A Midsummer Night’s Lore

Cinquefoil,campion, lupine and foxglove nod on your doorstep; Nutka rose, salal bells,starflower and bleeding-heart hide in the woods, fully green now. Litha hascome, longest day of the year, height of the sun. Of old, in Europe, Litha wasthe height too of pagan celebrations, the most important and widely honored ofannual festivals.

Fire, love andmagick wreathe 'round this time. As on Beltaine in Ireland, across Europepeople of old leaped fires for fertility and luck on Midsummer Day, or on thenight before, Midsummer Eve, according to Funk and Wagnall's StandardDictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. Farmers drove their cattlethrough the flames or smoke or ran with burning coals across the cattle pens.In the Scottish Highlands, herders circumambulated their sheep with torches litat the Midsummer fire.

People took burningbrands around their fields also to ensure

fertility, and inIreland threw them into gardens and potato fields. Ashes from the fire weremixed with seeds yet to plant. In parts of England country folk thought theapple crop would fail if they didn't light the Midsummer fires. People relittheir house fires from the Midsummer bonfire, in celebration hurled flamingdisks heavenward and rolled flaming wheels downhill, burning circles thathailed the sun at zenith.

Midsummer, too, wasa lovers' festival. Lovers clasped hands over the bonfire, tossed flowersacross to each other, leaped the flames together. Those who wanted loversperformed love divination. In Scandinavia, girls laid bunches of flowers undertheir pillows on Midsummer Eve to induce dreams of love and ensure them comingtrue. In England, it was said if an unmarried girl fasted on Midsummer Eve and atmidnight set her table with a clean cloth, bread, cheese and ale,

then left her yarddoor open and waited, the boy she would marry, or his spirit, would come in andfeast with her.

Magick crowns Midsummer. Divining rods cuton this night are more infallible, dreams more likely to come true. Dewgathered Midsummer Eve restores sight. Fern, which confers invisibility, wassaid to bloom at midnight on Midsummer Eve and is best picked then. Indeed, anymagickal plants plucked on Midsummer Eve at midnight are doubly efficacious andkeep better. You'd pick certain magickal herbs, namely St. Johnswort, hawkweed,vervain, orpine, mullein, wormwood and mistletoe, at midnight on Midsummer Eveor noon Midsummer Day, to use as a charm to protect your house from fire andlightning, your family from disease, negative witchcraft and disaster. A pagangardener might

considercultivating some or all of these; it's not too late to buy at

herb-orientednurseries. Whichever of these herbs you find, a gentle snip into a cloth, aspell whispered over, and you have a charm you can consecrate in the height ofthe sun.

In northern Europe,the Wild Hunt was often seen on Midsummer Eve, hallooing in the sky, in somedistricts led by Cernunnos. Midsummer's Night by European tradition is afairies' night, and a witches' night too. Rhiannon Ryall writes in West CountryWicca that her coven, employing rites said to be handed down for centuries inEngland's West Country, would on Midsummer Eve decorate their symbols of theGod and Goddess with flowers, yellow for the God, white for the Goddess. The coventhat night would draw down the moon into their high priestess, and at sunrisedraw down the sun into their high priest. The priest and priestess thencelebrated the Great Rite, known to the coven as the Rite of Joining or theCrossing Rite.

Some of Ryall'selders called this ritual the Ridencrux Rite. They told how formerly in times ofbad harvest or unseasonable weather, the High Priestess on the nights betweenthe new and full moon would go to the nearest crossroads, wait for the firststranger traveling in the

district. Aboutthis stranger the coven had done ritual beforehand, to ensure he embodied theGod. The high priestess performed the Great Rite with him to make the nextseason's sowing successful.

In the Middle Agesin Europe, traces of Witchcraft and Pagan

remembrances wereoften linked with Midsummer. In Southern Estonia, Lutheran Church workers founda cottar's wife accepting sacrifices on Midsummer Day, Juhan Kahk writes inEarly Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, edited by BengtAnkarloo and Gustave

Henningsen.Likewise, on Midsummer Night in 1667, in Estonia's Maarja-Magdaleena parish,peasants met at the country manor of Colonel Griefenspeer to perform a ritualto cure illnesses.

In Denmark, writesJens Christian V. Johansen in another Early Modern European Witchcraft chapter,medieval witches were said to gather on Midsummer Day, and in Ribe on MidsummerNight. Inquisitors in the Middle Ages often said witches met on Corpus Christi,which some years fell close to Midsummer Eve, according to Witchcraft in theMiddle Ages, by Jeffrey Burton Russell. The inquisitors explained witches chosethe date to mock a central Christian festival, but Corpus

Christi is no moreimportant than a number of other Christian

holidays, and itfalls near a day traditionally associated with Pagan worship. Coincidence?Probably not.

Anciently, Pagansand witches hallowed Midsummer. Some burned for their right to observe theirrites; we need not. But we can remember the past. In solidarity with thoseburned, we can collect our herbs at midnight; we can burn our bonfires and hailthe sun.

By Melanie Fire Salamander and GrannyMoon's Morning FeastArchives