Solstice rays raise New Age spirits

Today - summer solstice - the sun lingers its longest in the sky, almost a full 17 hours from sunup to sundown.

While most of us will go about our business enjoying the promised partly sunny day, the pagans - witches, druids and such - will take time to celebrate the seasonal shift from cool spring to full-on heat wave.

Some will hike up Mount Pisgah at dawn. Others plan drumming circles at dusk and potlucks on Saturday.

K.C. Anton planned to sing the sun up at home with his wife, daughter and close friends in a ritual involving chants and drums.

"It's a time to connect with friends, but also with the place you live and with yourself," said Anton, who owns Woodhart Ways of Olde, a shop that sells books, art, jewelry and clothing with pagan themes.

Anton said he also would leave a candle burning all night in a gesture meant to help the sun on its climb toward morning. The candle probably will be placed in the sink or bathtub to keep it from burning down the house, he said.

Don't get Anton wrong. He's perfectly aware that it's the Earth, not the sun, shifting position in the sky. But there's something about myth and ritual that satisfies a deep need.

"I understand the science of astronomy," he said. "But I still have a little kid in me that wants to be mesmerized by magic."

Solstice, Latin for "sun stands still," is one of eight magical times each year for pagans, said Norma Joyce, an elder priestess of a local group of witches.

Despite centuries of bad press connecting witches with evil, Joyce said witches' beliefs are based on simple respect for and awe of the planet.

"We believe that the Earth is a living entity and we call it Mother Earth. We don't worship her, but we attempt not to abuse her," Joyce said.

Seasonal shifts mark the holy days of pagans, and summer solstice has a bittersweet quality to it, she said.

"We celebrate that the sun is shining, and in Oregon that's important," Joyce said. "There is this happiness, but there's also sadness that we've reached the peak and the days get shorter."

Her group will celebrate with rituals involving candles and calling up the Earth's elements: fire, wind, earth and water. The gathering will include that contemporary party stalwart, the potluck, she said.

Recognition of solstice goes back thousands of years and runs through many cultures, said folklorist Daniel Wojcik, who teaches in the English department at the University of Oregon.

Pre-Christian Europeans believed that the veil between the seen and unseen world was thinnest at solstice, which made it a popular time to have your love life foretold. The Chinese believed summer solstice represented the waxing of the female principle of yin over the male yang principle.

In ancient Sweden, people decorated a tree and danced around it and women would bathe in a nearby river in a rite designed to bring rain.

In Egypt, summer solstice was also the beginning of the new year and marked by flooding of the arid Nile Valley.

"It's a time in which people took a moment to reflect on nature and the cosmos, to stand outside the normal daily grind," Wojcik said.

Today, thousands of New Age believers will gather at Stonehenge in England. At the ancient stone circle, the monoliths align with the sun on the longest day of the year so that dawn's light shines through the central stones.

Skies over Britain may be cloudy, obscuring the heart-stopping spectacle, but Eugene can almost bank on some sunshine. In the last 30 years, it's rained only eight times on June 21. The National Weather Service predicts early clouds burning off midmorning and highs in the upper 70s.

The physics: The Earth is tilted so that the north pole is at its closest point to the sun, resulting in more sunlight in the northern hemisphere and less in the southern hemisphere.

More light: From March 21 through Sept. 24, there are more hours of daylight than darkness. After today, the days will gradually shorten until winter solstice, Dec. 20.

Out of sync: While today is the longest day, it isn't the earliest sunrise at 5:30 a.m. Earliest sunrise occurred at 5:21 a.m. June 14; the latest sunset will occur at 9:03 p.m. next Friday.

Honey of a moon on its way: Watch for a full moon on Monday that will seem larger and more colorful because it won't rise very high above the horizon.

The funny little "scafolk" will be out all night tonight. The irony is that the midievil knights that they dress like and attempt to play swords like, were all devout Catholics who attended mass twice a day. Thank goddess and have fun worshiping your littel rocks children.

The irony is that the midievil knights that they dress like and attempt to play swords like, were all devout Catholics who attended mass twice a day

Some were many were just thugs and robbers.

It's a rare day when I can connect a story even tangentially to my childhood home of Scotch Village, Nova Scotia (pop. 206).

But Men for Change have been celebrating solstices and equinoxes with drumming, chanting, and doggerel there for the past few years at Maple Creek Farm.

And to think my family used to be thought a little strange by the locals for being Catholics from the Eastern Shore....

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