The summer solstice is the longest day of the year when the night is at its shortest.
This is an astronomical extreme, the peak of solar activity, which has become a national holiday since time immemorial, overgrown with many legends, rites and rituals.
The Summer Solstice is celebrated in one form or another throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and the features of the holiday are very similar: ritual bonfires, the magic of herbs and water, rampant otherworldly forces.
This is a joyful, cheerful, even violent holiday, when Nature seethes from the juices overflowing with it, which is also transmitted to people.
Over the years and centuries of the celebration of the summer solstice, many different traditions have developed around the holiday.
If you want to make the most of your day, enjoy the sunshine and nature outside by making flower wreaths, gardening, or playing in the water.
Seek harmony and balance through meditation, yoga, or start keeping a gratitude journal. Enjoy communication with loved ones at summer holidays and festivals or during gatherings around the fire.
✨ So, what can you do on Litha: ⠀
🌿Rejoice in the light. Spend time outdoors in the sun and enjoy the light that guides us through life. Build an altar of light with candles, summer flowers and yellow fruits in a beautiful natural setting. Later, enjoy the fruits that absorb the warm rays of the sun.
🌿 Respect the sun. The summer solstice is a great time to pay your respects to the sun.
You can make a holiday sun tea by adding edible flowers and herbs to a cup of water, then letting it sit in the sun.
You can also make a sunny mandala with orange and yellow flower petals. Arrange all the petals in circular decorative patterns that will express your serenity and tranquility.
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🌿Make a wreath of flowers. Gather flowers from the garden or buy from a flower shop. Choose fragrant flowers with thin stems.
🌿 Create a garden and beds. The summer solstice is a great time to create your garden. Dig up the soil and add compost or fertilizer to prepare the beds for plants.
Select plants from a nearby garden center or ask friends and neighbors to share cuttings with you.
🌿 Start keeping a gratitude journal. This diary will remind you of the wonderful moments of life. Indicate events, objects and people in your life for which you are grateful, as well as your abilities or qualities.
Write down all positive emotions and impressions. Remember all the positive events in your life in order to correctly assess the scale of self-realization.
🌿 Learn new ways to recover. The summer solstice is a great time to learn more about the healing and recovery methods you are interested in, like reiki, massage, or acupuncture.
Sign up for a session of new recovery therapy in the context of the problem that is bothering you (stress or pain). You can also find courses and learn how to do massage or other procedures.
🌿 Organize a family holiday. Invite family and friends to celebrate this day with you. Visit farms and markets for the freshest food for the holiday.
Meals can include bright vegetables and sun-colored fruits like lemon, papayas, corn, oranges, bananas, carrots, peppers, peaches, apricots, melons, pumpkins, mangoes, grapefruits, and sweet potatoes.
🌿Arrange night vigils around the campfire on the occasion of the summer solstice.
Pagans would light a candle or fire at sunset and keep the fire going until sunrise to ritually care for the sun’s flame during the shortest night, until at dawn the Wheel of the Year (seasonal ritual cycle) turned again towards the dark half of the year.
This tradition is seen as a celebration of the brightest time of the year and honoring the gifts of the coming darkness that will come along with the reduction of daylight hours.
🌿Focus on positive change. Summer stability and the prospect of pleasant warm days is a time of self-development, freedom and self-care. Consider such conditions as an occasion for positive change.
🌿Make a rearrangement in the house. Rearrange furniture and replace boring items with things from the attic or basement. Add new accents like pillows, lamps, art.
You should get rid of unnecessary things, but leave objects that give you joy.
🌿 Change your diet – start eating more seasonal fruits and vegetables. This is a great time to start consuming greens, your own produce, and organic produce rather than processed ones.
🌿Find an activity that you like. Choose a pleasant activity for yourself instead of monotonous and boring things. For example, you can meditate, do yoga, swim, run or ride a bike.
✨Signs of the Summer Solstice:
Many folk signs are a kind of weather prediction, which is not surprising, because the harvest depended on the weather, and life itself depended on the harvest. Many similar signs are connected with the day of the summer solstice.
🌿 For example, bad weather on the longest day of the year predicts crop failure. Moreover, as our ancestors argued, nothing good can be expected from the summer, even if the sun simply hides behind the clouds.
🌿 But a lot of dew in the morning – to a bountiful harvest. By the way, this dew was usually collected and poured into a separate vessel, as it was believed that it had a rejuvenating and healing effect, or, as our ancestors said, magical power.
In general, according to the ancients, on the summer solstice all the water acquired magical properties, so any water procedures at the beginning of the 20th of June were considered very useful.
🌿 The starry sky on the night of June 21 (20) promised mushrooms in early autumn.
🌿Another good sign is to meet the dawn on the day of the solstice: this should give strength and health for the whole year and protect from adversity.
🌿 And remember that you can’t be offended and swear on this day, otherwise it can bring trouble to the family.
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