June 21 at 1:04 AM EDT is the Summer Solstice this year.
This is an astronomical fact to be sure but it also carries a psychological
meaning for us as the seasons shift again, constantly expressing the Great
Round of the solar year and reminding us that life is a cyclic process; an
interplay of light and dark.
The Summer Solstice is the day of longest light. The Sun in
its apparent journey northward arrives at it northernmost point, the amount of
daylight climaxes, and from this moment on, the Sun begins its long trip
southward trailing diminishing sums of daylight. The Sun’s gift to us then is
leaving the northern hemisphere warm and luxuriant in the full bloom and beauty
of the natural world.
Light has traditionally been associated with consciousness,
differentiation, spirit, and focal awareness. Most recently in the western
tradition, it’s been reflected upon Christ as the Light of the World, and
before that Mithra, solar deity of the Roman Empire. In classical Greece,
Apollo was associated with the human longing for beauty, youth, order, beauty,
music, and harmony. Clarity, discipline, and reason were given to Apollo. He is
the quality of rational consciousness. He is with us when we see better in the
light of day and matters by the light of reason.
When I was small I recall how much time I spent outdoors and
how wonderful the Sun was to me. I welcomed summer. I’d get up early, go out
and stay until day’s end, playing, lazing, and exploring the world around me.
It seemed our entire culture worshipped those sunny days.
Today I’m struck by how attitudes have shifted 180 degrees
regarding Sol. Rather than healthy and life-giving, we issue cautions about the
Sun as if he were an enemy. We are told to limit the amount of time in his
presence, screen ourselves from direct contact with his power. Have we in the
end spent too much time at his altar, become too relaxed in his presence, so
secular that we have forgotten his divinity?
We are seeing now how we have dishonored his visitations
with our excesses; the inevitable result, the increasing rates of skin problems
and cancers found in sun worshipers and non-worshipers alike. In our excesses,
have we become an inflated solar culture placing too much reliance upon
Apollonian rationality at the expense of other styles of being in the world? Do
we now worship the god of reason and order while neglecting the gods of Chaos,
Night, and Imagination?
Summer brings culmination and full bloom. The world is in
bright display, everything is in its moment, brilliant and shining. Light is a
wonderful blessing in its proper proportion. Despite this as we all know, light
can also be overbearing, glaring, flaring, searing, burning, sparking, and
blinding. Icarus and Bellerophon in coming too close to the Sun vividly remind
us in their plummeting that humans are not destined to be gods. It is important
to remember that making observance from the proper distance keeps humility
close at hand and helps avoid hubris.
The Sun is a great blessing and without it we would not be
here. The Summer Solstice is Light’s yearly triumph before giving way to its
seasonal decline and eventual submission to the power of Night. The Solstice is
our day in the Sun, our moment in the spotlight. Let us celebrate Sol’s climax
and celebrate ourselves as the season of warmth and heat blossoms and then recognize
and accept his eventual decline. Other divinities have their claims upon us
throughout the day and throughout the turning of the year and they also require
honoring. “To everything there is a season…” Have a nice Solstice.
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