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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Midsummers Eve

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 Suggestion: Endless Daytime - TV Tropes Forum

 

Och, is my sleep ever screwed up.

Constitutionally an early riser, I'm habitually up with the Sun. This means that as we march toward Midsummer, the year's Longest Light, I'm up earlier and earlier every day.

This, of course, is no inherent bad. Early morning is a good time to get things done: I'm fresh from sleep, it's still relatively cool, there are fewer distractions. Still, as the Sunstead (that's "solstice" in Witch) approaches, it does mean that I get less and less sleep every night.

(It doesn't help that I've been paring away at my caffeine consumption lately, either. A tea-drinker, son of tea-drinkers, I'm now down to two cups of green tea a day. Pathetic. Still, I find that what sleep I do get is qualitatively better than it used to be back in my pot-o'-black-a-day days.)

Then there's the matter of twilight, the “two lights.” At Midwinter, we lose our twilights: the Sun goes down, and it gets dark.  But come Midsummer, there's light in the sky long after the Sun goes down, and long before he comes up again. In Shetland, they call this the Simmerdim: the “Summerdim,” we non-Shetlanders might say, the extended twilight of the Lithedays, the Midsummer season.

Children of the Light, Children of the Seasons are we. As the Light waxes, together we enter a collective state of chronic sleep-deprivation.

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Bright Blessings! A Celtic-inspired Midsummer Ritual

June is summer reaching its full glory. There have been many rites around the world to acknowledge the longest day of the year. The Japanese climb Mount Fuji at this time, for it is free of snow during two months in the summer. The Native American tribes of the Southwest and Great Plains hold ceremonies to honor the life-giving sun. Incan, Mayan, and Aztec midsummer rites honoring the sun gods were among their most important ceremonies. Here is a midsummer ritual my group has celebrated joyfully for years. 

 Essential elements for a Celtic-inspired Midsummer ritual are a wooden wheel, fallen branches and firewood, multicolored candles, multicolored ribbons, food and drink, and flowers for garlands. This ritual should be performed outside, ideally on a hill or mountaintop, at dusk. Call the local fire department to verify the fire laws in your area. You will likely need a special permit to light a bonfire, and certain areas may be restricted. Always clear the grass and brush away from your fire area, and make sure to dig a shallow pit into the ground. Circle the pit with rocks to help mark the edge of the fire pit as well as to contain the accidental spread of fire. Have a fire extinguisher, a pail of sand, and water bottles nearby in case the fire gets out of control. One person not directly involved in the ritual should be on hand to watch the fire at all times. Make sure the fire pit is far enough away from surrounding trees and other landscape features to allow for a group to dance around it.

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Sunrise Spell: Blessing Bowl Ritual

Here is sa marvelous rite to perform on Midsummer Day and every day. While a bowl is not a tool in and of itself, you can utilize bowls in your spellwork often and anytime you are inspired to do so. Three simple ingredients, a red rose, a pink candle and water can bestow a powerful blessing. The rose signifies beauty, potential, the sunny seasons, love for yourself and others. The candle stands for the element of fire, the yellow flame of the rising sun in the east, harmony, higher intention and the light of the soul. Water represents its own element, flow, the direction of the west, emotions and cleansing. This ritual can be performed alone or with a group in which you pass the bowl around. 

Float the rose in a clear bowl of water and light a pink candle beside the bowl. With your left hand, gently stir the water in the bowl and say: 

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A Midsummer Invocation to Earth and Her Two Husbands

Midsummer dark, Midsummer bright:

the longest day, the shortest night.

 

(Horn)

Let us lift up our hands.

 

On this Midsummer's Eve we call

to Earth, mighty mother of us all,

and we praise you for your great good gift of fruitfulness.

We ask that through the summer to come

our gardens may bear abundantly,

so that through this season

and through the winter to come

we, your people, may have plenty to eat.

So mote it be.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Dance of Oak and Linden

If you're looking for a magical dance with which to crown your Midsummer's Eve, here's a new one made of ancient parts: the Dance of Oak and Linden.

In Baltic lore (in the Baltics, Midsummer is still the biggest holiday of the year, bigger even than you-know-when), Oak is considered a male tree, Linden a female: two trees, two genders of beauty and strength.

The Midsummer connection is strengthened by the fact that Oak is also held to be the tree of Thunder, most virile of gods, and that the Linden—known as Basswood in the US—perfumes the White Nights of Midsummer with her spicy flowering. You could think of them as the Midsummer equivalents of Midwinter's Holly and Ivy.* 

The Dance of Oak and Linden is a simple round dance, and better it be if danced around a bonfire, or one of its eponymous trees. At its most basic, men bear oak sprays, women linden. (I'm sure that you don't need me to tease out the various possible permutations for you.)

Bearing your oak and linden, then—or whatever the equivalent trees in your landscape are—you join hands and dance.

Here's a song to go with it, dating from circa 1300, the oldest song in English to which we have both words and tune.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
In Praise of Catalpas

The catalpas are in bloom: thank Goddess.

Catalpa speciosa, the northern Catalpa. They're huge trees, catalpas: often the tallest on any given block. Heart-shaped leaves, bigger than your out-stretched hand, and those flowers: creamy with spotted tongues, like little orchids, really, if you can imagine tens of thousands of orchids all in one place. (Thus does superabundance render even the greatest beauty banal.) The city's catalpas are towering pyramids of white right now, that you can smell a block away: that sweet, spicy, nutmeg-y smell of Midsummer.

They're weedy kinds of trees, actually. Soft wood, not good for much of anything. They're also "dirty" trees: first the fallen flowers, which coat the sidewalks with slime, then the long, carob-like seedpods that litter the lawn by the thousands and (I swear) tens of thousands.

Oh, but they're in their glory now, and that means Midsummer can't be far away.

I grew up calling them (PI alert) "Indian tobies." Oddly enough (it took me a while to figure it out), "tobie" is short for "tobacco." Here's why. 

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
A Night on Witches' Hill

I'm not sure what the police were expecting, but it clearly wasn't us.

Midsummer's Eve. There we were, with our sister coven, up on Witches' Hill.

We'd had our picnic, we'd danced and sung the songs. Everyone else had gone up to the top of the hill to sing the Sun down. Typically, Uncle Steve was still down in the park, running around with the kids. In fact, the youngest was sitting on my shoulders.

The police car came hurtling up over the curb, tearing up turf as it went. It slammed to a stop midway up the hill. Simultaneously, in a choreographed move, both doors fly open. A cop leaps out of each and immediately crouches behind it, taut, as if expecting a barrage of bullets from the hilltop.

“Hey officer,” I say. “Midsummer's Eve, what?”

They give me the eye. Hands on guns, they move cautiously up the hill.

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  • Thesseli
    Thesseli says #
    lol!

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