Why summer solstice is sexy
“This is the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath.” -Margaret Atwood
The summer solstice on 21 June is the longest day of the year - for those 90% of us living in the Northern Hemisphere; the moment the sun most appears to stand still - thus our “sol - stice”. Like this moment, the world appears to pause. Amidst all the darkness, it epitomises light - and life.
The pagan holidays, equinoxes, and solstices, hold a special place in our hearts at Fox&Badge and we like to time our events around these crucial points of the year as a nod to a time when we were more connected to nature and our true natures, proud of our inherent sensuality as spiritual beings.
But of all the points of the year, the zenith of summer solstice is our favourite. It is a celebration of vitality itself.
We hope you can join us in solstice celebration as we travel to that iconic era of liberation and exploration in our 1960s-themed Summer of Love event this month.
Here’s a bit more on midsummer - its history, its science, and how its celebrated around the world.
MYTHOLOGY:
The solstice has been celebrated for at least 11,000 years - perhaps initially in the Middle East.
For pagans it arrived at a rest point between planting & harvesting, and afforded a rare moment to relax, and enjoy in various ways the imminent fruits of fertility; thus a fanfare of fertility ritual, and the proliferation of June weddings.
Fire in the sky & loins was accompanied by fire in the lands, with the leftover cinders then sprinkled over the crops to ensure a good harvest. Solstice’s Pagan name “Litha” means balance, and fire often balanced with water. Giant wheels were set alight and rolled into lakes and rivers.
Pagans believe that the veil between this world & the next is at its thinnest at this time, and that spirits and faeries are at their most powerful; that today we as humans can exceed the usual limitations of the world. For herbalists, this is the best time to harvest medicinal plants and herbs for they’re at their most potent.
Midsummers comes in myriad European forms - primarily Nordic. We Brits still celebrate its Christian perversion, a few days late (like Christmas) - as the Feast of Saint John the Baptist (whom the Gospel according to Luke says was born half a year before Jesus).
But Shakespeare immortalised an earlier Paganism with the faeries and fogs & forests of his Midsummer Night’s Dream, his multiple lovers perhaps dramatising gentler versions of earlier fertility rituals (btw it’s showing at The Globe Theatre in London this month). Three of Uranus’s moons were later named after characters of the play (Puck, Oberon, Titania) - completing the loop from cosmos to earth & back again.
The Cornish in Penzance still worship its Pagan form as “Golowan”, parading the equine effigy of their Puck-like “Penglaz ’Obby Oss”. Modern Pagans of course worship the sun, but also its complement, water, and visit Holy Wells. They dance & frolic & drink mead, & “leave out milk & honey for the Fair Folk”.
Other countries celebrate Midsummer as Jāņi, Enyovden, Liða / Litha, Midsommar, Ivan Kupala Day, Juhannus, Mittumaari, Alban Hefin, Gŵyl Ganol yr Haf, Sankthans, Joninės, Jaanipäev, & Keskikesä.
You may have seen Ari Aster’s sensational(ist) film, Midsommar, which depicts the conflict between the modern mindset and a fictionalised folkloric one, merging fairy tale and horror; a brutal purge, lcaed with ritualised sex & psychedelics & sacrifice. Our own experience of Swedish midsummers involved a tad less death, as we wreathed our crowns with flowers, danced the famous “Frog Dance” around the vegetal maypole we’d built, and feasted on pickle herring, salmon, potatoes, but mostly schnapps & vodka. There used to be a tradition among unmarried girls, where if they ate something very salty during Midsummer, or else collected several different kinds of flowers and put these under their pillow when they slept, they would dream of their future husbands
In Norway (like in Celtic Cornwall & Ireland) they light vast barrel bonfies; in Latvia, they compete to leap over them, bringing good luck, while “milk witches” disguise themselves as maidens in white, unleash their hair, and scatter spells, and households decorate their cars with tree branches for “Jāņi”.
According to Polish folklore, the man and woman in question would become a couple. It’s tradition for a couple to leap through the flames together while holding hands – if they don’t let go, it is said their love will last.
In Iceland they throw a huge 3-day secret solstice festival, with the world’s only rave in a glacier cave (http://secretsolstice.is/)
In the Greek “Klidonas”, female virgins gather water from the sea, and apparently dream of sex. One of the oldest rituals is called Klidonas, and it involves local virgins gathering water from the sea.
The village’s unmarried women all place a personal belonging in the pot and leave it under a fig tree overnight, where – folklore has it – the magic of the day imbues the objects with prophetic powers, and the maidens dream of their future husbands.
The next day, all the women in the village gather, and take turns pulling out objects and reciting rhyming couplets that are meant to predict the romantic fortunes of the item’s owner.
The Spanish unleash fireworks, whilst the Iranians release yellow cows as a trade for the white horses ridden by newlyweds.
The Belarusians bathe in lakes for “Ivan Kupala” day (Ivan is John; Kupala means Cupid). Russians skinny dip & float flowers on water; Polish women float garlands down river, then negotiate with the bachelors that catch them from the other side.
And in America, they host a 24-hour marathon of Yoga - because this is also the 6th International Day of Yoga; a tribute to this Indian period of Uttarayana (https://www.un.org/en/observances/yoga-day).
GEOGRAPHY & GEOMETRY - WHY ARE THE DAYS SO LONG?
All over the planet most people actually did get nearly equal doses of day and night during the spring equinox. But the amount of sunlight we get in the Northern Hemisphere has been increasing daily ever since. Why?
That’s because the Earth is aligned on an axis, an imaginary pole going through the center of our planet. But this axis tilts – at an angle of 23.5 degrees.
As Earth orbits the sun [once each year], its tilted axis always points in the same direction. So, throughout the year, different parts of Earth get the sun’s direct rays.
When the sun reaches its apex in the Northern Hemisphere, that’s the summer solstice.
At that time, the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer, which is located at 23.5° latitude North, and runs through Mexico, the Bahamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India and southern China.
On the UK mainland, the sun first rises at its most Eastern point at Ness Point (near Lowestoft in Suffolk) at 4:44am, the same as the day before & the next, since Midsummer's day is actually less than a second longer than the 2 days either side of it. It rises 14 minutes later in London (where it takes a whole 2 minutes to travel across the M25), And finally, its last rise is at 5:16am over Old Grimsby on the Isles of Scilly, just after its 5:13 rise at Lands End in westernmost Cornwall.
The sun then sets first in the UK at Ness Point 9:20pm - & finally disappears from British sight at Scilly 81 minutes later, at 10:41pm.
But of course things are quite different as you head North into Nordic latitudes. Our Northernmost British latitude is Skaw, on Unst, in the Shetlands (north of all the Scandinavian capital cities), where the sun rises at 3:29am - and sets at 10:40pm, and it never really gets dark at all.
Sunrise is 1 minute earlier for every 1.5km of mountain altitude, so if you could skydive down to earth from our highest peak (Ben Nevis, at 1,345m, which’d take just over 16 seconds in freefall), you could watch the sun rise twice in way less than a minute.
