Solstice?

[Labrys]

So, summer solstice is around the corner here in the Northern climes....or so the calendar promises.  About one day out of 10 we get over 70 degrees, three days out of ten we are lucky to hover over 55, and average is around 62.  I don't want to know what it drops to by night, but I am still sleeping comfortably under a feather comforter!

I drove myself out to the fire pit for Beltane, tho' it was sincerely cold then (still freezing at night and hanging in mid 40s by day).  It seems like tough going this year with the weather in my part of the world suggesting nothing at all like what the religious calendar says is happening.

 

Is anyone else feeling a "Wait, what season/holiday is this again?" moment?  I know it is very, very hot some places; is that as much of a "Hey, it is NOT Lammas..." kind of mind-twister as the cold.

[Labrys]

Just as I was thinking I would have trouble knowing 'when' solstice should be by more than a date on the calendar (excessively wet and cold, not terribly summer here), late night reminded me that there are those things that don't care about the weather to judge the sabbat 'here'.

I was coming from my laundry room into the house, and just as I stepped up over the threshold, a shadow fell as if someone was walking into the same room as I was, but from the living room.  I thought it was my husband.  But I stepped into a completely empty room!

My husband was in the bathroom, door shut.  Yes, a chill-thrill went through me.  It has been a long time since some "one" visited the house and it troubled me a lot.  It  is easy to forget accounts of the traditional "veil thinning" at the summer solstice.  The usual brightness of the season tends to dispel that aspect, don't you think?

But the shadow was there, a feeling of tentativeness flavoring the room.  With my son in Afghanistan, I had to control the urge to freak out; and confined my semi-panic to asking questions of my pendulum.  I ask if the shadow "visitor" was someone recently dead.  It said yes.  It said it was no blood-relative of mine. I took an unreasonable amount of comfort from this answer...

I should have stopped there, but I asked about my step-mother, from whom I am now estranged.  She broke her hip in December and has resisted all therapy and necessary 'back to it' procedures since then.  The pendulum answered in the affirmative.

[Lark]

It has been feeling far more like Lammas around here with the temperature in the high 90's and very little rain.  But today as I awoke on the Solstice it was to the rumble of thunder and grey skies.  It was almost a relief not to be able to welcome the rising of the sun today.

Your story of the visitor reminds me that the Summer Solstice is not all about light and brightness.  In fact, even as we celebrate the growing harvest of the Mother and see the Lord in his greatest strength, he is challenged by his darker brother and receives the wound which will eventually prove mortal.  Darkness and Shadow have triumphed over the Light and the year will now slowly grow darker until we reach Yule.  It is the constant reminder that Death is always the flip side of Life.

[Labrys]

It feels more like Beltane here; our temps have been extraordinarily low.  It was only just above 50 when I rose this morning!  We do have sun today, which is a bit of cheer.

But yes, this solstice feels unusually solemn---the Manchild's  girlfriend has a late evening class schedule this summer and had planned to come here only Thurs night thru Sunday.  Yesterday was her first five hours of late class.

I was up late doing laundry and watching over a post-operative Minotaur husband (dental surgery) when I heard her voice.  She had come back, at eleven at night and was flushed and shaky.  She said she felt "creeped out" and that every where she went felt full of whispers and shadows.
She is not pagan, but clearly was shaken with perceptions she was unaccustomed to feeling.

I can't help having a feeling of foreboding, of calm before a storm.