Yule, Quiet, And The Death Card

The longest night invites a softer kind of courage. We welcome Yule with candles in every room, slices of sun made from dried oranges, and a warm mug of wassail as we step outside to thank the earth for her quiet work. From there we move into the heart of the season’s archetype—the Death card—not as a warning but as a wise guide for letting go of ego, illusion, and habits that keep us tired. If winter looks still on the surface, it’s only because life is shifting underneath.

We also dig into practical tools for shaping the year ahead. You’ll hear how to run a 24-card spread pairing tarot and oracle for each month, a focused pull of a Major Arcana theme for the year, and a numerology path to your Tarot Year Card. Along the way we talk through why doing this now, not on the frantic edge of New Year’s, gives your intuition time to breathe. If you want support, there are free Insight Timer meditations—including a Yule visualization that works like a gentle spell when travel or family logistics make ritual hard—and seasonal playlists to set the mood while you read and reflect.

Yule is our holiday of replenishment, a space where we choose warmth, slow rituals, and honest journaling. Try prompts that ask what you learned this year, where you need rest and boundaries, what needs mending, and which relationship is ready for deeper listening. Let joy be a practice too—yes, even the nostalgic holiday album that never gets old—because play keeps the inner fire steady. As the sun begins its return, choose one thing to release and one theme to carry forward. If this conversation warmed you, subscribe, share it with a friend who loves seasonal magic, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

Chapters

• 0:23 Welcoming Yule And Cozy Rituals
• 1:16 Oranges, Candles, And Sun Magic
• 2:21 The Death Card As Release
• 3:21 Insight Timer Meditations And Resources
• 4:28 Playlists, Joy, And Seasonal Music
• 5:16 Year-Ahead Readings: Methods And Tips
• 7:30 Reflecting On Yule Versus Christmas
• 9:17 Journal Prompts And Inner Child Work
• 10:11 Closing Blessings And Next-Year Intentions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:12

Hello, witches. Welcome to another cozy coven chat. I'm your host, Jenny C. Bell, and happy winter solstice, happy Yule. Um may you have Yule blessings. May it be beautiful and cozy. I am brewing Wassel and going to have a dinner similar to like a Thanksgiving comfort food dinner with macaroni and cheese, and I make my own Satan and just a comfort meal. And going to um have my battery operated candles on all night. So everyone has a candle in their bedroom for a winter solstice, and then we safely don't keep them on all night. But there's candles in every room and all throughout the house as a way of bringing back the sunshine, and I just love it. I'm going to be um slow and slow drying oranges. I like to cut them, slice them in circles, but then cut some of those in half so that they make half moons. Because I like to do moon phases with my orange slices, and then I put them in the oven on the lowest setting, on parchment paper, on a cookie sheet for hours. And they continue to dry out after you take them out. So they don't have to be totally dry in the oven. Um, as long as you don't like stack them, they'll get moldy. But if you're like hanging them on the tree right away, but I love to have orange slices for winter solstice because they look like the sun. I like to have candles, I like to have my warm wassel beverage. Um always go outside, no matter how cold it is, just to thank Mother Earth and wish her a good slumber. Just love it. Love feeding the birds and the squirrels and getting everybody their peanuts throughout the winter and helping them store up and cachet. So yeah, happy Yule. Um so funny. The card I picked is the death card, which is perfect. Winter solstice is the death and the life, right? Uh Sawin is the death if we're gonna do like the whole allegory and story of the Oak King, Holly King. But you look at the earth in the winter and it looks dead, right? In a in not a terrible way, just not green, except for the evergreens, but you know what I mean. Looks pretty dead. You don't even see some of the animals because they're hibernating. Um, so death is one of my favorite cards in the tarot. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's the death of the ego, it's the death of illusion, it's the death of what no longer serves you. It's beautiful, it's perfect. So if you were like, I'm not sure what I'm gonna manifest or do or hope for on Winter Solstice, maybe you want to release. Death is here, and we're it's time to release. So I love that. I wanted to tell you if you don't know, I am a teacher on Insight Timer, and Insight Timer is a free app. Um, and all of my meditations are free. They I have an entire series on the wheel of the year. So if you're interested, you can listen to my cozy chat on Yule. And you can also listen to my meditation for Yule, which is a really fun, it's like a spell. It's a spell through visualization. So instead of doing an actual physical spell, it's a spell in your mind's eye. So if you can't go, if you're visiting or you're traveling and you can't celebrate Winter Solstice, it's perfect for that. So check me out. I'm on Insight Timer, just look up Jenny C. Bell. Um, you can also find it through my website, jennycbell.com. They're free. It's a free app, free meditations. I personally use Insight Timer every day. I'm not getting paid to tell you this. Um been a teacher on there. It's one it's the thing I've been doing the longest, like even longer than YouTube. Something I applied to be a teacher a long time ago, and I love it. I love teaching meditation. It's something I've thought about doing more often, but yeah. So we have the death card, which is also a meditative card, it's a going within card, it's a quiet card. I love the quietness of winter, how it's just dark and we want to speak softly. Oh, I also have playlists too for all of the Sabbaths on my Spotify, which you can also find on my website. So I have a really good U Old Winter Solstice one. Um, I would love to know everybody's favorite like winter or Christmas albums, and I would love to be like really cool and tell you something like witchy, but mine is a new kids on the block Christmas album. I listen to it every year. I love it and I will love it till the day I die. I love a boy band. Joey Joe still has my heart. Love it. Okay, and we need joy. We talked about having fun last week. Um, I want to talk to you a little bit about a year-ahead reading. So, what is that and why do we do it? There are different ways to do it. Um, I have them all in our coven. So, one of them, which I think is my favorite, but is the most time consuming, is to do a 24 card reading. So, this is for people that have more than one card deck. So, what I like to usually use is a tarot and an oracle. And I pull one tarot, one oracle for every month of the year for all of 2026, which is 24 cards. And so that's a possibility. That's the most in-depth. I'm gonna walk you from most in-depth to least, right? So that's the most in-depth. I do like to have all of my tarot upright for that, that's just personal. And some people, before they do that reading, like to take out the cards that scare them, and that's okay. The other option is to pull a tarot, major arcana of the year. We have that talk about that in our coven too. So you separate all of the major arcana from the rest of your cards and you leave them upright. And if you want to, you can take out the scary cards, but you don't have to, and then you ask for the theme for the year. And then the last option is to use numerology to decide your tarot of the year. And I have all this stuff about that in our coven, but you can probably Google it too. So there's different ways. You can pull as many as one card for the all of 2026, and as, you know, or as many as one to 24, you could do more than that. There's no wrong or right, kind of up to you. Um, I like to do this around this time because I don't like to do it closer to New Year's. I like to have time to process the cards. So something to think about, something you might want to do on Yule or around Yule. Some other things I like to do around Yule are I like to sit and truly reflect, kind of like how people do on New Year's Eve, on the year as a whole, and what I'm grateful for. Even though, you know, technically Sawin is the witch's New Year, you know, I grew up in this culture and the calendar new year, it feels like the new year. So although energetically, I think I align most with the astrological New Year, astrological New Year, which is in spring. But, you know, there's so many chances. Sorry, I have a bit of a scratchy throat. So anyway, um, yeah, I think I like to reflect. I also like to, like I said, light a ton of candles safely. I like to look ahead. I like to be comfortable and do cozy things. I like to have warm drinks and I like to have comfort foods. Because Christmas as a mom, it's not really for me, but Yule winter solstice is for me. And I guess that's the biggest delineation in my mind. Yule and winter solstice are my holidays. I fill my cup and we do things I want to do. And Christmas is more about my children and celebrating them and making a, you know, cookie offering to Santa, elf on the shelf, all those things. Um I never thought about that till recently, but it's like we leave cookies for Santa, like an offering to the spirit of Christmas. That makes it so witchy. I already thought Santa was kind of witchy, but that makes it really witchy, which I really love. But yeah, I just wanted to wish you a happy Yule. Um, some Yule reflection questions. Um there are quite a few, actually. There's a lot to, I don't know, think about with Yule because it's like different ways you can approach it. I like to think of it as the longest night of the year, and I like to really lean into that darkness. But other people like to really lean into the fact that it's the sun returning, and they like to lean into the solstice kind of summer energy. So some people will like um like listen to Here Comes the Sun from the Beatles as a way of like welcoming back the sun or the lighting of the candles. I don't know. Um, this time of year, too, is a really good time to do inner child healing because we tend to get reflective about childhood and maybe even watch some of our favorite Christmas childhood movies. So inner child healing is a really good thing to do at this time. Um okay, so journal questions. What lessons did you learn this year? Where do you need more rest in your life? Where do you need more boundaries? What needs mending, literal or metaphorically? And what relationship can you practice deep listening more? Where and what do you see as signs of winter? And what are your thoughts for next year? Where are you already thinking about for next year for 2026? What are some initial thoughts? Have a wonderful winter solstice, and you will bless a beak.