Midsummer (June 21st) Summer Solstice

Though Summer Solstice is officially the first day of summer, Wiccan tradition calls it Midsummer. That's likely because by the experience of those who lived in most parts of Europe where holiday festivals celebrated the day, it was definitely "mid-summer." Summer temperatures and the growing season are well established by this time, and the Sun is at maximum power. This is the longest day of the year and the actual date of the solstice can vary from June 20- 22, depending on what time of day the Sun enters the 0 degree of Cancer.

"Solstice," as was said here at Winter Solstice, comes from the Latin words sol for the Sun and sistere, which means, "to cause to stand still." Since Yule the days have been gradually lengthening. Now Sun seems to "stand still" for about three days, and from this point until next Winter Solstice (the shortest day and longest night), the days will gradually shorten. This description fits the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, it happens the other way around. When it is Yule in the north, "down under" it is Midsummer. At southern hemisphere Midsummer, we in the north are celebrating Yule.

Myths of the season depict the culmination of light that is also the onset of increasing darkness. A favorite one from the Norse countries is the challenge to the Oak King (God of the waxing year) by the Holly King (God of the waning year). The two battle and of course, the Holly King wins, for it is he will reign until Yule, when he gives way to the rebirth of the Child of Light, the baby Oak King. The two are alternatively called Bright Lord and Dark Lord in similar enactments of the myth of transition from waxing to waning, light to dark. Though often "played" as two separate god images, the two are but aspects of one, and may alternatively be depicted as a transition from naïve youth to the mature Father God, who recognizes his responsibility to his Goddess and his people, even as he celebrates the culmination of his light and power. He is the youth at Beltane, hormones charged in anticipation. Now he faces a new phase of life.

The Goddess, who in her Maiden aspect met the youthful God in sacred marriage at Beltane, has now become Mother, pregnant, just as the Earth is pregnant with the growth that will become the harvest. The Mother reigns as Queen of Summer, and it is through her that her Consort comes to mature realization of his full role, and its ultimate sacrifice. She is the Earth; he is the energy and heat that has gone into the Earth so that together they create new life. His energy will be born within the grains and fruits of the harvest that in the next two turns of the wheel must be reaped and die to feed the people. The God will become a willing sacrifice, falling with the harvest and becoming the seed of his own rebirth as the wheel turns.

It is in mythologies of this eternal cycle of life, death and life again, that we see the Goddess as the eternal Wheel itself, and the God as the traveler on the wheel, each year repeating his cycle of birth, waxing, culmination, waning, death, leading to rebirth and so and on.

Midsummer rites sometimes include fairy lore, and the association of fairies with this day has been most famously celebrated in Shakesphere's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's said that the little people, the elves and fairies, can be more easily seen at Midsummer, and that this is one of the days when the veil between the worlds is thin. We are forewarned, then, to take care when walking in the forest mists, lest we stumble into in the land of fairie where time is suspended, and we can be lost to the world for longer than we know!

An herb especially associated with Midsummer is St. John's wort. This plant with its bright yellow flower of four spikes like the solar cross is ruled by the Sun. One legend has it that if you should step on a St. John's wort flower on Midsummer's Night, you are magically transported to fairyland. St. John's wort gathered in this season can be hung over your door as an amulet of protection.

Another plant to be gathered at Midsummer as an amulet of protection is mistletoe, sacred to the Druids. Found growing in the top branches of oak trees, the mistletoe was cut at high noon with a golden sickle and never allowed to touch the ground, lest its magick be grounded. Cut it with friends who can catch the falling mistletoe in a white sheet.

In the Nordic countries where the equinoxes and solstices were the primary festivals and where the name Midsummer may have first emerged, the ancients celebrated with bonfires. The fire magic was used for divination, to encourage fertility of couples who would jump the fires together and to generate energy encouraging the Sun's potency through the growing season so that harvest abundance would be assured.

Midsummer by Other Names

Litha, another popular name for Summer Solstice, probably comes from Saxon tradition, though there are no clear sources for it. Raven Grimassi, in his Encyclopedia of Wicca & Witchcraft says that the name might be derived from the Anglo-Saxon lida, which means, "moon." This name for the summer Sabbat came into use in modern Wicca through works of the 1970s such as Starhawk's The Spiral Dance.

In ancient festivals of Gaul, Midsummer celebrations were called Feast of Epona. Epona is sometimes pictured as a Goddess riding a white mare, and sometimes as the white mare itself.

In ancient Rome, Vesta, Goddess of the Hearth, was honored in mid-June. The shrines of Vesta were usually open only to the Vestal Virgins, her priestesses, but during the annual festival of Vestalia, married women were also welcomed.

Medicine Wheels, stone circles built by Native American tribes, have been found to be aligned with the rising Sun at Summer Solstice, indicating the importance they gave this season.

The Christians, after the conversion of Europe to Christianity, attached a new meaning to the Midsummer festival time, just has they had for other pagan holidays. June 24th became the Feast of St. John the Baptist, his day to be celebrated as a day of triumph when just as this saint was the forerunner of Jesus, Summer Solstice is a forecast of the birth that would arrive with Winter Solstice.

Summer Solstice has been marked in many places around the world by stone circles or carved markers or tunneled passages through which light on solstice rising would flow. By this it is clearly shown that ancient people thought the day important enough to make great effort to predict and record its occurrence.



Copyright © 2003 Maria Kay Simms