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Midsummer James Uzzell June 20th-22nd, Summer Solstice; a time when the Sun King’s energy is at its highest, the lifeforce caresses the thriving fields of our Mother Earth, and we are enchanted by the delights of the sweetest breeze. Yet now we've turned the wheel of the year past its halfway point, we begin the slow wane back towards Yule, always asking ourselves whether this wheel is turning faster and faster. Meanwhile, it's perhaps true that these perpetual lockdown sun-days accrue a certain quality; one that lets in all the intoxicating magick of the Linden flower (Tilia x europea) and the Rose (Rosa sp.). It’s an enchantment that offers a reprieve from the normal speed of the world, lets us sit in the warm grass and find the sweetest of scarlet-skinned Strawberries (Fragaria x ananassa) ripening between the green. Some would say it’s a blessing of love, to have our attachment to time severed by this moment of beauty and bounty. A blessing from the God and Goddess. Some say that their marriage aligns with the start of summer, at Beltane, when the Maythorn (Crataegus monogyna) flowers, but others cite the Summer Solstice, when the sun is at its zenith and the Goddess is pregnant with life.
Whichever variation is followed, you'll find names and celebrations of this time of the year on all continents around the world. Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere, Winter Solstice in the southern. Within neo-paganism in the U.K., the terms ‘Midsummer’, ‘Litha’, and ‘Alban Hefin’ are the most commonly heard. In modern Druidry, ‘Alban Hefin’— meaning ‘light of summer’ or ‘light of the shore’ in Welsh — was coined by the 18th Century Welsh Romantic, Edward Williams, or Iolo Morganwg to give him his bardic name (Owen, 1832). The term Litha (līþa) is widely used in Wicca and derives from the old Germanic name for the month of June. Some Pagans see this day as the moment when the Oak King is crowned. Born as the tiniest of light at the time of the Winter Solstice the Sun/Oak King has now grown in strength and power and shows his face at his Zenith. The Oaken Crown of the Waxing Year is placed upon his head. But at that exact same time the Holly King is born, he who grows during the Waning Year and is crowned with Holly at the Winter Solstice, and thus the Wheel turns…
