There is an hour in late June when the light forgets to go.
The hedges hold their heat long after the sun has dropped behind them. The grass has gone pale and dry at the tips. In the north the sky keeps a bruise of gold in it until almost midnight.
Then the sun stops, and nothing in the year moves.
That pause is Litha. It is the longest day of the year.
The shortest night of the whole year follows straight after it, thin as a held breath.
The sun climbs to the highest point it will reach all year. From there it begins the long descent back toward winter and the cold blue hours waiting at the far end of it.
Litha is a festival of fullness rather than a festival of hope.
Nothing whatever is being asked for at this particular sabbat.
Everything requested at the earlier festivals is standing out in the field, green and finished and warm to the hand.
This is what the fire is lit for.
What Litha Is
Litha is the sabbat kept at the summer solstice, the hour when the sun halts at the top of its climb and hangs there.
It marks the exact turning point of the sun’s year.
Daylight reaches its greatest length on this day. Then it begins to shorten.
The name Litha is used across most of the modern traditions.
Midsummer is the older and plainer word for the same festival, worn smooth by ordinary use.
Both names point at one thing. The sun is standing at the very top of its arc, gold and unmoving.
Everything else in the rite follows from that single fact, the way a shadow follows the thing that throws it.
When Litha Falls
In the northern hemisphere the solstice arrives in late June, when the nights have gone thin and blue and never quite close.
The date shifts slightly and usually falls between the twentieth and the twenty-second. An almanac or an ephemeris will give the exact hour, down to the minute in which the light stands still.
In the southern hemisphere the same moment arrives in late December, at the opposite end of the calendar, where the same fire burns beneath a different sky.
Many keep the rite on the night of the solstice itself.
Others keep it on the nearest evening the week will spare them.
The sun does not object to either arrangement.
Sunrise, Noon or Sunset
Three hours suit the solstice, and each of them carries a different weather in it.
Sunrise belongs to gratitude. The whole rite may be nothing more than standing barefoot in wet grey grass while the light comes up rose, then white, then gold across the field.
Noon belongs to power. The sun sits directly overhead, the shadows have shrunk to almost nothing, and the air above warm stone shivers.
Sunset belongs to release. The fire is lit as the last of the light drains out of the west and the short night begins.
Choose one of the three and let the other two go past you like weather.
Attempting all of them produces a tired witch and a thin ceremony.
What to Gather
Very little is needed, and almost none of it has to be bought. Midsummer lays most of it at your feet.
- A candle in gold, yellow or deep orange
- A small fire, a hearth, or a fireproof dish of sand
- Fresh flowers, whatever happens to be open in the garden or the hedgerow
- A cup of clear water and a cup of something sweet
- Bread, fruit or honey for the sharing
- A hoop of green wood or straw, still supple, for the sun wheel
Midsummer is the one sabbat that supplies most of its own materials.
Anything growing within reach on the day of the rite belongs on the altar, still warm, still smelling of the ground it was cut from.
The Solstice Ritual
This ritual is used when you wish to mark the height of the sun.
It is also used to give thanks for what has already grown.
Perform it at whichever of the three hours you have chosen.
Stand facing the sun, or facing the place on the horizon where it last stood and left its heat behind in the stones.
Cast the circle in the usual way if that is your practice. Flowers laid head to stem along the ground will mark it out for a smaller rite.
A formal magic circle is not required for a solstice fire. Many prefer to have one regardless of the season.
Light the candle and set it where the light can be seen. Let it stand for the sun that is standing still.
Speak into the flame:
Sun at your height, fire at your full, I stand in the longest light and give thanks for it.
Hold the flowers in the warmth above the flame rather than in the flame itself. The heat lifts the scent out of them and carries it up past your face.
Name aloud one thing in your life that has already come to fruit.
Then name one thing you intend to carry through the darkening half of the year.
Speak again:
What is grown, I keep. What is spent, I give to the fire.
Set the flowers on the altar, or feed a few of the petals to the flame and watch them curl and blacken at the edges.
Share the bread and the drink with whoever is present.
Pour a little of each onto the bare earth, where the ground takes it in without a sound.
Let the candle burn all the way down if the setting is safe to leave.
If it is not safe, pinch the flame out between wet fingers. Keep the warm stub for the cold months at the other end of the year.
Why Fire Belongs to Midsummer
Fire has been carried through midsummer nights across Europe for a very long time.
Hilltop fires were built where the wind could find them, and burning brands were carried around the dark edges of the fields. The ashes were often kept and scattered afterward.
The reasoning behind it is not difficult to follow.
A fire lit on the shortest night is a small answer given to a very large darkness.
A fire lit on the longest day is not an answer at all. It is a form of agreement, one flame nodding to another across the whole width of the sky.
If an open fire is impossible, a single candle on a kitchen table will do the same work indoors.
The principles of candle magic hold at the solstice exactly as they hold at any other hour.
The Sun Wheel
The sun wheel is the emblem of the day and the simplest thing your hands can make.
Bind a hoop of green wood or straw into a circle. Cross it with two sticks tied together at the center.
Ribbons in gold, red and green may be woven through the spokes if you have them, so the wheel stirs and flickers whenever the door is opened.
Some hang the wheel above the hearth and leave it hanging until the next solstice, gathering dust and smoke and the smell of a year of fires.
Others burn it at the end of the rite. The year is allowed to take back what it gave.
Both readings are honest, since the wheel is either kept or returned.
The Litha Altar
Dress the altar for abundance rather than for mystery. Let it look like a table at the end of a long hot afternoon.
- Gold or yellow cloth
- Sunflowers, roses, marigolds and oak leaves
- Honey, mead, ale or pressed fruit juice
- Seashells, river stones and a bowl of clear water
- Amber, carnelian or any warm gold stone
- The sun wheel set at the center
Face the altar south if you keep the directional correspondences. That quarter is given to fire.
Leave enough room for the candle to stand entirely alone, a hand’s width of bare cloth around it.
Crowding is the usual mistake at midsummer. The day is already full to the brim without any help.
Herbs Gathered at Midsummer
Midsummer is the traditional hour for cutting herbs, when the beds are loud with bees and the air above them hangs thick and green. The reasons are practical as much as magical.
Plants stand at their fullest and the oils in them are strong. Nothing has yet begun to fade toward autumn.
Herbs commonly associated with the solstice include St John’s wort, vervain, chamomile, mugwort and yarrow.
Cut in the morning once the dew has lifted off the leaves. Take rather less than you think you need.
Dry the bundles hanging in shade rather than in the sun that grew them, in a cool room where the scent can gather in the rafters.
Gathering and drying are set out at greater length in the field guide for the green witch.
Say something over the cutting if it pleases you:
Taken in the full light and kept for the dark. Grow again where you stood.
Water at Midsummer
Fire is not the only element that belongs to the solstice.
Wells and springs are visited at midsummer in a great many places, where the water comes up cold out of dark stone into the hottest morning of the year. Water drawn on this morning is often kept through the year.
Set a bowl outside where the sun can reach it directly. Leave it standing there from sunrise until noon, until the light has lain on the surface for hours.
Use it afterward to anoint the brow, the wrists, the threshold of the house or the tools.
Fire and water together make the balance the day is actually about. Neither of them is asked to win.
The pairing follows the older logic of the four elements, in which nothing is meant to stand alone.
The Oak King and the Holly King
Many modern traditions tell the solstice as a battle between two kings.
The Oak King rules the waxing half of the year. He grows stronger from midwinter until this day arrives, leafing green over every hedge and lane.
At Litha he meets the Holly King, and the crown passes from one to the other.
From here the Holly King rules alone, dark-leaved and patient. The light shortens steadily toward the dark half of the year.
The story is not ancient in the form usually told. It remains useful all the same.
It gives a shape to the strangest fact of the day. The sun is highest exactly as it begins to fall.
What the Day Asks of You
Every sabbat asks something different of the one who keeps it.
Imbolc asks for patience and Beltane asks for appetite. Samhain asks for memory and for a steady nerve.
Litha asks for gratitude, which is harder work than any of the others.
Standing inside a season that requires nothing at all is uncomfortable. The mind goes looking for the next lack the way a tongue goes to a missing tooth.
The solstice rite exists to hold the mind still for one long gold afternoon.
That is the whole of the work, and it is not a small one.
Keeping the Day Without a Ritual
Not every year allows a fire, a circle and an undisturbed evening.
The day may still be kept properly.
- Rise before the sun and watch it come up
- Eat at least one meal outdoors
- Walk barefoot on grass, sand or bare soil
- Cut flowers and put them where they will be seen all day
- Stay awake until the last of the light has gone
The shortest night is genuinely short. Staying with it until the grey thins back into morning is a rite in itself.
Litha Alone
A solitary solstice is not a lesser solstice.
One candle, one cup and one sentence spoken at the right hour will carry the whole day.
Say this at sunset, with the light going amber along the wall, if nothing else is said:
The light was full, and I was here to see it.
Litha With Others
The fire festivals were never quiet occasions.
Build the fire together if there are others present, and let the smoke choose its own direction. Let each person name one thing that has come to fruit.
Leaping a low fire is an old midsummer game. A low flame is the whole of the safety instruction.
Children may be given the sun wheel to carry around the fire, ribbons streaming behind them.
Feed everyone, because a solstice without food is only astronomy.
Closing the Rite
Let the fire die down of its own accord rather than drowning it. Wait for the red to sink into the ash and go grey.
Thank the sun aloud before the circle is opened again.
Go down easy. The dark is only the other half of you.
Open the circle in the usual way. Put out the candle last of all.
Grounding Afterward
Midsummer rites leave a great deal of loose energy in the body.
The long light, the fire and the noise of a gathering keep the nerves running well past midnight, humming like a wire in wind.
Sit on the ground before sleeping. Let the heat run out through the palms and the base of the spine and go down into the cool soil where it belongs.
A short grounding meditation settles the night better than anything else available.
After the Longest Day
On the morning after Litha the light is already shorter than it was.
Nobody will notice for weeks. It is true from the first hour regardless.
This is the quiet instruction of the sabbat, delivered without any ceremony at all, in the plain grey of a kitchen window.
What is full begins to empty. What is emptying will fill again in its turn.
Keep one thing from the day and put it somewhere dark for the cold half of the year.
A pressed flower gone paper-thin, the stub of the candle, or a small jar of the sun-warmed water.
Held from the longest day, opened in the longest night.
Then let the sun go, and let it take the year along with it.