A Ritual for Summer Solstice and Father’s Day

The summer solstice is a powerful time on the witches’ calendar. Astronomically, it’s the date when the sun reaches its zenith, from our perspective, and then begins its descent back towards the winter solstice (in the Southern Hemisphere, this is reversed, so the date marks winter solstice). It is understood as the day summer begins and is met with many traditional celebrations, including gatherings, bonfires, and ritual practices.

[Try a “Guided Summer Solstice Meditation.”]

Masculine & Feminine Magic

The occurrence of this special day near Father’s Day is a powerful opportunity for exploring the balance of masculine and feminine energy within yourself. On the day we celebrate masculine parenthood, we are also celebrating the summer—the season that is most connected to the divine feminine. Some of the symbols of this holiday include ripe fruits, especially strawberries, and we honor the harvest the earth has borne for the season.

At the same time, the sun is masculine energy in many traditions. On the solstice, the heat of the masculine sun is at its brightest and most powerful, and Earth, which is related to feminine energy, is abundant and ripe. The two pause together in the sky for a moment, creating a powerful union, which leads to the abundance of the season that is then harvested, enjoyed, and preserved for the leaner winter months. It is a moment of relationship, balance, and connection, with the symbolic implication of sexuality and fertility at their peak.

The gender binary is something that many people have felt oppressed by in our culture. Masculine and feminine have important meanings in many traditional cultures, but they aren’t always strictly assigned to different bodies, and often the idea is that we all have some balance of both aspects within us. That balance is always shifting, just like the sun and the moon.

[Read: “Boy or Girl? Knowing Your Child as Spirit”]

Father’s Day comes with its own baggage, for many of us, especially if we have difficult or absent relationships with our fathers or if fathering has been a difficult journey. Many fathers also have to contend with a culture that wants them to be strong and stoic all the time while the experience of having a child is deeply emotional and empathetic. It is a rite of passage that, for some fathers, may come with a reckoning of those aspects within.

A Meditation Ritual for Summer Harvest

On this pinnacle moment of the summer solstice, we have an opportunity to sit with these energies and explore what they mean to us and how we want to engage with them in terms of gender expression, parenthood, childhood, and whatever else this mystical conjunction brings with it. Here are some questions you could meditate on or journal with. If you’d like, fold them into a ritual meditation practice following my guided meditation for the summer solstice.

• What is the harvest of my life at this point in the year? What have I been building since the winter solstice in December?
• What is missing in my life? What do I want more of?
• How am I engaging with sensuality, sexuality, fertility, pleasure, and food right now?
• What is my relationship like with my father? How would I (have) like(d) it to be?
• What is my relationship with masculine and feminine within myself? What do I feel those energies mean?

However you celebrate the harvest of your year, happy summer solstice and Father’s Day.

Celebrate summer with this raw carrot and ginger soup recipe.