The Sevens
Major arcana: Death/ Guardian Position on wheel: Samhain. Chakra: base
Seven of Wands: Clearance
This is the time of year for cutting down dead wood, and pruning to enable better future growth. An axe rests beside some cut silver birch, whilst the dead wood is burnt in a November bonfire. It is time to take action in order to clear outworn modes of behaviour from areas of your life. A clarification, a paring down of intention. The fire purifies negativity, transforming the energy.
   
Insecurity
A fearful person, unprotected, is attacked by anxieties and nightmares, unable to see a clear way out as they are so ungrounded. The solution is to protect one’s boundaries, call in warmth of support; the need for intense physical activity to help one to ground some of the panic.
   
Seven of Cups: Mourning
A lamp is lit for the dead, and food and drink if offered as ancestors are remembered. Yew, an evergreen, is a reminder of rebirth. Grief and mourning for a loss in one’s life. Necessary emotional release. An honouring and a respect for that death.
   
Seven of Stones: Healing
Between a stone gateway, against a clear starry sky a shamanic antlered guardian holds the cord that binds one’s soul to one’s body. A figure lies on the ground, protected by stones at the four quarters, and one on their heart. You are receiving healing, and need to reunite your re-energised ‘astral’ or spirit body with your physical body. Time to reawaken and ground oneself, using your visionary experience in a creative way in normal life.
   
The Hermit
Minor arcana: Eights Position on wheel: Midwinter Solstice. Element: earth.
Chakra: womb. Colour Indigo/black
After being stripped to the bone in Death, you are now wrapped in the protection of the Greenwood in The Hermit. The green cloak is of holly and ivy, evergreens, that still grow in the otherwise bare and stark woodland in winter. You are finally arriving at your grounded centre. Warmth radiates from the heart of the tree, and the holly wreath shows the eight-spoked wheel. The original ‘Father Christmas’ wore a green cloak. Our Hermit is seen non-gendered.
The Hermit holds a holly staff for you have travelled far to come to this place. The green flame from the horn lantern will guide you through the darkness of winter, just as the spark of life lies dormant within nature at this time. When you sit in the winter stillness, nurturing this deep green flame of the inner heart, you will feel an inner warmth and peace. Our hermit walks firmly on the earth, and enters the Greenwood Tree to sit within its roots, this is unlike the traditional image of the hermit climbing a mountain, which denies that wisdom is held in the land itself.
The Hermit requires this contented solitude to re-establish their every day life after the disruption of Samhain. This is not lonely isolation but a stable base from which she can visit others. This time away from hectic activity enables you to explore interests in depth, use your talents (Skill, eight of stones) and draw together all you have achieved and desired throughout the year. (Hearthfire, eight of wands).
   
Judgement
Minor arcana: Eights Position on wheel: Midwinter Solstice. Element: earth.
Chakra: womb. Colour: indigo/black
Judgement is a concept much misunderstood by contemporary society. The image shows two of yew trees. Yew is an extraordinary tree. It is our longest living tree, and can grow for 3,000 years. It appears to regenerate itself, sprouting new growth from a seemingly dead hollowed trunk. The evergreen yew is said to hold the memory of all previous generations and is usually planted near the dead. The Judgement card has to do with the cycles of time, a year, periods of one’s life, one’s whole lifetime, one’s many lifetimes; from the seasonal year to the lifetime of the planet earth itself.
Your approach to the issues in this card affects your future, decides the nature or even the possibility of your rebirth. The entrance to a passage grave beckons you (Bryn Celli Du, Wales). This is a place to lay your past to rest, a still safe sanctified space in which the parts of your life can be reconstituted after the trauma of Death. (see Rebirth, eight of cups).

You are sensitive, and require someone to stand watch for you; either the highest part of oneself, an ancestral guardian, a shamanic figure or angelic power depending on your belief system.

In this Judgement card a huge white bear watches over your soul. On one level, this bear is the re-empowered Guardian of the previous card; the exposed bones now protected, all soulparts restored, a rebirth occurring.

In many mythologies the bear is the shamanic part of oneself, and its ceremonialised death and resurrection is an initiation into a shamanic system. This white bear traverses all three shamanic worlds, upper, middle and lower, and stands at the axis due north, just as the constellation of the Great Bear points to the Pole Star. The Winter Solstice is a gateway to these worlds. The dawn Midwinter sun brought rebirth to the dead and the darkened world, yet the darkness itself brings stillness and peace; it is not fallow. Behind the mound shines the aurora borealis and the rainbow bridge across which souls are said to traverse after death. A figure dressed in red, rides their reindeer on a shamanic journey (cf. Santa Claus).

After the Death of one highly significant part of your life, people are often very judgmental, i.e., ‘if s/he had not done this or that…’ often there is profound shame, sorrow, guilt at the mess they have made of their life, their time, their relationships etc.

What every person requires for their rebirth, to break a continuous cycle of repeated patterns, is forgiveness, absolution, the power and blessing of love, whether from an external source or oneself.

Perhaps for the first time in your life you feel a whole person, reborn.