Winter Solstice, the God, and Masculinity
I went to a pagan friend's place for winter solstice, which was a wonderful experience. They have been practicing much longer than I, but because of my own reticence to participate (I think because I was denying my calling) I hadn't actually witnessed one of their rituals before.
Whereas my husband and I are much drawn to the path of Druidry, our friend's practice is closer to the Wiccan side of witchcraft. There is very significant crossover between the two practices (the founders of Wicca and the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids were even close friends), but one thing associated very strongly with Wicca in particular is a reverence for the God and Goddess and a focus on their polarity, sometimes reduced to a gender binary. I trusted our friend to be sensitive, but when it came time to invoke the God and Goddess, I still found myself uncertain of how much I would resonate with it.
In the end, I chose to read the invocation of the God. I reasoned that I wanted to affirm my newfound masculinity, as someone who has lived as nonbinary for seven years before realizing I was a trans man. Perhaps I wanted the God to recognize me as one of His own. In a way, it was exactly that. In a way, it was more.
See, the God is the Sun. I am a Leo sun, with an Aries moon and Aries rising for even more fire. Fire represents a great deal of what I am. I am passionate, creative, energetic, an active mind. I am full of feeling, full of thought. However, you would not necessarily know that from meeting me in person. I am very soft spoken, if I speak at all, and often I give the impression that I am closed off or simply empty-headed. Since I was young, I have felt like I was too much. I spoke too much and too loudly, I felt too much, thought too much. To counter that, I withdrew into myself, made myself small, made myself invisible.
Many of the things that I feel make me too much are parts of myself that I connect to masculinity, which is a big part of why I struggle so much with the truth that I am male. I do not want to be the kind of guy who speaks over others, who does not share space, who values himself more than those around him. I fear becoming that man more than anything.
However, masculinity does not need to be that. Fire aspect does not need to be only something that burns and consumes without control. It can be warming, life-giving, life-preserving, a tool of great transformation. Without it, our lives would be much more difficult. Without the sun, this great ball of nuclear fire in the sky, our lives would not be possible at all.
These are all things I felt when I invoked the God and called down the sun. It felt weighty, but not like a burden. It felt powerful. It felt affirming.
It was a powerful experience, and I hope that it is a sign of only more growth for me in the future. I am grateful to my friend for leading the ritual, and as my first year as a committed pagan comes to a close, I am more than happy that this is the path I chose.