Come sisters, come to the radiant sun . . . .

Every year I have the privilege of  priestess my coven's summer solstice ritual. It's always somewhat the same and somewhat different each year. The ritual's always outdoors, always in a public place, and always involved dancing in the meadow. For me, that's the utter essence of a solstice celebration.

When we began our ritual on Sunday, I asked everyone how many times each had celebrated the solstice. Surprisingly, most of our answers were similar: we'd celebrated the solstice formally as part of the Pagan community for a set number of years, but almost every one of us had felt drawn to celebration of this special day long before we had much of a Pagan consciousness.

When I lived in the Pacific Northwest, I can remember taking my kids to the top of Somerset hill--long before it was developed-- overlooking Lake Washington, Mercer Island, the city of Seattle, Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. We'd go there toward sunset on the solstice. The kids would weave crowns for themselves from lady's bedstraw and clover and we'd all watch the sun as it set at the northernmost point of the year and the kids would run, play, tumble and dance in the meadow that used to be there. If we were really lucky, we could see Mt. Rainier turn to strawberry ice cream in the pink rays of the setting sun.

And several times we went to various Scandinavian Midsummer festivals with folk dancing, and floral wreaths suspended high on a decorated pole. Something in me just knew that dancing and being outdoors were essential on that day.

This year my coven went to a new site, at Marina Park in San Leandro, California, right on the edge of San Francisco Bay.  It was a wonderful place, with green soft grass, shade trees, and lots of dappled sunlight.

As is our custom, we made each other floral head wreaths for the solstice. And before the ritual, I asked everyone to make a flag decorated with symbols of something that takes them through the dark part of the year. The flags were made from rectangles of muslin that were about 12" by 18", with ties to attach them to ``flagpoles'' that were 4' bamboo garden stakes.

We always start the ritual singing a call-and-response version of a song I learned from Sparky T. Rabbit's ``Lunacy'' recording. It's called ``Come Brothers Come.'' We're Dianic Pagans, so we don't have brothers at our ritual. We sing ``I see XXXX in the radiant sun, come and dance with the Goddess'' to the tune of ``Come Brothers Come.'' Each person who's called then gets up and danced to the drumming and calls the next person up to dance. We continue until everyone's dancing and then we dance a whole lot more.

Then we got to work on our head wreaths. I strip my garden of anything that's flowering and also hit the discount flower market in Oakland the day before. And everyone else brings flowers, too. This year we had several colors of yarrow, marigolds, wallflowers, several different sages, lavender, statice, eucalyptus flowers, baby's breath, sunflowers, geraniums, several colors of dianthus, mint, basil, rosemary, and probably a lot more things I can't remember. Here are some photos that will show you how wonderful everyone looked in the wreaths. (I love making them because it's just the profligate creation of beauty as an end unto itself).
 
After everyone was suitably be-wreathed, we had a flag-twirling parade through the park. Since the creaky-kneed crone led the parade, we didn't get too far, but we still had fun. We sang ``We are marching in the solstice sun'' to the tune of ``Marching to Pretoria.'' We made up a lot of funny verses, including twirling, sitting, kissing, dancing, flag-waving, all in the solstice sun. Here you see us in action:

The flags were wonderful, each one so different from the others. I think if I'd have to choose favorites, they'd be Sarah's, with an image of Amaterasu Omikami, and Linda's, with a whole flock of birds;

Brighde, who lives in too-hot-in-the-summer Davis said it was the promise of winter rains that kept her going, and Linda Harrison made a cool flag containing images of both light and darkness:

We danced the spiral dance at the end of the ritual, using a song we learned from the women of Gaia's Womb:

``Listen sister, listen to my heart song.

Listen sister, listen to my heart song.

I will never forget you, I will never forsake you.

I will never forget you, I will never forsake you.''

Seems just about perfect, doesn't it?

Then we had our usual post-ritual feast which, this time, seemed to run pretty heavily to seasonal fruit and cheese.

Here's Orgy, the terra cotta goat outside my front door, who always gets my solstice head wreath when I'm through with it. And I'm already counting the days until our next solstice ritual. I do love dancing in the meadow under the summer sun.

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Comments

[Hollyheartfree]

what a glorious high summer day you had! Both pictures and verbage are lush and full of color. Wish I'd been with you.