Midsummer

This festival celebrates the high point of the year and the full force of Nature. The usual date is 21 June, when the Sun moves from Gemini to Cancer and the Sun stays over the horizon for the longest time. Midsummer is a minor festival and is celebrated at noon.

The Festival

If you look around you at Midsummer, you can be in no doubt that Nature is at Her peak. This is what the world is supposed to look like. Everything is green green green and everything blooms. It's amazing. This is the high point of the year, the purpose everything has been growing towards. It is the climax of the Yearly cycle. The festival if Midsummer is a celebration of the fullness of life.

At this point in time, all the energies that have been building since Midwinter gather together. All that energy is celebrated and held in the ritual, so that from that moment it can be used to bring the Year's work to greater maturity.

I have been working on myself all year, finding the seed of my strong self, connected with the Elements and the Divine, already present, even in the debris of the old Year. And I have found ways to feed it and to support it. I have found partners for my growth and for my work. I have let go of some old patterns. But just before Midsummer I learned something new about myself, about how important my voice is, and what I have to say. That fed into my ritual in a very special way.

Midsummer came on a beautiful day. It wasn't sunny, but it was one of the few dry days we had had in ages. The Sun tried to peer through the clouds occasionally, and it was warm enough to walk outside in the clothes you were wearing indoors. And everything was green. Most of the trees stopped blooming long ago, and now the showy blooms take their turn: roses do really well in the clay soil of North West London. They are a symbol of this Festival, because the best ones are an orgasm of colour, scent, and silky petals, a delight to all the senses.

A Midsummer Ritual

Midsummer corresponds to the Southern point of the Circle, and that is where I place my altar. On it are symbols for each of the Elements, together with a red piece of paper and a white pencil. There is also a small bowl with flower seeds. At the centre of the circle is my cauldron, with young dill plants planted in it.

I cast the circle and invoke Brigantia, the Goddess of passionate creativity. I raise the power with an appropriate chant to do with power and Nature's purpose. I direct the power into the plants in the cauldron.

With the red paper (for the Sun's power) and the white pencil (for the power of the mind) I perform some magic for myself. I draw a white Gemini symbol and hold the paper in my hands. I focus all my energy into it, so that it is ready to work for my life's purpose. When I'm ready, I put it into the cauldron with the dill plant (for personal focus). Later, I plant them all together in the garden. I also do a meditation about the intended shape of my life.

Finally, I dedicate some flower seeds for magic. I say some words over it about the great abundance of this Earth, and how it could be shared more equally. Later, I scatter them in the garden, too, to all the corners of the world: East, South, West, and North.

I finish with a feast of cake and wine, and thanking Brigantia, the bright shining one, I open the Circle. I scatter my gathered energy throughout my world.

Dill and dill square from Cathe Gordon's garden pages

 

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