21/06/2025
☀️Happy Summer Solstice ☀️
The longest day arrives like an old friend, generous with light and reluctant to say goodbye. Summer solstice in Britain—when the sun reaches its zenith and the earth seems to pause in reverence before beginning its slow tilt away once more.
Our ancestors knew the power of this day. They gathered at stone circles—Stonehenge, Avebury, Callanish—where they watched the sun rise in perfect alignment with monoliths placed by hands long turned to dust. They lit bonfires on hilltops, a chain of flames stretching across the countryside, each village calling to the next with light against the brief darkness. The old ones believed the veil between worlds thinned on this night, that faeries danced in woodland glades and magic hung heavy in the midnight air.
In the oak groves, druids once gathered with mistletoe and mead, their ceremonies honoring the green world's peak. Villagers would dance until their feet were sore, weaving through fields with garlands of St. John's wort, their yellow flowers capturing sunlight in tiny constellations opens their starred yellow flowers precisely now, as if keeping an ancient appointment with the sun. Country folk once called it "chase-devil" for its power to ward off melancholy and ill spirits. They would weave it into protective wreaths to hang above doorways, or steep it in oil until the clear oil turned ruby red—a potion they called "blood of the sun," potent medicine for both body and soul.
Brigit Anna McNeill
