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Candlemas

     It is the time of light, laughter, and joyful abandon. It is Litha! Let us celebrate with ruby-ripe strawberries and twinkling fireflies and achingly-pure blue skies reflected in chilly streams and sun-warmed ponds. I tend to get giddy this time of year; maybe it’s the child in me that hasn’t grown up yet, or perhaps the Kitchen Witch who is so excited by all of the fresh fruits and vegetables that summer brings, or maybe it’s just because I’m finally warm enough. Whatever the reason, they year’s turning at Litha always fills me with barely-contained excitement, though I don’t always get to act on it. My mind springs into action, suddenly there are so many things I want to do, and I can’t convince myself that I still have to balance all the fun things with work, which means working my way through my summer reading list while lounging by the lake is not a daily option. (Life isn’t perfect, after all.)

The words dark and shadow are not synonymous, in fact when they are used interchangeably all manners of unintentional shaming, oppression and labelling falls upon women, the Divine Feminine and all persons born with skin darker than lily white.

There's a phenomenon of pagan ritual that I've noticed again and again down through the years.

I'll call it the “dark light.”

The pagan calendar (day begins at sundown) and pagan schedules (most of us work day jobs) being what they are, we do a lot of our ritual at night. This means that we do much of our ritual by firelight.

Bonfires, candlelight, torchlight. Which is it to say that, by the usual electric-lit 21^st century standards, there isn't very much light.

And yet consistently, again and again, as I think back to any given ritual, I find myself remembering more light than could possibly have been there.

But it's not just a matter of memory. In ritual, colors are brighter. Bodies, faces, things seem to glow as if from within, transfigured.

I think of the Grand Sabbat. Cross-legged up there on his altar, the Horned glows, I swear it. I swear it. He's lambent: the light comes from Him.

We've passed the solstice so each day a little more light comes into our lives.  This sounds like everything should be lovely.  The light has returned.  In the north, we still have months to slog through frigid, snowy weather.  Weather which goes a long way in keeping us inside.  In essence, we are hibernating in our own way.  

It may be the light part of the year but the light is in its infancy.  It builds a little every day like we learn a little each day as a child.  It will be baby steps until Midsummer.  Each day will bring a little more enlightenment into our lives.

I live well out in the rural hinterlands of Ireland. Folk memory is long lived and some traditional farming practices tend to border on folk magic. One such custom that can still be found is to put an predator's carcass on display to warn off other of its species not to prey on herd animals - sheep and chickens. I have known pine martin to be nailed up on chicken coops as a warning. Walking our dogs down our lane I saw a road kill fox draped over the pasture's fence post.  It's a form of sympathetic magic. And it is deep, deep in our cellular memory. Sympathetic magic is imitative magic or correspondences according to anthropologists. You don't have to be identified as pagan to practice it.

Summer is now in full swing! Today is the Summer Solstice, also known as Litha in Old English or Midsummer, is a festival celebrated as either the beginning or midpoint of summer in many cultures throughout Europe, with parallels across the world in other locations as well. It’s opposite is of course Midwinter, which is celebrated at the same time on the other side of the world.

As always we’ve gathered all of our related posts as well as those we found across the internet that we thought you might enjoy . We hope you have a great time this summer!

-Aryós Héngwis