The Solstice Circle: Gathering Talk

Welcome. I'm so glad you came. Tonight is midsummer. The longest day of the year. For thousands of years, people across Europe marked this night. Not because anyone told them to. Because the land told them to. The crops were growing. The animals were strong. The sun had done its work and the harvest was coming. You could feel it. And that feeling, of abundance on its way, of the year at its fullest, deserved to be celebrated. So they lit bonfires. Across Celtic, Slavic and Germanic lands, fires on every hill, to honour the sun and boost its strength for the rest of the growing season. They danced around them all night. They jumped over them, the highest jump thought to predict the height of the year's harvest. Nobody went to bed. This night was too important to sleep through. And there was something else. The old traditions held that on this night, the veil between worlds grows thin. Fairies and nature spirits move more freely. The boundary between what is seen and what is felt becomes uncertain. Whether you believe that or not, something in it is true. Midsummer has always had that quality. The light so long, the night so short, the world feeling slightly more permeable than usual. What those people understood, that we have mostly forgotten, is that abundance is not something to take quietly. It is something to receive fully. To name. To celebrate out loud. And this is the ideal time to set your intentions. The sun is at its height. Whatever you call in tonight carries the full force of the longest day behind it. So before we go up to the circle, I want to ask you one thing. What are you calling in this summer? Come up to the circle. The fire is lit. I'm waiting.