Celebrating the Summer Solstice

Exploring ancient traditions to create modern rituals that authentically resonate with who you are (rather than coopting ancient rites and pretending to understand them).

Blessings and HUGE gratitude to all my paid subscribers for making this creative space possible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your contribution to my work, to my life, and to this beautiful, burgeoning community. I appreciate you more than I can say.

For my friends in the Southern Hemisphere—

Please enjoy the universal rant about the understanding (or lack of understanding) about our ancestors at the top of this post… but as you arrive at the Summer Solstice specific content, here’s a post about the Winter Solstice you may find more relevant.

The Summer Solstice is June 20, 2024 at 4:51pm EDT (but your celebrations don’t have to be precise).

Photo by Ave Calvar on Unsplash

It’s easy to talk about ancient pagan rituals as if we know what we’re talking about.

We don’t.

Colonialism, burning witches and heretics, utter lack of understanding by the uninitiated, and the sheer destructive force of time have all but destroyed the ancient rites.

The internet is littered with nouveau revivalists who will tell you exactly how to celebrate the ancient holydays recognized by our ancestors. (Keep reading if you’re hoping I’ll do that here—I will… but first you need enough context to understand how to do actually do it without clumsily trying to culturally appropriate celebrations from lost civilizations.)

The History Channel and every other history-adjacent publication jumps on the new-age bandwagon, seeing an opportunity for popular content in reminding modern folks about how things used to be.

Meanwhile, a helpful array of modern druids and Wiccans offer beautiful ideas for how to reconnect with each season in your own life.

I usually find myself doing a bit of both.

But today, I’m annoyed. Annoyed because my books about celebrating the seasons are still packed away awaiting the construction of our library. Annoyed because even if I had my full library with its catalog of books about ancient traditions, there would still be so much lost.

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

The Lost Sacred Wisdom of our Ancestors

With so many easy calculations at our fingertips and so much scientific understanding about the nature of the universe, it’s easy to think that we modern humans know more than we actually do. The sad truth is that the lineage of oral history was broken—utterly and entirely—by the chaos and destruction of the ages, and the written histories are nearly non-existant.

We have to face the fact that we really don’t know much about those who came before us, and what we do know is filled with speculation, assumption, and cultural bias.

There is much to be learned from the constructions of the past, which were built to withstand the passing of time, but we cannot confound observation and speculation with understanding!

WHAT WE CAN KNOW:

The alignment of ancient neolithic sites with the Summer Solstice shows us that the movements of the sun must have been important to ancient peoples. The phenomenal undertaking of building these structures with neolithic technologies is unfathomable.

While Stonehenge is often the most talked-of in the West, ancient peoples around the world built many dauntingly complex sites that align with the Longest Day.

• Big Horn Medicine Wheel — USA

• La Table des Marchands — France

• Temple of Karnak — Egypt

• Angkor Wat — Cambodia

• Newgrange — Ireland

• Machu Picchu — Peru

• Chichén Itzá — Mexico

• Mnajdra Temple — Malta

These amazing structures stand testament to lives lived in accordance with the seasons on ways we can’t even imagine.

… Or maybe they don’t. We can never really know.

WHAT WE CAN’T KNOW:

We can watch documentaries on these sites, with archeologists and historians trying to piece together stories. We can read books and articles about solar alignments and ancient construction methods. We can even travel and experience for ourselves the energy of these places.

But no one can tell us what these alignments meant to ancient peoples. We must accept that we cannot know the experiences and beliefs of our ancestors.

We can never fully remove our cultural lens. We can never fully inhabit the experiences of another. We can never reconstruct the ancient understanding of the world.

And that’s okay… as long as we recognize that our interpretations of ancient rites are only our understanding. There’s power in admitting what we don’t know.

Embodying Ancient Ways of Being

Instead of attempting to reenact dead rituals whose meaning died with those who celebrated them, we must learn to reconnect with the ancient source of those rituals.

We must find the thread—as our ancestors once did—of connection with a living world, and trust our bodies to show us how to celebrate. When we root ourselves in relationship with the Earth, tossing away the fetters of modern life and allowing our inner wildness to emerge, we rediscover the ancient and still deeply relevant power of the Summer Solstice.

As we explore here how we, as modern humans, might celebrate this primordial holyday, I invite you to sink into your body. To feel the pulse under your skin and the grain of earth buried just beneath the surface. To allow the sex and stink and sweat of life to grow so thick in your awareness that your cubicle becomes swampy. To feel the walls of contemporary propriety breaking down inside your psyche for a moment as you give yourself to the sun and the wind as a creature of Earth.

Photo by Reza Ghazali on Unsplash

Now… perhaps, if you can truly shake off the shackles of your own civilization, you can begin to explore how to celebrate a season that existed long before you and will continue long after you are dust.

Celebrating the Summer Solstice

The sun is life. It offers all warmth, all nourishment. Everything… everything lives or dies by the whim of the sun. Including you. Especially you.

To-day is the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. It has likely been celebrated since time immemorial.

Rather than sitting comfortably behind our screens as we explore the way our ancient ancestors may have honored this holyday…

Let us feel the blood memories of their dances round ancient bonfires.

Let us pray for the fasting and sacrifice of the Sun Dances of old.

Let us experience in our bones the raw power the sun holds over us in every moment.

Let us ask:

How will I celebrate this Solstice?

---

IDEAS FROM ANCIENT CULTURES

• LIGHT A BONFIRE
  Pre-Christian European pagans often celebrated Midsummer with ritual bonfires. A gathering place for the entire community, bonfires offer a way for humans to join in the celebration of light.
  
  Modern historians are fond of saying that ancient people believed these bonfires warded away evil… that they were a ritual offering of light… and a dozen other intellectualized reasons “why” these bonfires existed. We don’t get to know the "whys” of our ancestors.
  
  → If you want to understand the magic of a Midsummer bonfire… light one!

• SHARE A PICNIC
  Overlooked and truly ancient, the tradition of eating together outside in the glory of nature is a tradition than evokes gratitude. The array of food available in the summer must have been incredible for people before the advent of greenhouses and grocery stores, and Midsummer is a time to share this bounty with friends and family.
  
  Even after the Christianization of the Summer Solstice when celebrations of St. John the Baptist’s Feast Day on June 24 took over more ancient rituals, the tradition of feasting together remained an important part of the celebration.

  → Will you take the time to share food and be in presence with the Earth? A picnic can be as simple as taking an iced coffee down to the park if it’s done with reverence. And if you find yourself with a bounty to share, don’t forget to make an offering to the creatures all around you!

Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash

• DANCE DANCE DANCE!

  The traditional Sun Dance of First Nations peoples are often rigorous rituals of fasting, prayer, sacrifice, and healing. They are a time of community gathering, kinship, renewal, and prayers for the Earth.

  In cultures where dance is not central to the rituals of Midsummer, it is still an unavoidable part of celebration! There is something joyaunt and powerful about dance that allows us to shake off the puppet strings of civilization and return to the wild roots of the body.

  → Dancing is about letting go and allowing your body to move however it wants. What does it feel like to give yourself over to dancing?

• CELEBRATE THE FEMININE

  From Ancient China to Ancient Rome, summer was a time to appreciate women and the feminine (or yin) force. In Ancient Rome, Midsummer was the one time of year that married women were allowed to enter the temple of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. In Ancient Gaul, now modern France, this season celebrated Epona, goddess of horses and fertility.
  
  Cultures around the world recognized the fertility and abundance of nature during this season and paid homage to this life-giving force with offerings and attitudes that presenced the power of the Feminine Divine.

  
  → How can YOU honor the Feminine in a way that is meaningful for your life?

  A FEW IDEAS:

  • walk barefoot on the earth

  • hug a tree

  • make love

  • forage for food

  • offer food to the wilds

  • bring flowers inside

  • tell a woman (or girl) she is magnificent

  • thank your wife or mother for everything she does

  • ground your energy into the Earth

  • go swimming

  • be Present with Nature

My Personal Solstice Celebrations

I’m lucky to live in the wilds of Québec in the year 2024 where I can invite all my witchy women to a Summer Solstice bonfire ritual and party in my forest backyard. While I celebrate all the ancient holydays of the wheel of the year with my women’s circle, this one is unique.

Tonight, we won’t just sit round the fire and make offerings… we won’t just share in potluck and break bread together… we won’t just pass the talking stick and pour our hearts out…

This is the Summer Solstice, baby!

When our traditional rituals end, we’re going to break out the bubbly and dance ‘round the fire, go skinny dipping in the pool and howl at the moon.

‘Tis the season for making merry… and merry we shall make!

The Summer Solstice is June 20, 2024 at 4:51pm EDT (but your celebrations don’t have to be precise).