Blessings on this Mid-Summer’s Day!
Mid-Summer Day is not the same as the Summer Solstice. Rather, it is the third day following the Summer Solstice. It is the day when the Sun visibly begins its southward journey from its northernmost station. On the Summer Solstice the Sun has traveled as far north along the horizon (eastern at sunrise, western at sunset) as it is going to travel for the year. It stations still, rising in the exact same spot, for three days. Solstice means ‘sun stand still’. The Sun rises a bit further to the south each day until it reaches the Winter Solstice sunrise position, where it also stands still for three days. As the Winter Solstice occurs on or about December 22 (I am being northern hemisphere specific), three days later it shows its first movement, its return. That day is… Christmas day, December 25th! Christmas day is the day that denotes the return of the Sun out of its long cold night. Mid-Summer Day, three days after the Summer Solstice, is the summertime equivalent of Christmas.
Inward… for this is where the celestial dance is experienced, within our Soul. As above, so below.
The three days of the Summer Solstice is the moment in which the Sun’s vital force is at its peak, expansive, potent, virile. The Earth, meanwhile, is at her most receptive, glorious and embracing. In that moment of the Summer Solstice the sacred union of Earth and Sun occurs. The Sun Father releases his pent up vital force, which has been building in potency since the previous Winter Solstice, in a powerful transmission to the awaiting womb of the Earth Mother. Cultures more in tune with the natural cycles of the seasons have given expression to this orgasmic transmission through rites of summer such as the jumping of the fires by young couples holding hands in northern Europe or the institution of June brides as a cultural phenomenon. In ancient Sumer the rites that celebrated the ritualized death of Dumuzid – who gave his life to his consort Inanna – were held at Mid-Summer. Dumuzid and Inanna were known in the Greek myths as Adonis and Aphrodite.
However, the midsummer rites were not rites of fertility, these having already been displayed in the Spring. At Mid-Summer the orgasmic transmission from the Sun to the Earth is one of complete and utter devotion of the masculine to the feminine. He gives his life for her. No longer is he in his ascendancy. As the days progress after the Mid-Summer his vitality is less and less, his hours in the sky shorter and shorter until, at the Autumnal Equinox, he has descended into the Underworld, the time of darkness. It is not until the Winter Solstice that the same dynamic exchange has a reversal of roles and the feminine Earth gives of herself fully to her consort, the Sun, and his days become longer. The rites of Mid-Summer, again, are not rites of fertility, but of the transcendent spiritual commitment of the Divine Masculine to the Divine Feminine. This commitment is consecrated in orgasmic cosmic union with a transfer of the Sun’s vital force to his consort, the Earth.
Please do not confuse masculine and feminine for male and female. This cosmic orgasmic dance goes on within each and every one of us, male or female. The dynamic of this dance of Sun and Earth activate the archetypal forces within us. Mid-Summer is a time for us all to dedicate our vitality, deeds and actions with the greatest self-sacrifice to the furtherance of Life, the honoring of what the Earth, and the Sacred Feminine, has brought forth, be it the gardens and crops or the children and families.
May your Mid-Summer’s Dance bring the greatest service and bliss to this world. Blessings!
Jade Grigori
June 24, 2019
