Explore Your Dreams: SUMMER SOLSTICE: THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year, and stands opposite the Winter Solstice in the Wheel of the Year. It is the time when the new life and light that was born at the Winter Solstice is manifest in our lives and in the world. Summer Solstice has been celebrated in practically every culture on Earth, and is a time of joy and celebration of the powers of life.

The Sun is at its fullest power, and the darkness of winter is a fading memory. But just at this moment of greatest light, we begin to face death, for now the days begin to shorten and the darkness grows. Solstice literally means "sun stand still", for at the solstices the sun seems to stop on its course before it reverses itself.

Many traditions have grown up around the Summer Solstice. The Native Peoples of America had many ceremonies celebrating the Sun, especially the Sun Dance which ritually commemorated the life-giving powers of the sun. The Sun Dance of the Great Plains peoples was a dedication to the divine spirit, held during summer solstice when all of nature was rejoicing and the sage plant was succulent.

Summer Solstice was the most important and widespread festival in Europe. In Celtic countries, it was celebrated on Midsummer's Eve and was a vegetation-fire-water ritual, when all the elements of life were celebrated and honored. It is a time of magic, both good and bad; a time when the faerie folk once again come out to dance. Fires are lit to help the Sun in its course, the waters bring blessings, and dreams are potent.

But most of all, Midsummer is a time for lovers, for it is the moment of the marriage of Heaven and Earth. The Sun fertilizes the Earth with His heat, and She becomes pregnant with Life. But there is a cost to all of this, for the Summer King must fight the Winter King for his Flower Bride, and although he overcomes the darkness, yet will the darkness overcome him as well.

This Summer Solstice is especially important with the major planetary aspects affecting it.  This Summer Solstice is weighty and intense.   Of course, we don’t need to look to the heavens to know that, we just have to look at the challenges the world faces – oil polluting our oceans, revolutions, wars, lack of real leadership.  But in looking to the heavens, and reading the archetypal Cosmic Story, we evoke and understand the energies involved and consciously channel the chaos into new form.  We get to take part in creation.

And believe it or not, we are also called to celebrate in the midst of this death and destruction in the Gulf, the wars and hunger ravaging the world, and the fierce imagination of the end of Time.  We celebrate life in hard times to ensure our faith in the promise of new Life.  We gather and celebrate to energize ourselves, to renew our passion, to engender our purpose.  We are called to co-create the future.

Happy Solstice!

Until Next Time,

Sweet Dreams!