Happy Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere

A time to reach out for your own power or maybe reclaim it at this sunshine festival of Michael, Archangel of the Sun, splendid in red and gold with a golden sword and the scales of justice. Make that leap of faith. You cannot fall or fail with Michael with you.  

Be not sad, says the I Ching, be as the sun at midday and look forward in anticipation of good times: do not waste precious moments worrying that happiness or love may not last. For there is still plenty of sunshine ahead.

If the day is grey or you are overwhelmed with problems, it is not easy. All we can do is make our own sun by spreading kindness, humour and optimism to all we meet, even if we are filled with doubt or despair.-and often this will be returned. 

Make each day meaningful no matter how hard by one small act to make yourself happy and use the Midsummer impetus to forge the changes you desire that may not be what you anticipated or even hoped but can weave from experience new directions, out half-forgotten or undeveloped talents.

Deck your Solstice day with brightly-coloured flowers, oak or redwood fallen boughs, golden fern pollen that is said to reveal buried treasure wherever it falls, scarlet, orange and yellow ribbons, gold coloured coins and any gold jewellery, even small stud earrings, that can be empowered at the festival: with your wishes that the sun will shine in your life.

Incenses, flower and herbs don’t have to be exotic bouquets but chamomile, dill, fennel, lavender, marigolds, rosemary, sage...  As darkness falls or just before dawn, light a red, gold or orange candle and blow into the flame secret wishes. Eat yellow fruit and vegetables, spices, butter, cheese and share oranges with close family, each segment containing a special blessing or wish if there has been coldness or tension, often caused by circumstances and not ill will.

• Make your Solstice water, the most potent Sun water of the year, leaving water in a gold coloured dish surrounded by golden or yellow-coloured flowers from dusk on the Solstice Eve until Noon on the Longest Day. This is especially healing and empowering and you can keep it in clear glass or gold-coloured bottles to drink or add to bath water to give you energy and confidence. If you want to get pregnant rub the water on your womb and breasts.

• Set any small gold colored items (a brooch given by a child is as precious as a royal crown) where the Solstice light will illuminate them from dawn till noon on Solstice morning to transfer the power of the sun at full height into your life as you wear the jewellery.

• At any opportunity open your arms wide, palms outstretched and uppermost and breathe in the sunlight of Solstice power, drawing it upwards through your whole body. Sigh out alternately though your mouth any darkness, sorrow or fear and when you feel full of sunshine, say nine times slowly, I am filled with the light. I am pure gold.

• On the Summer Solstice, greet the dawn by lighting a lantern or torch just before sunrise, from an East facing hill or open space and extinguishing it as the first light rises. You can do this in your garden.

• Spend the day in the open air if possible and then say farewell to the Sun as it sinks, relighting your lantern to offer the sun power, as the slow ebbing of the year begins.

• Cast golden flowers or herbs into the air from a hill, a handful at a time, on Solstice afternoon, making empowerments for courage and achievement to the winds. Where they land and take root represents in the old traditions, places of buried treasure or in this case revealing new or buried talents you can develop to realise your potential.

• Light sun oils, frankincense, juniper, rosemary, orange or benzoin or burn them as incense sticks to bring the sun power into your home or workplace.

Happy Solstice and may the sun of love and health shine on you..