Midsummer
(Summer Solstice)
Most cultures of the northern hemisphere acknowledge Midsummer in some ritualized manner. In pagan India, Midsummer was the principal festival of the entire year. The holiday has been called by many names, including Lithia or Vestalia in ancient Rome, Gathering Day in Wales, Feill-Sheathain in Scotland, Alban Heflin in the Anglo-Saxton tradition, All Couple’s Day in Greece, and the Feast of Epona in ancient Gaul.
Midsummer marks the time of the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, the height of the Sun’s power. Although the hottest days of the summer still lie ahead, from this point onward we enter the waning year, and each day the Sun will recede from the skies a little earlier.
At Midsummer the Goddess is heavy with pregnancy, just as the Earth is pregnant with the coming harvest’s bounty and the cattle in the field await calving, but the fertility rites continue. Just as a human baby can be miscarried or born blighted, our Pagan ancestors knew the same was true for their crops and animals, and Midsummer rituals focused on nurturing new life both in the ground and in human and animal wombs. But motherhood is not the sole focus of this Sabbat. For every mother there is a father, and so it is in Paganism. The Sun is at his peak in the sky, the Sun God at the peak of his life, and we celebrate his approaching fatherhood.
Because this is a Sabbat which glorifies the Sun, and the Sun is a symbol of protection, many pagans choose to make protective amulets in the week before the Sabbat that are later empowered over the Midsummer balefire. Some witches choose to bury their protective amulets each Midsummer’s eve and construct new ones. Rue, rowan and basil, tied together in a white or gold cloth, is a good protective trio that can be carried in your pocket year round. A few cinnamon sticks tied over the door of your home is another protective charm.
Though all eight of the Sabbats are in some way fire festivals, the element is most prominent at Midsummer. Fire is the most easily seen and immediately felt element of transformation. It can burn, consume, cook, shed light, or purify, and because of its heat, fire is most intimately associated with the hot Midsummer Sun.
Because of the Sun’s obvious role at Midsummer, this was a time of fire rituals and fire magick throughout western Europe, and balefires still figure prominently at modern Midsummer rites. The Celts would light balefires all over their lands from sunset the night before Midsummer until sunset the next day. Around these flames the festivities would take place.
In Scotland, the use of the cauldron, a Celtic symbol of life, death and rebirth, is important to the Sabbat celebration that honors Cerridwen the Crone Goddess, who tends the cauldron. The cauldron is present to remind revelers that the Sun is not truly dead, but will be reborn from this cauldron of rebirth from the Goddess at Yule.
Processions to and from the ritual site were common at the warmer Sabbats, especially at Midsummer. The Norse especially loved lengthy processions and would gather together their animals, families and lighted torches and parade through the countryside to the celebration site. There, their torches were placed in the ground around the sacred circle, often in lieu of the balefires.
Most wild herbs are fully mature by Midsummer and this is the traditional time for gathering magickal and medicinal plants to dry and store for winter use. In Wales, Midsummer is called Gathering Day in honor of this practice. The Celtic Druids also gathered their sacred plants at Midsummer, especially their important and revered mistletoe, called "the golden bough," which they cut with a golden sickle reserved just for this event. When found on the sacred oak tree, it was especially valued, for it was believed to have been blessed by the God. Mistletoe was used is all sorts of healing, divination and magickal spells, and was believed to open locks, including a locked mind. But its appeal went far beyond the Celtic lands. Uses of and veneration for mistletoe are found in the folklore of Italy and France and even as far away as Japan. In Rome, it was used to adorn the hearth fires of the celebration of Vestalia which signaled the rekindling of the home fires for the coming winter. Swedes also gathered and displayed it on Midsummer Eve, knowing it was sacred to their Sun God, Balder and to the Goddess Frigga.
Lavender is another Midsummer favorite, and is an aromatic Herb that figures prominently in many British and Irish folk songs. Just as the scent of it was once believed to be a strong catalyst to love magick. It is still burned at pagan handfastings and sought out as an aphrodisiac. Lavender in full flower was also used as a Midsummer incense to honor the deities as parents-to-be.
Vervain was also traditionally collected at Midsummer just before dawn and pine cones gathered at Midsummer were considered powerful amulets for protection, fertility and virility.
