St Bride's Bay, Marloes

Pembrokeshire Coast, Summer Solstice 2012

(I got a sunburn. Didn't know it until the next day. Well, that's what I get for praying for the sun to 'pink my skin'!) We'd been out all day long, doing a circular walk around the headlands. That afternoon, with the sun still shining, we couldn't help but go back out to the coast path, but rather than walk it, we plunked ourselves down in this grassy spot and just sat there for nearly an hour. We didn't see another soul the whole time. Amazing day. 

Tarot Blog Hop: Celebrating the Longest Day

Hubby and I will be celebrating Litha on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. We'll get up early (but not early enough to greet the dawn), then we'll spend the entire day walking the path and enjoying the light. Because even if it rains, there's still the light. 


I've never really understood why people contemplate darkness on the longest day of the year, and dwell on the light on the longest night of the year. It's like living your life in the future rather than in the now. For me, it makes me feel all out of balance. A couple of years ago, taking some advice from a book, I created an elaborate observance for Winter Solstice that involved a round candle encrusted with gold glitter, invocations of the sun, with music and a meditation asking for the sun to light the dark corners of my life. I was to shine light on things I wanted to change. Which resulted in all sorts of emotions being dredged up and causing me to feel very unsettled and disturbed for the following week. I realised later, what I personally needed was to revel in the quiet darkness, to rest and enjoy the fallow peace of that time of year. And at Summer Solstice, it's my time to revel in light and life. That's how I work, and that's how my spirit works. The prevailing energy is all to me. I don't like worrying with the 'yin yang' of the sabbats, and I don't like this constant New Age/neopagan obsession with using each sabbat as a time to 'reassess' myself and 'set goals'. How about just feeling what's there and loving it? What's wrong with that? And so I pray,


Blaze on me, O Sun,
blaze down.
Burn through me,
quicken me.
Warm me from scalp to soles,
Illuminate me.
Glint and glimmer,
tear my eyes,
pink my skin,
swarm and drone and ripen,
and I will wallow in your warmth,
I will squeeze every drop of your sweet juice,
and drowse on the hillside.


And here is my tarot draw for Litha. I decided the natural deck choice is Sol Invictus--the Invincible Sun. For this draw, I removed the entire suit of Wands and major arcana19 The Sun and used only those cards.