5 Ways to Honor Summer Solstice
Summer Solstice Reflections
Litha (Summer Solstice) is such a sweet, relatively simple pagan holiday where we honor the “longest day of the year,” connect with the earth in some way, and give gratitude to the sun king for the abundance that is possible from his light.
An excerpt from my friend Juliet Diaz’s book Witchery - “Litha is the longest day of the year. It’s the day when the Sun God is at the peak of his virility and the Sun Goddess is with child. It’s a time of year when crops are growing heartily and the Earth is fertile and happy.”
Lovely and simple, right?
But June 20th is bookended by Juneteenth the day right before and National Indigenous People’s Day right after, which adds complexity to the longest day of the year for me. A lot of fellow white folks that are trying to find our way back to our pre-christian-inquisition pagan rituals want to reach so far back that we just get to what our pagan ancestors practiced, conveniently bypassing the last 500 years. No.
If we’re going to integrate the past, you start with the immediate, and go back from there, and any work you do will be utterly meaningless if you only choose to pay attention to the easy parts.
In light of this, if you’re someone who celebrates Litha, I invite you to join me in braiding these three days together in your sun gratitude rituals today. To not see them as compartmentalized and having nothing to do with each other, or only choosing to honor the one that has to do with your anglo ancestry. These three days have everything to do with each other.
An invitation for some options on ways to honor summer solstice:
Ground your bare feet on the earth and connect with the energies within, and connect with the ancestral stewards of the land. They may not care to acknowledge you, and that’s fine, but if they do, it would be appropriate to ask them what they would like you to put on an altar for them, or they may have some other mode of honoring them that they’d prefer you enact instead. Afterwards, build an outdoor altar to them in a space that is unlikely to be disturbed, including elements that are at home outdoors, and bring any food, drink, or plant kind offerings they asked for to the altar.
If you can, stand or sit in a grounded pose somewhere where the warmth of the sun can shine on your face and body. Feel the warmth penetrating your skin and visualize that light going bone deep, and visualize yourself as a reflection of that same, warm, bright, glowing light. In this moment, offer gratitude to the sun for what they provide, and for the perfect delicate balance between that light and the earths atmosphere that keeps that light warm and comforting instead of its lethal potential.
Research from the appropriate educators about the real history of Juneteenth, meditate on our journal through the feelings that come up for you if it’s the first time you’re learning that a declaration of freedom did not equal actual freedom for everyone.
Sitting at your outdoor altar to the land ancestors, or sitting at your altar for you have for your own ancestors (if you have an altar,) light a candle and pay reparations to Black and Indigenous folks. While doing so, pray into the light of the candle that the amount paid expands tenfold once it is in their hands, and pray that the folks you’ve paid are protected and prosperous. Ask your ancestors to do their part on their side to use the energy of your offering to work towards a future of repair, contrition, and healing.
In the evening, hold a bonfire to continue the “prevailing of the light,” and use it as an opportunity to dance, sing, commune and give joyful gratitude for the land you’re immediately on and where you came from (both in this life and ancestrally.) Vow to do right by the land you settle on and to treat it with the reverence and respect how you would when you are a guest in someone else’s house, because that’s what we are.
Bring your children in on these activities and teach them about the real history of these three days. In my experience, children are much more comprehending of hard things than we give them credit for, and are often better at integrating emotionally charged information than adults are. The generation we’re raising are going to need to know the whole truth sooner than later to do what they came back here to do.
Oh, and Happy Father’s Day, Sun Daddy!