Finding the Darkness in a Time of Light (or, Rituals for Those who Cannot Stand the Sun)

Wednesday Wheel for the Summer Solstice

It’s long seemed strange to me that at midwinter, we celebrate the light being reborn amidst the darkness, and at midsummer we celebrate…the light.

Where is the darkness in all this? Why this imbalance? We cannot live out our lives solely in the sun. For life to thrive, we need the turn of the seasons. For morning to come, we need night. For the spark of life to catch fire, we need the mothering darkness of the womb. For rebirth to happen we need death. For regeneration, we need decay. And yet the closest we get to celebrating the darkness as a culture is Hallowe’en, which is more a subversive, trickster-ish festival in its modern guise, and much maligned by religions which associate the dark with all things ‘demonic.’

There is racism here; a long tradition of Western white associations that line up all things good with all things light, and all things evil with all things dark. There is sexism here, as the light of reason has been historically associated with all things male, and the dark of nature and intuition, which is of course seen as lesser, with all things female. There is even a form of ableism manifesting; left-handedness (more common in the neurodivergent) and ‘The Left-Handed Path’ are often associated with all things ‘dark magic’. If we are going to decolonise our magic and our practices, we need to move beyond these pernicious dualities, and I would suggest we start by looking at and moving beyond this imbalance in the way we view the solstices.

Not only can light not exist without the dark, it is born from it. This is exactly how we often mythologise midwinter in various traditions, but rarely do we do the same wth the summer solstice and recognise the return of the dark in the midst of the light. Or, in neopagan traditions that do, it’s often mythologised with a dying god motif (or most likely later at Lughnasagh) that holds echoes of ancient rituals of human sacrifice - probably not connotations that do away with the dualism I speak of above, or that we really want to keep.

These light/dark, good/evil splits in both our cultural stories and our psyche have, I would argue, caused a great deal of harm. Contrast those images to the Daoist yin/yang (mind, I’m not saying Daoist cultures were without their problems either) which shows light and dark as not only two halves of the same whole but as each half containing the kernel of the other. Perhaps this is how we need to start viewing the yearly interplay of the solstices - each one gives birth to the other. In the feminist theology approach, we do away with the typical female = dark and male = light and look at how the feminine sacred can hold both.

So, how about this year we try ritualising the solstice not at noon, in the sun, with sunbathing and feasting and revelry, but by welcoming the rebirth of the dark, just as at midwinter we welcome the rebirth of the light? Some suggestions for doing this include;

Have your celebration at midnight, and keep it quiet, meditative and chilled.

Try fasting rather than feasting (but keep hydrated and cool.)

Meditate on the yin/yang symbol, draw or paint it, or make it out of flowers, fabric or stones.

Do a guided journey to the Underworld in a quiet, dark room.

Read/learn about just how important the ‘dark’ is - learn about the womb, or the soil, or black holes or dark matter, or the Buddhist concept of sunyata (emptiness.)

Stay in the dark for a while, use blackout blinds if it appeals, before emerging into the bright sun. Track how it makes you feel and the physical and psychological changes. Then try it the other way around.

Do some shadow work with a therapist or therapy group. Confront something about yourself that you’re scared of.

Honour those that have passed so far this year, or since the last Midsummer.

Also, for all those sun-lovers out there, remember that summer at its height can be as difficult as winter. It may have meant drought to our ancestors. Now, it may mean climate change, drought, heat stroke and the spread of infectious disease and pests. An endless summer is good for no-one. For some of us even in the more privileged West, the summer is difficult; those sensitive to sunlight, heat or pollen can find these month offer little to celebrate.

My intention here isn’t to ruin anyone’s holiday! But to make us think about things a little deeper.

Perhaps, a little darker….