MidSummer Magic MishMash

Some selected thoughts on this special time of year:

Midsummer Magic
[from : "Midsummer magic, sun and fire" C.J. Moore, International Herald Tribune, Jume 21, 2006]

Sun worship is alive and well all over Europe, even in our century. I don't mean the summer invasion of beaches where bodies bake to a shade of toast. Or even the ancient Druidic rites this week in places like Stonehenge, as the midsummer sun astonishes by rising in perfect alignment with the huge stone circle.

I have in mind a custom widely celebrated from Scandinavia to southern Spain, from Russia to Ireland, and even in China. In this midsummer week, pagans, Christians and unbelievers alike will gather for fire ceremonies that have their origins in rites associated with the sun.

Communities and families will light bonfires and dance around them, young lovers leap over the flames together or toss flowers across the fire, flaming brands will be carried around the fields.

On the evening of June 23, St. John's Eve, Germans will go out to light their Johannisfeuer, Scandinavians their midsommar fire, the Irish to celebrate their Bonfire Night. Crowds in Alicante and Valencia will celebrate the Fires of St. John, the touristic version of customs once condemned by the Church as superstitious and a danger to public morals. For many, this will just seem an opportunity for drinking all night and doing reckless things with fires and burning torches.

In the northernmost latitudes, above all, people around their fires will be celebrating the midnight sun, with dusk and dawn conjoining on the northern horizon. A significant celestial event lies behind all these fire festivities, of course - the summer solstice, when the sun is highest above the northern hemisphere and gives us the longest day of the year. On or around June 21, the sun "stands still" - the sense of the word "solstice" - before the orbit of the earth starts to lower its angle again, making the days shorter and colder.

So we are at a turning point in the year when a return to darkness already beckons. For the Chinese, this is the "yin" moment of the year, when Li, the element of fire, is invoked. In primitive terms, our sun is threatened. The custom of the Midsummer Fire is our instinctive response. As one writer on Celtic tradition puts it, the lighting of fires is "sympathetic magic" to encourage the warmth of the sun to stay.

The fire ceremony itself probably goes back to the beginnings of human history. But the Catholic Church absorbed the old pagan celebration into its own calendar by setting the feast day of St. John the Baptist on June 24. The symbolism was deliberate: just as, in the pagan and Celtic religions, the summer king gives way at midsummer to the winter king, similarly John the Baptist gives way to Jesus Christ, who will be born around the winter solstice.

Ancient nature beliefs say that such turning points in the year open doors between worlds. The "standing still" of the sun was said to release much magic, and the barriers between nature spirits and humans to briefly fall. St. John's Eve, then, is meant to be a time of special power for gathering healing herbs, or drawing a protective ring of fire around crops and cattle.

It is a time, too, for witches to dance around fires in their midsummer sabbaths, from the Basque country's "akelarre" to Russia's "Night on the Bare Mountain." Here the devil himself is said to attend in the form of a black goat, and the poor peasant who stumbles across such a terrible gathering is rescued only by the coming of light at cock-crow.

Traditionally, to spend midsummer night in the forest or on a mountain is to come close to spirits who will either show you great powers or drive you mad with their tricks. This is the theme behind Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which takes place at night in "a wood near Athens." Here we enter the world of the fairy people who, as the mischievous Puck says, "run ... from the presence of the Sun." Instead, now reigns the sun's shadow counterpart, "the cold fruitless moon" who is "pale in her anger." As a result, all those in the play go through a kind of madness before order, stability and true love are restored.

Regardless of the trappings of the modern world, we still have strong instincts toward the sun, the Moon and the natural cycles and rhythms of the year. The Austrian thinker Rudolf Steiner argued we should acknowledge their profound effects, celebrate them and allow them to work upon us. From this viewpoint, sun worship may even be good for our health.

C.J. Moore is the author of "In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World."

NY Times Editorial
Our Midsummer Pause
Published: July 4, 2006

Technically speaking, the middle of summer really comes about Aug. 5, the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. But we don't know anyone who celebrates Aug. 5. Today is our true midsummer feast. The fireworks tonight are meant, of course, to echo the explosive character of the Declaration of Independence. But half the fun is waiting through the protracted midsummer twilight until the sky is indigo enough for the full effect.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence had a lot on their minds, the least of which was our need, 230 years later, for a good midsummer holiday. The rhythms of our lives are awfully distant from the rhythms of theirs. But what you celebrate comes to depend, in time, on when you celebrate it. The Declaration was fundamentally a political event, a short, sharp document that made a powerful statement about human nature and human expectations. But the fact that it was dated July 4 guaranteed that in time, given the practical nature of Americans, it would be celebrated with hot dogs down by the lake while the sky erupted overhead.

We seem to be living in an era when every day poses a new problem in the fundamentals of civics, a test of balance in a nation where balance is everything. The Fourth of July might seem like the opportunity for a natural crescendo in the political and philosophical battles this country faces, a day to worry about the very real and practical matter of keeping our democracy alert, alive and undiminished. But this is also the best of days to admire the long continuity of our history, the profound American talent for compromise, the simple beauty of what endures. It's a good day to hope that every part of this country gets what it needs — a dry night in the Northeast, a long morning rain in the Rocky Mountain West, and truly thunderous fireworks in a clear sky just after dark.