside. It was thick, and velvety and coated your skin. A portal to other lands. 

I would look into that opaque world and watch the movement—the constellations conversing through blinks and twinkles, the familial voices from antiquity letting you know they were there, and the others…the faeries, the vampires, the ghosts and the witches vying for your attention under the full Cold moon. All the things the summer sun shines through are made whole and tangible in the darkness of winter.

It was in these moments, as a teenager, I got lost, and also, found. I would journal, write songs and poetry, draw, listen to music, and write about who I thought I was and what I wanted to be. I would learn later, I was doing a specific kind of work. 

Shadow Work.

Darkness is the winter’s secret—its magick and power. It forces us to fall inward, look around and then pull out what we didn’t know was there, the bad and the good. The winter ignites secret parts of us to come alive, the parts kept hidden during the heavy spring and summer sun. The magickal, strong roots connecting our bones and hearts and minds to the earth. 

And then the winter solstice comes. The longest night of the year.

Pagans call it Yule. 

We celebrate this moment of darkness as it allows us the freedom to settle into ourselves. The earth has promised us it will give us back the light, and we trust that truth; the earth doesn’t lie. After the solstice we are made to sit for a few more weeks in dormancy, in contemplation, and if we are brave enough to see the reality of who we are, we emerge fresh, more whole than we were the season before. 

This unique collection of stories does just that. It pulls you in, breathes space into your heart and soul and then releases you with a better understanding of the rhythm, cycles and power of life. Each story in this enchanted collection is an aspect of the shadow work we do on Yule, an homage to the depths we dive and to the light that returns within us:

Kelyn in An Turas dives deep into her mind to find the strength to spend the longest night with the person who makes her feel whole.

Ozella in The Longest Winter’s Night looks back on a life well lived as her cycle in this world comes to an end. 

Ria in By the Blades of Grass and Knife befriends a foundling in the wheatfield, throwing caution to the wind and allowing herself a connection like she’s never known. 

Alvina in Home Sweet Home escapes to the deep woods seeking renewal, only to return to the mysteries of the Earth after the wild outside calls to the wild inside.

Perchta in the Wild Hunt re-living ancient traditions, decides between wrath or rewarding those who follow her journey across the solstice sky.

And Aoife in The Changeling confronts the decision to keep a loved one close or let them go where she cannot follow. 

I hope these original Yule stories, along with the little bits of magick we collected on the pages between, help you on your journey into the dark, so you won’t be afraid to see something secret about yourself—your shadow. I’ll see you on the other side, renewed and rejuvenated to enter the springtime with vitality, magick, empathy and love.

Peace and Shadow,

River

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An Turas

River Eno

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Kelyn closed her eyes.

Her breathing purposeful, her thoughts passed through an intense, disquieting fog—as they always did during her travels—and then she landed on a country road after dusk.

Piles of snow from past storms lined the sides of the road, but the path before her had only an inch or two of freshly fallen snow. In the light of a dim street lantern, snowflakes drifted like tiny, twinkling stars falling from space to prick her skin with a faint understanding of cold.

A large, familiar house stood back from the others, its boundaries marked by a sturdy wooden fence that seemed to dare passersby to climb over it or to at least touch it. Maybe because the house enclosed behind it was tall and intriguing, or perhaps it was the wood itself, the streaked rose color or the scent of cedar she could smell from the road.

Making her way along the path, Kelyn felt a familiar flutter in her belly. She tensed and then raced up the driveway to grab hold of the large holly bush hoping to remain in this world. Only she didn’t quite make it. She was slipping. Again.

No, no! 

Her ghostly hands grabbed through the holly, and she was roughly thrust back into her body. 

Damn it!

Her heavy breathing upset the attic, intensely quiet