Happy Solstice Everyone

Happy solstice everybody! Here is my special solstice celebration video (which was filmed in the rain!) and I also want to let you know that you can follow me on twitter @OathBoundWitch

This video is intended to foster great community spirit on youtube and blogger. I know that I tend to be very guarded about my personal practices, but I want people to be able to get to know me and build friendships. I plan on making more personal videos and blogposts, not revealing everything, but just enough for people to see who I am. I am quite shy, I think I always have been, and sometimes this can come across as rude, lofty, or dissinterested. I hate for people to think that I'm being rude when really I am just too shy to pipe up. I find it hard to make friends because of my social anxiety, but the internet has always been a way for me to communicate with the world from the safety of my home, and it has helped me to work on my social skills. It's online that I find people who are like me, eccentrics and outsiders who don't quite fit in with mainstream society. I think it's important for us to support each other and encourage each other to express ourselves.  

I'm hoping the weather is going to be pleasant this weekend so that I can celebrate the solstice with a barbeque in the garden. There will also be a midday open ritual for family celebration at the stone circle in Avebury, run by the Cauldron of Cerridwen coven.

In Britain from the 13th century, St. John's Eve (23rd June) and St. Peter's Eve (28th June) were celebrated with the lighting of bonfires, feasting and merrymaking. In late fifteenth-century England, John Mirk of Lilleshall Abbey, Shropshire, gives the following description: "At first, men and women came to church with candles and other lights and prayed all night long. In the process of time, however, men left such devotion and used songs and dances and fell into lechery and gluttony turning the good, holy devotion into sin." The church fathers decided to put a stop to these practices and ordained that people should fast on the evening before, and thus turned waking into fasting (Festial 182). Mirk adds that at the time of his writing, "...in worship of St John the Baptist, men stay up at night and make three kinds of fires: one is of clean bones and no wood and is called a "bonnefyre"; another is of clean wood and no bones, and is called a wakefyre, because men stay awake by it all night; and the third is made of both bones and wood and is called, "St. John's fire" (Festial 182)." These traditions largely ended after the Reformation, but persisted in rural areas up until the nineteenth century before petering out.

The tradition of lighting bonfires was revived by the Old Cornwall Society in the early 20th century. Bonfires in Cornwall were once common as part of Golowan, which is now celebrated in Penzance. This week long festival normally starts on the Friday nearest St John's Day. Golowan lasts several days and culminates in Mazey Day. This is a revival of the Feast of St John (Gol-Jowan) with fireworks and bonfires. In Wales it is called Gŵyl Ifan, or Gŵyl Ifan Ganol Haf (St John's of Midsummer) to distinguish it from Gŵyl Ifan Ganol Gaeaf (St John's of Midwinter, the feast of John the Evangelist). Great agricultural fairs used to be held at this time, along with merriment and dancing. A bonfire was also kept this night. This observance finally died out at the end of the 19th century. However, since 1977, a folk-dance revival started in Cardiff, and is held now annually on the 24th June.

In his book The White Goddess, the author Robert Graves invented the mythological figures of the Holly King and Oak King. The Holly King rules the winter season whereas the Oak King rules the summer. Graves identified a number of hero-figures as the Holly King and Oak King, including Lleu Llaw Gyffes and Gronw Pebr, Gwyn and Gwythr, Lugh and Balor, Balan and Balin, Gawain and the Green Knight, the robin and the wren, and even Jesus and John the Baptist. A similar idea was suggested previously by Sir James George Frazer in his work The Golden Bough in Chapter XXVIII, The Killing of The Tree Spirit in the section entitled The Battle of Summer and Winter. Frazer drew parallels between the folk-customs associated with the changing season. The Divine King of Frazer was split into two battling kings of Winter and Summer in Graves' work. Stewart and Janet Farrar, following Graves' theory, gave a similar interpretation to Wiccan seasonal rituals. Gardnerian rituals on the other hand follow Frazer's theory of a Divine King who rules the winter, whereas the Great Goddess rules the summer.

Orphic Hymn VII

Hear golden Titan, whose eternal eye 

with broad survey, illumines all the sky.
Self-born, unwearied in diffusing light, 

and to all eyes the mirrour of delight:
Lord of the seasons, with thy fiery car 

and leaping coursers, beaming light from far:
With thy right hand the source of morning light, 

and with thy left the father of the night.
Agile and vigerous, venerable Sun, 

fiery and bright around the heavens you run.
Foe to the wicked, but the good man's guide, 

over all his steps propitious you preside:
With various founding, golden lyre, 'tis mine 

to fill the world with harmony divine.
Father of ages, guide of prosperous deeds, 

the world's commander, borne by lucid steeds,
Immortal Jove, all-searching, bearing light, 

source of existence, pure and fiery bright
Bearer of fruit, almighty lord of years, 

agil and warm, whom every power reveres.
Great eye of Nature and the starry skies, 

doomed with immortal flames to set and rise
Dispensing justice, lover of the stream, 

the world's great despot, and over all supreme.
Faithful defender, and the eye of right, 

of steeds the ruler, and of life the light:
With founding whip four fiery steeds you guide, 

when in the car of day you glorious ride.
Propitious on these mystic labours shine, 

and bless thy suppliants with a life divine.

Labels