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I am sure everyone is tired of heading how strange a year we’ve had by now. Summer Solstice is coming up on June 20th, and in many places, you may even be able to have a small outdoor ritual to celebrate.
Summer solstice is the point at which the day is longest and night is shortest. Technically speaking, it is the height of summer, even if it might feel like summer is just getting going. It is called Midsummer or Litha in neo-Pagan traditions along with Summer Solstice.
Themes of Celebration
Themes for celebrating the summer solstice that are always appropriate is paying good attention to what is going on around you in Nature in your locale and celebrating that. Having a meal with seasonal local produce and expressing gratitude to the Earth for providing it? Perfectly appropriate and simple. Celebrating the light and brightness and being fully expanded by dancing around bonfires, jumping over a fire for purification and luck, or rolling a burning wheel down a hill into a body of water – also perfectly appropriate and traditional.
Season of Love and Commitment
Midsummer is a good time to schedule a wedding – not only is the weather usually nice, but it is an appropriate time to schedule a ceremony meant to recognize and celebrate a relationship at its best.
For spellcrafting, Litha has similar symbolism and magical intent to a full moon – spells of increase and blessing, power and fullness. Bringing something to realization, empowering a goal. Doing that kind of magic on or before a full moon can empower your spell but doing that kind of magic with a solar boost on Midsummer can be even more powerful. As always in magic, it is good to work with rather than against the cycles of nature. If you want to increase something, do magic for it at times when nature is doing the same thing.
Suggested Litha Observances
Morning – themes of invoking bounty and fullness
When you wake, get outside and find the sun (or the brightest part of the sky if it is cloudy). Lay on your back and open your arms and energy. Call to mind who you are when you at your fullest, best self, and what power belongs to you – the power of sovereignty over your own body, the power to think your own thoughts and the power to make decisions about your life. Open to and embrace the wisdom of the natural world and the divine, and let in the full blessing of the sun into you to empower your growth and health.
Evening – themes of purification and acceptance:
Light a candle or fire. Recognize the fire that is within you. Send into the fire all you wish to release and let go of, feel yourself whole and full like the sun this day. Express gratitude for the sun and the summer. Enjoy the flames and then extinguish them safely when you are done.
Good Music for Litha
I love to collect non-pagan music with Pagan seasonal themes. Here are some suggestions for Litha / Midsummer / Solstice. The
Here Comes the Sun (the Beatles) – Lyrics:
Here comes the sun do, do, do
Here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right
Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun do, do, do
Here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right
Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun do, do, do
Here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right
Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear
For more popular music on the themes of the summer solstice, the European Space Agency has put together a playlist for the Solstice that you might enjoy.
Here comes the sun do, do, do
Here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right
Here comes the sun do, do, do
Here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right
Summertime – George Gershwin from the musical Porgy and Bess – I like the way this song captures the themes of full growth and claiming power, and as a Pagan sometimes think of the parents in this as the Goddess and God (I sometimes reverse the lyrics to ‘your mama’s rich and your daddy’s good looking’ because that fits my feel for Mother earth and the Green man better.
Summertime
And the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’
And the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy’s rich
And your ma is good-lookin’
So hush, little baby
Don’t you cry
One of these mornings
You’re going to rise up singing
Then you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll take the sky
But ’til that morning
There’s a’nothing can harm you
With daddy and mammy standing by
One of these mornings
You’re going to rise up singing
Then you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll take the sky
But ’til that morning
There’s a’nothing can harm you
With daddy and mommy standing by
Blessed Litha to you! May the sun’s heat and light illuminate your growth and fullness and bring you good harvest in time.
Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash
