Midsummer - Summer Solstice

Midsummer, the longest day and the shortest night of the year. 

Celebrate the light. 

The summer solstice is a great time to honour the sun. You can make solstice sun tea by adding edible flowers and herbs to a jar filled with water, then leave it out in the sun to steep. You can also make a sun mandala with petals from orange and yellow flowers. Arrange the petals in decorative, circular patterns while maintaining a vision of peace and serenity.

The summer solstice is a great time to find inner peace and balance. Try the sun salutation and the tree pose or simply sit quietly for a while. Meditation and yoga are intended to exercise both your body and your soul, balancing both in harmony through thought and physical movement. Begin this routine on the morning of the summer solstice and aim to make it a daily habit from this time on.

The summer solstice has been celebrated for centuries, with all sorts of traditions growing up around it. In the northern hemisphere, the summer solstice is usually celebrated on the 20/21st June, while in the southern hemisphere, it's usually celebrated on the 21st of December. To make the most of the summer solstice, celebrate the light and nature by engaging in outdoor activities like making a flower crown, working in the garden, or playing in the water. You can find balance on the solstice by meditating, doing yoga, or starting a gratitude journal. Enjoy time with your loved ones at a summer solstice festival, feast, or bonfire.

This is the peak of the Solar year and the Sun is at the height of its life-giving power. Yet within this climax is the whisper and promise of a return to the Dark. As the Light reaches its peak so this is also the moment when the power of the Sun begins to wane. From now on the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer and we are drawn back into the Dark to complete the Wheel of the Year.

Traditionally people stayed up all night on Midsummer's Eve to welcome and watch the sunrise. Bonfires were lit on tops of hills, by holy wells, at places held sacred, to honour the fullness of the Sun. At Litha the bonfire really represents a reflection of the Sun at the peak of its strength. The chosen wood would often be Oak and aromatic herbs were scattered into the fire. People danced around the fires and leap through them. Blazing herbs from the sacred bonfire were used to bless the animals. Blazing torches were carried sunwise around homes and fields. Coals from the Midsummer fire were scattered on fields to ensure a good harvest.

Tree worship has always played a large role in Midsummer festivities and trees near wells and fountains were decorated with coloured cloths. The Oak King who has ruled the waxing of the year represents strength, courage and endurance, and the Oak has always been particularly significant at Litha. The Celtic name for Oak is 'Duir' which means 'doorway' - we are crossing the threshold, entering the doorway into the second, waning part of the year.

Mistletoe was and is, highly revered by the Druids. It is regarded as particularly potent when it grows on Oak, the noblest of trees, growing between the worlds of Heaven and Earth. Although it is more commonly associated with Yule and the Winter Solstice, it was often gathered ceremonially at Midsummer when it is regarded as being at the height of its power.

All herbs are reaching their peak at this time of year and thus the fullness of their healing and nurturing potency. Giving a bunch of herbs as a gift on Midsummer Day is wonderful.

All of the flower kingdom is reaching its peak, wide open, full of colour, surrendering their perfume.

Our lovely bees are now making honey. Midsummer full moon is known as the 'Honey Moon' for the mead made from honey. This is often part of handfastings performed at the Summer Solstice. Mead is regarded as the divine solar drink, with magical and life-restoring properties. Drink to celebrate and toast the life-giving abundance of the Sun.

The natural world is full of colour at this time. Choose blue for the sky, green for the grass, yellow for the Sun. Or red, orange and purple to honour all the blooming flowers. Or choose the colours of the four elements - red, blue, green and yellow. 

Ideas for Your Table/Altar

Oak leaves, oak leaves and more oak leaves. All the abundance of all the herbs, flowers and grasses that are so very available at this time. Candles in Sun colours. This is a shrine to honour the Sun - Sunflowers!

Magickal Elements

Moon Bowl Charm

A full moon charm to enhance your natural radiance to celebrate the beauty of Midsummer.

You will need: A glass or china bowl, a glass or china jug and a small white candle. Remember the candle needs to burn away completely so choose a small one.

Draw your water into the jug - rainwater is best, but freshwater from the tap is fine. Take the jug of water, the bowl and the small white candle outside and place them on the ground. Light the candle in a suitable holder and place it at the top of the bowl - at the midnight/noon point of a clock face. Pour the water into the centre of the bowl and say:

"Renewing water shining bright

Weave your charm in my bowl of Light"

Place your Moon Bowl in the moonlight so the light of the full moon is reflected in the water and leave the candle to burn down.

When this is complete take your bowl and dip your hands into the water and as you gently splash the moon water onto your face say

"By Full Moon charm,

By Full Moonlight,

May inner beauty shine through tonight.

Brightest Blessings of the Goddess shine through me."

When you have finished, return the water to the Earth. I always pour it on my favourite Holly Tree.

Charm donated by our lovely Counter Enchantress.

Love and Light,

Trace

xoxo

Imagination

Hi, Everyone.

I thought I'd make a post concerning symbolic visual knowledge and imagination. I'm a pretty curious person with bundles of imagination, and so research a lot about many varied things. One of my favourite topics is origins and cosmology. When writing 'A Carpet of Purple Flowers', I wanted to create a cosmology for my beings called The Sindria and understand their environment. The mind is amazing when it's set free to wander the realm of possibility and along the way connections of patterns are made. This is where the creative mind/consciousness plays with what if's with no boundaries. If there's a problem that needs solving, imagination can take you there. Then, all you need do is research the science behind what you imagined or try and piece together scientific evidence/hypothesis that will back-up your theory to make it viable.
It's why I love Einstein's quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein

Some more on imagination:

“Everything you can imagine is real.”
― Pablo Picasso

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”
― J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”
― Maria Montessori

“Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”
― Jonathan Swift

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
― Lewis Carroll

“Children see magic because they look for it.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”
― Mark Twain

Okay, enough with the quotes, but you see how imagination is everything.

Jonathan Wolstenholme. a book character, journals his experiences, and growing knowledge of the Sidhe, supernaturals. Through researching ancient symbolic visuals, he discovers that the ouroboros, a symbol in the form of a snake biting its own tail, used especially in ancient Egypt and in Hermetic philosophy, as an emblem of eternity meant the cycle of birth and death. That one end represented the beginning and the other, the end. 

He pondered on this a while, what would be interpreted as such in our known universe? He pictured a snake across the heavens as the Aborigines Rainbow Serpent and Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is the period in which life was created according to Aboriginal culture. Dreaming is the word used to explain how life came to be; it is the stories and beliefs behind creation. 

The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake, a creator god. What would it look like? Jonathan envisaged a massive black hole as the point of rebirth, as exploded from the belly of the snake (center of a black hole) and the pinprick black holes or possibly white holes, being the ones that haven't exploded yet. All would contain within their belly the primordial soup which makes a world. This would also match the theory of the big bang and many spiritual teachings of returning to the source, and the cycles of karma, which the Sidhe called Vo-ror-bla. He speculated that consciousness/soul were the same things, alive but untangible. What if, pieces of matter and light were sucked in from the holes and expelled at the end, creating other universes, even replicas of us as all? Parallel universes perhaps, due to the invisible information/building blocks of life being the same stuff as ours, passed through. Would these building blocks replicate our own? Was that one form of quantum entanglement connecting us all? 

Jonathan mentally noted the snake in mythology and symbols such as Yin/Yang, the infinity symbol and many more, all contained creation stories, balance of the universal power, and cycles of life and death. So, the ancients were indeed using imagery to depict the story of creation but along the way, text and literal interpretation got in the way. The spiritual interpretations of the visuals not understood by mainstream academia logic, and maybe, were classified wrongly as myth and folklore. The truth of many things concerning our histories became lost because of a logical perspective and disconnecting from ourselves spiritually, leaving that task to religion, external influence. 

Everything needs balance he concluded, including the decoding of our origins, Mind (logic), Heart (feels/spirit/essence), and Soul (spiritual consciousness). The trio that religion oft depicts, that our law courts state a thing three times, even commands are given three times in order to verify that the message is being given intentionally. Writers and artists use the rule of three. The Latin phrase "omne trium perfectum" (everything that comes in threes is perfect, or, every set of three is complete) conveys the same idea as the rule of three. Three/Thrice/Trio/Triad...the lure of three...his mind drifted to numerology and jumped to Tesla's Key to the universe...vibration, energy frequency. 3...6...9  The Universe...

The above isn't in the books, it's research and philosophical ramblings. I create Jonathan's journals to better understand the character/the realms/origins through concepts/theories that come to me. Without imagination, all stories would be the same. It is the perspective of the writer which creates a new idea for a story told millions of times already but from different eyes. This, to me, is imagination connecting the dots/patterns to a very ancient puzzle where pieces were destroyed/lost /misinterpreted during the linear time. Imagination fills these lost spaces in the puzzle, and from different writers, we see the many aspects of the same/origin puzzle piece.

 “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely, but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

― Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

Love and light,

Trace

xoxo

Happy Sant Jordi - Saint George's Day

Hi Everyone 😀

Today is The Feast Day of Sant Jordi - World Book Day in Barcelona and St.George's in the UK. 

Sant Jordi, or Saint George's Day is the Catalan equivalent to the UK's Valentine's Day. 

Normally, each year, the streets are filled with people strolling around grasping books and roses wrapped in ribbons in the colours of the Catalan flag (The Senyera).

The basic idea for Sant Jordi is that men give women roses and women give men books. And it can be anybody, not necessarily your partner or somebody who you have taken a liking to. For this feast, boys buy roses for their mums; girls buy books for their friends. Also, in today's forward-thinking society the rules are no longer set regarding who gets what. A girl is just as likely to receive a book and vice versa.

St George's Day in England remembers St George, England's patron saint. The anniversary of his death, which is on April 23, is seen as England's national day. According to legend, he was a soldier in the Roman army who killed a dragon and saved a princess.

St George's Day used to be a national holiday in England. It is now an observance that is celebrated with parades, dancing and other activities. Flags with the image of St George's cross are flown on some buildings, especially pubs, and a few people wear a red rose on their lapel. Church services on the Sunday closest to April 23 often include the hymn 'Jerusalem', written by the poet William Blake. The words describe a supposed visit to Glastonbury, England, by Jesus Christ during his youth.

St George was born sometime around the year 280 in what is now Turkey. He was a soldier and rose up through the ranks of the Roman army, eventually becoming a personal guard to the Emperor Diocletian. He was executed for being a Christian on April 23, 303, and is buried in the town of Lod in Israel.

St George is most widely known for slaying a dragon. According to legend, the only well in the town of Silene was guarded by a dragon. In order to get water, the inhabitants of the town had to offer a human sacrifice every day to the dragon. The person to be sacrificed was chosen by lots. On the day that St George was visiting, a princess had been selected to be sacrificed. However, he killed the dragon, saved the princess and gave the people of Silene access to water. In gratitude, they converted to Christianity. It is thought that the dragon represents a certain type of pagan belief that included the sacrifice of human beings.

St George's Day was once celebrated as widely as Christmas. But the celebrations waned by the end of the 18th century after England had united with Scotland on May 1, 1707. In recent times, there has been a push, involving campaigns and petitions, to make the day a public holiday in England.

St George is the patron saint of a number of other places, such as Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Portugal and Russia. He is also remembered in some regional holidays, such as in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada and among the Gorani people who live in a mountainous area in the Balkans and were converted to Islam many centuries ago, but still observe St George's Day. Around the world, a number of days are devoted to St George, including April 23 and dates in November and December of the Gregorian calendar.

The most widely recognized symbol of St George's Day is St George's cross. This is a red cross on a white background, which is often displayed as a flag. It is used as England's national flag, forming part of the Union Flag, the national flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Saint George's cross was originally the flag of the maritime Republic of Genoa. Around 1190, the King of England started paying the Doge of Genoa to protect ships originally from the city of London and the rest of England that sailed in the Mediterranean.

 

During the crusades in the 1100s and 1200s, English knights used St George's cross as part of their uniform. It has been the official flag of England for centuries, but the Union Flag, a combination of St George's cross, St Andrew's cross and St Patrick's cross, is the national flag of the United Kingdom. Now Saint George's cross is used as a national symbol by fans of the English national football, rugby and cricket teams. At international matches, flags and scarves bearing this cross are worn and people paint it on their faces. It is also has a prominent place on the arms of the City of London and the flags of the city of Barcelona, Spain, and the country of Georgia.

Love and light,

Trace

xoxo

Stay Safe ((( Hugs )))

Hi everyone,
Just a short message to say 'hi' and hope you're all well during this unsettling time. How are you keeping yourselves occupied?

I'm going to use this period to edit/revise the sequel to 'A Carpet of Purple Flowers'. It's been a long time coming due to illness of myself and close family over the past few years. I've missed the characters and their story, and can't wait to dive back in. Thank you for being patient and understanding.

  

Big Love,

Trace

xoxo

Blessings on Imbolc

Imbolc or Imbolg, also called Brigid's Day, is a Gaelic traditional festival marking the beginning of spring. It is held on 1 February, or about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Historically, it was widely observed throughout Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man.

It is time to let go of the past and to look to the future, clearing out the old, making both outer and inner space for new beginnings. This can be done in numerous ways, from spring cleaning your home to clearing the mind and heart to allow inspiration to enter for the new cycle. ('Spring cleaning was originally a nature ritual' - Doreen Valiente). It's a good time for wish-making or making dedication.

St Bridget. She is a Goddess of healing, poetry, and smithcraft. She is a Goddess of Fire, of the Sun and of the Hearth. She brings fertility to the land and its people and is closely connected to midwives and new-born babies. She is the Triple Goddess, but at Imbolc, she is in her Maiden aspect.

Make a Brigid Cross - HERE

Love and light,

Trace

xoxo