It is the darkness that brings light.  Even on the darkest night of the year, the longest, we have the stars to cast their brightness on this earth, reminding us that we cannot fully understand the light without shadows. 

And these shadows, on this day, are not harbingers of gloom but messengers of the underworld, that deep cave where rest and contemplation and dreams call to us.  As we reach into those depths, we cast off the debris of the year and recharge our souls in the spring of imagination and intuition, that private place unique to each individual, forever found among the stars and in the shadows.

And when the dawn breaks the day after solstice, we find ourselves once again turning towards the sun, each day progressively longer, each strand of light reaching us all the way down in the underworld, where we rest and recharge and dream.