The Thirteen Nights of Solstice Sorcery

The Thirteen Nights of Solstice Sorcery

Tomorrow, the Winter Solstice arrives. The sun turns upon its path, and the light is born again. From this threshold onward, the days slowly lengthen, carrying renewal, continuity, and becoming.

In witchcraft across the northern European folk tradition, this turning marks a powerful hinge in time. The new sun gathers form. This meeting place between cycles has long been honoured as a season for fate-setting, divination, and deliberate magical workings.

Historical sources describe the nights following the solstice as a span that stands slightly apart from ordinary time. Jacob Grimm records these nights in Teutonic Mythology as liminal and responsive, a period when the unseen world presses close and the shape of the coming year becomes readable through signs, actions, and intention. James Frazer, in The Golden Bough, documents midwinter rites of burning, offering, and symbolic enactment, noting their role in guiding fortune, fertility, and protection through the year ahead.

The solstice opens a gate. Work undertaken in awareness during this time moves with greater depth and consequence than work done in the ordinary run of days.

These are the Thirteen Magical Nights.

Before the solstice, or on the solstice itself, prepare thirteen small slips of paper.

Sit quietly. Allow the calendar year behind you to settle. Let its lessons, successes, griefs, and completions come to rest. 

On each slip, write one intention for the coming year.

Write each intention as a completed truth.

Use clear, declarative language.

Speak as one who names what has already been formed.

In witchcraft, words shape the direction of energy. Language carries power because it describes reality in motion.

Examples may include:

“My work stands strong and well received.”

“My home is steady, protected, and well kept.”

“My body moves with strength and health.”

When each slip is written, fold it toward yourself, drawing the intention toward you. Then place all thirteen slips together, unmarked and indistinguishable, in a safe and private place. 

The Burning of the Twelve

Beginning on the night of the Winter Solstice, and continuing for twelve consecutive nights, take the bundle of slips and draw one at random, without opening it and without reading it.

Burn the folded paper safely.

Fire serves here as a carrier and activator. In folk magic, flame moves intention beyond the personal sphere and sets it into the wider current of becoming. What passes through fire enters motion.

As the paper turns to ash, the intention releases into the unseen pattern where timing, chance, and influence arrange its unfolding. The act completes the setting of the work.

Repeat this each night for twelve nights.

Each burning completes a single working. Together, they form a field of intention that surrounds the year ahead.

The Thirteenth Intention

After twelve nights, one slip remains.

This is the thirteenth intention.

This intention stays with you. It marks the area of life that asks for attention, effort, and an ongoing relationship. Place it somewhere meaningful. Return to it throughout the year. Act for it. Work for it. Speak it again when needed.

The others are moving within the larger weave. Set out into the multiverse to do its work. This one remains within your hands.

The craft recognises that some workings are released into the multiverse, while others are cultivated through presence and practice. The thirteenth intention holds this role. It becomes a living thread between you and your desire.

Midwinter rites across Europe consistently reflect these themes. Burning, offering, symbolic action, and deliberate speech appear again and again in the historical record. The surface forms vary. The understanding beneath them remains steady.

The Thirteen Magical Nights offer a way to meet the year with steadiness and authority. They teach relationship with time, clarity of speech, and trust in the unfolding of what has been set in motion.

The sun turns.

The light returns.

What is spoken with care begins to walk.

Sources and Context

This working draws from documented midwinter folk tradition and later traditional witchcraft practice, including:

Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology

James George Frazer, The Golden Bough

Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun

Christina Hole, British Folk Customs