Winter · Turning the Wheel
The Dark Night Sky
Twelve nights between the old year and the new one.
21 December – 6 January · twelve nights
Opens at the solstice with a live ceremony
Five live calls, all recorded
A daily email and a story, 25 Dec – 6 Jan
A channel to ask and to share
Recordings until mid–March
Language English · times in CET
The idea
Where did the year go?
You are not setting goals. You are finding the thread of a story that happens to be yours.
Time moves fastest when we don’t inhabit it. At the end of a long day you sit down and think: what did I actually do today? No idea.
It isn’t that we did too little. We did a great deal — very little of it for ourselves. On days like that we put ourselves last: the body, the needs, the direction.
The Rauhnächte are the nights in between. They come from several traditions, all of which agree on one thing: the dark half of the year is the half made for turning inward. To look at what happened. To decide what comes next.
Twelve nights, twelve rituals. One month of the year that is ending, one month of the year that begins.
The year does not end. It turns.
The twelve nights
Each night holds two months.
Every night looks back at one month of the year that is ending and forward into the same month of the year that begins. Through dreams, meditation and writing you find your way into both. If a night passes you by, you take it later. Nothing has to happen on its own day.
The card of this night
A question for each night
Twelve of them.
How it runs
Slowly, and at your own pace.
Five live calls
The solstice ceremony, the first night, New Year’s Eve, and two calls to close. All on Zoom, all recorded. Christmas is loud enough — nothing here depends on you being there live.
Twelve emails, twelve parts of a story
From 25 December, an email each morning: the theme of that night, the ritual, and one part of a story I wrote myself. By 6 January the story is finished. So is yours.
A place to ask
A channel for the twelve nights, for questions about the rituals, for the dream you can’t make sense of, and for reading what the others found.
Before — the solstice21 December
- Monday 21 December · [TIME] Solstice ceremony. The longest night. We open the twelve nights together and I walk you through what lies ahead.
The first nights25 – 31 December
- Saturday 26 December · 12.00 – 13.30 First Rauhnächte ceremony. We begin together.
- Thursday 31 December · [TIME] The turning. Closing the old year.
The last nights1 – 6 January
- Monday 4 January · [TIME] Planning the new year — from what you found to what you will actually do.
- Wednesday 6 January · [TIME] Closing call. The thirteenth day, and what you carry out of it.
Afterwardsuntil mid–March
- Recordings Everything stays available until mid–March, so you can repeat the rituals that worked and shape them to fit you.
- Members keep access to everything, and go on into 40 Days of Rituals in spring.
A taste of the first night
The night you stop counting.
Most of what we call reflection is really accounting. What did I achieve, what did I miss, where am I behind. It’s the same list as always, only with a candle next to it.
The first night asks something else. Not what you did with January, but what January did with you. Where you were pulled, where you resisted, what you decided without noticing you were deciding.
You don’t need to have journalled all year. You don’t need to remember much. The year left its marks on you, and they are easier to read than you think.
Two ways in
The Dark Night Sky lives inside AELYS.
Recommended
The Membership
111 € per month
The Dark Night Sky is one of four seasonal courses. As a member you get all of them, plus everything in between.
- The Muse (autumn) and The Dark Night Sky (winter)
- 40 Days of Rituals (spring) and Mid Somma (summer)
- Three live circles a month and the private podcast feed
- All past courses, first access to clothing and retreats
Billed monthly. Your rate stays as long as you stay.
Single course
This course only
333 € one–time
Twelve nights, five live calls, the daily emails and the story, access until mid–March.
- No monthly circles
- No access to the other seasons
The Muse and The Dark Night Sky as single courses: 666 €. Three months of membership: 333 €.
Until last year, The Muse and the Rauhnächte were sold together as one winter bundle. AELYS replaces that. The courses are still here, but their home is the membership now, and that’s where the price is fair.
This is the eleventh time I am walking these twelve nights with you.
Your host Steffi Grube
This is where it all startet. This course, those nights.
I had my own interpretation about the Dark Nights (Rauhnächte) - I was bored by writing 13 wishes or brurning old thoughts written on white paper.
I'm Steffi - a writer, a coach and a yoga teacher. An odd combination, until you see what it does to a course like this one. The reflecting is the coaching. The planning is the strategy. The question of what you want to embody is the yoga. And the thread you follow through all of it is the writing.
I use the Rauhnächte the way you will: to see the patterns I keep repeating, and to stop repeating them. That part isn't mystical. It's just slow - and it takes twelve nights.
Yoga teacher since my early twenties, trained journalist, based in Cologne and often somewhere else. I entered the wellness world at 19 and spent two decades learning what it gives and what it quietly takes. AELYS is my answer: my own recipes of energetics, writing and creative practice, in a circle that holds you without telling you who to be.
