Litha Celebration

Another fantastic ritual by Chris P.

As most of you know, Litha is the celebration of the summer solstice, which is the longest day of the year. While most people think of the beginning of summer as the beginning of the sun's strength, it is actually its apex -- and each day that follows the solstice decreases in daylight. In our tradition, this is the day when the Lord of Light gives way to the Lord of Dark, when the Oak King relinquishes his rule in order to allow the Holly King to sit in the throne provided by the Goddess. While the Oak King is lord of growth and the Green, the Holly King is the master of "hoof and horn," of animals and red blood and death. This spooks some people, but it shouldn't. The Holly King is a faithful teacher and father; he bears perpetually the wisdom of age and experience. Really, he is the young god transformed -- mature, confident, whole. He is a healer in this way.

Litha is also considered one of the key liminal times of the year. A liminal period is one that exists between opposites at a point of balancing energy. Each day we experience the liminal times of dawn and dusk. Think about the sunset on the night of a full moon: just as the sun is falling into the western horizon, the full moon is cresting in the east. The solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarters (Beltane, Lammas, Samhain, Imbolc) are also liminal -- they are turning points in the wheel of the year. In these liminal periods, the veils that separate our human world from the other worlds (of the dead, of the fey, of the Shining Ones, etc.) are the thinnest, which means we can more easily make contact with the beings/consciousnesses that reside in those realms.

Perhaps because of the green abundance at this time, it is traditionally believed that Litha is particularly open to the fey. There are many, many ideas about who or what the fey really are, and I suggest that folks read all of it then forget it all and just experience the fey and trust that.

Most of our ideas of the faeries comes from Celtic and English lore, which does not present a consistent portrait of them, but many cultures in the world speak of faery-like creatures in their cosmology. While it is believed by most of the folks I hang with that nature spirits (called "devas" in India) are not synonymous with faeries, one fairly consistent idea is that faeries are closely associated with nature and fervently love Mother Earth. Chris P. teaches that the faeries are the eaters of the dead, that they reside in the underworld, which is a kind of parallel universe to ours, but of a more primal nature. Chris loves to remind people that faeries have not always been regarded as cute, little, winged spirits that happily sprinkle fairy dust all over everything, giggling all the way. For some, the fey are the vestiges of the old gods and goddesses, the Sidhe, or the Elfame, an elder race who once ruled in the land before our cycle of time (think Tolkien's Elves). Some see the fey and all those of the underworld as existing in partnership with the gods, goddesses, hidden company and angelic beings of the upperworld. In this way, humans and, I would say, all other life on this planet, serve to manifest the gifts of both realms, taking in and transforming the energies to bring growth and consciousness into the world. As celestial light from the heavens pours down, it is "eaten" by the fey and the dead, which transforms the energy into earthly nourishment that grows up, from the ground, up towards the heavenly light. Life on the planet takes in the energy from above and uses it to nourish the earth. And so it continues.

I've been feeling so tuned into nature lately; I feel as though I can feel the presence of "something" there, be it nature spirit, elemental, or fey. I've gone through so much hurt and despair this year and it doesn't seem to be over, but I feel that something is reaching out to me, to bring me healing and perhaps at the end of it all, peace.

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S. interrupted my blogging today and starting writing an entry "for" me. Here's an unabridged version of what he thinks I write (doesn't he read this blog?!). All grammatical/spelling errors and pointless jabs have been retained for authenticity:

today i got up. Then i looked in the window, and then I had coffee, but I broke the thing. Then I went and got bagel, I really wanted bagel so much.....omg... so I went and got a bagel. mmm so good. But I didn't get my bf an orange juice because I secretly hate him. Then I did laundry. I hate laundry too.

Crazy.