Beltane Summer Moon
We’re close to the Summer Solstice. Those crazy Scandinavians are getting ready to get naked and dance around bonfires. I figure it’s all those long cold dark days in winter. I wouldn’t want to try it here. Imagine all those mosquitoes biting you in places no mosquito had ever found on you before. Still. I admire the abandon, the ecstasy these rites release. Dancing sky clad (as the Wiccans have it) honors the bond between earth and fire, person and sun, light and dark.
The Solstice celebration is an astronomical holiday, not one legislated in the halls of Congress or Parliament or the Diet, nor is it a day celebrated solely for a religious or cultural reason. No, it marks an actual celestial event, one with consequences here on earth. Since the Solstice marks the moment when the sun is at its highest (69 degrees here) and therefore pouring down more energy on a given square yard of earth than at any other time, this is the moment of greatest solar strength throughout the year. Due to a lag in warming, June is the coolest of the summer months, but the increased solar energy will begin to demonstrate itself in July and early August.
I’ll comment more on the Solstice on Saturday, but here I want to note my contrary reaction to it. The signal moment of the Solstice for me is the beginning of the sun’s decline in height, heading toward its nadir on December 21st. Just as the Winter Solstice can be seen as the moment when the light begins to return after long months of increasing dark, so the Summer Solstice can be seen as the moment darkness begins to return after long months of increasing light.
If you’re a child of the dark half of the year, finding the cold and solitude of the winter months, especially on that sacred night, the Winter Solstice, inviting and nourishing to your soul, then you might join me in rejoicing at its return.
