Midsummer | Contemplative Inquiry

23 June 2024, around 8.15 pm. I’m enjoying my first contemplative walk for some days. I’m looking at an old wall, once part of the Llanthony Priory estate in Gloucester. The day has been one of rising temperatures and humidity. Even now, as the shadows deepen, I feel an energy and expectancy in the evening light.

The Priory here was for a time the largest landlord in the city and its surrounding district. In those days, midsummer was celebrated on 23/24 June. The Church celebrated the birth of John the Baptist, at the opposite end of the year from that of Jesus. (His beheading is remembered on 29 August). Popular celebrations on the evening/night of 23 June involved bonfires, and local festivities could be attributed to the saint, the season, or both.

In many cultures, the year has been divided into two contending halves, whether at the solstices, the equinoxes, or with the Beltane/Samhain division. Traditional Christianity flirts with this theme. I might think of summer and winter kings, king-slaying and the Goddess. I might also think of John, Jesus, and their respective human fates. In the case of John, Salome and her royal mother Herodias are a presence, along with their fateful demand for his head. These stories are not the same, but in the European Christian imagination they have at times been interwoven.

I might also think of the Green Man maturing to the point where he can “speak through the oak”, as “its crown forms his mask and its leafage his features” (1). To speak through the oak is to speak at another level, or from another dimension, a developmental moment that occurs at the year’s zenith (life’s zenith?) This maturation flows from from a willingness to surrender to a greater power. The purely personal direction can only be towards winter and death. But that’s not the whole story, even to a ‘sacred agnostic’ like me (2.) This is the midsummer evening’s tale that intrigues me the most.

The image below comes from a small patch in Llanthony Priory’s current garden, on the site of the original physic garden. I simply found it beautiful.

(1) Green Man Poem In: William Anderson Green Man: archetype of our oneness with the Earth Harper Collins: London & San Francisco, 1990 See: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2017/05/11/poem-green-man

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/02/16/sacred-agnosticism

Leave a comment

June 19, 2024

MIDSUMMER DREAMING 2024

In the original edition of The Dreampower Tarot (1) The Sleeper is an androgyne figure in a field of corn and poppies. Their face is turned towards the flowers. Their right arm is outstretched, with palm and fingers turning a little towards the ground. Their forefinger hints that we should look to the earth and underworld for healing and inspiration. The whole image evokes deep evening slumber.

In this midsummer period, I’m in a regime of going to bed early, before the light has gone. It reminds me of delicious childhood moments and I feel comforted. During this period I have tended to dream of abstract images and unfathomable events, with background sounds so soft that I can barely hear them.

In these dreams, I have no language and can make no real sense of anything. I’m OK about this, because I’m aware of being aware and safe in awareness without the slightest ability to formulate a sentence like this one. The recognition is primal and wordless. At times, I experience a push towards understanding of a sort, but it is not (yet?) agitated or dominant in consciousness. I seem, in this dreaming (as perhaps once in pre-natal life), to be in realm of divinely simple potential.

When I wake up in the early morning. at this time of year, I find light again, and a different feeling of wonder. Using my resources of language and culture, I am able to make cognitive sense of my world once more. The gift of the dream is that my everyday experience feels, for a while, strange and new. It makes room for the luminosity and magic that I can easily forget in my ‘waking’ hours. The morning light outside my window confirms their presence here. They nourish me, and I am porous to the world.

(1) R. J. Stewart The Dreampower Tarot: The Three Realms of Transformation in the Underworld London: The Aquarian Press, 1993 Illustrated by Stewart Littlejohn

Leave a comment

June 21, 2023

FIVE IMAGES: MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION 2023

The five images in this blog record a dedicated solstice walk, an evening walk beginning 8 pm on 20 June. For me, the solstice period lasts around a week ending on 25 June. I like to acknowledge the stasis (standstill) element. My festival practice is not about a moment in time so much as honouring an extended pause before the wheel turns, at first slowly, towards the dark.

I sought immersion in the unique and sacred flavour of this day at this time in this place. I do not believe my images ‘capture’ that flavour – now gone with the moment it belonged to. But the pictures do provide a suggestive record of that time. They help my memory. They remind me especially that my experience of this practice in 2023 differs from that of 2022, when I first undertook it as a solo, contemplative form of midsummer celebration. (See: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2022/06/24/.)

The first image (above) is of Llanthony Priory gardens, dominated this evening by a dramatic sky. Sunlight shines through heavy clouds, dark and suggestive of a storm that we had largely missed in Gloucester. Three canalside images (below) also display the energy of clouds with the sun backlighting them. I find both beauty and power here, indeed a strong sense of powers greater than mine, and indeed of ours collectively. This year, my seasonal immersion has an edge. A modern Druid, I celebrate the seasons and reverence the elements. But I certainly don’t own them, or decide how they are meant to be.

During my walk I spent a lot of time with my eyes turned upwards and skywards, with hints of both awe and foreboding. I understand how sky god spiritualites work. But I also looked across and down and found new life. A pair of swans and their cygnets were finding space on the water on a busy small marina. It is now surrounded by housing on three sides, yet they seemed flourishing and confident. Storm clouds of many kinds threaten. Life goes defiantly on.

Leave a comment

June 24, 2022

MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION 2022

The place is called Lower Parting, though it is actually a joining. The parting is 3km (just under two miles) up river. There, the River Severn divides into two channels, east and west, to flow around Alney Island. When taking the picture above, I was standing near the point where the channels meet again. It was around 9 a.m. on 22 June. I had not been there before.

Although every time and place is ultimately sacred, some times and places are easier for me to honour. In my experience this is partly a property of the times and places, partly down to culture and tradition, and partly to do with my own inner and outer availability.

On this occasion, I was within a midsummer period which for me lasts from a day or so before the solstice until around 25 June. I like to acknowledge the stasis (standstill) element within the solstice experience. It is not just about a point of time. Like its midwinter opposite and twin, my midsummer allows an extended pause before the wheel of the year turns. My walk on 22 June was an intentional celebration of the midsummer stasis, something between an outdoor walking meditation and a miniature festival pilgrimage. It was built around my first encounter with an intuited special place, now that I am fit enough once more to walk the required distance.

I can easily understand why people in many parts of the world have seen water, especially flowing water, as sacred. I am on a quiet part of a quiet island in the middle of Gloucester city. The wetland here is blissfully unfit for development, and now a nature reserve. I was able to stand here and look out at the joining of the waters, under a blue sky, and surrender to a benign spirit of place. I didn’t have to attend to my attention. In this extended, flowing, moment, nature was doing that for me. I found, here, a generous horizon, and a living peace that invites participation. I am glad and grateful to have discovered this place on this day.

In my tradition, at every seasonal festival, we are asked to think not only of the time we are celebrating, but also of its opposite. Walking back from Lower Parting, I see features in the landscape that help me. My pictures below do not evoke winter, but they do show light and shade within a single image. On planet Earth, the time of my summer is the time of someone else’s winter. These are both ways in which opposites complement each other in an interconnected world.

2 Comments

June 26, 2021

MIDSUMMER STASIS 2021: A CELEBRATION

A blue sky frames quiet branches. It is the midsummer standstill in my neighbourhood – a period extending over several days. I took the picture on 23 June, in the early afternoon, a time of soft warmth and sunshine, with me able to meet it. I had been prepared to miss it this year, and was delighted when the opportunity came.

The picture below shows the play of afternoon light and shade in a semi-sheltered spot, where a footbridge crosses a stream.

The next picture makes it clear that there is substantial built environment too here – one of the things I like about this landscape – in the form of weathered railway arches visible behind the foreground green.

The nearby canal looks sleepier than the stream, as if dreaming in the lushness of the moment.

Below, water margin nettles stand out as part of the richness and fecundity of this space, calling for my attention. Clearly capable of being an irritant and seen largely as a nuisance today, the nettle was highly valued by our ancestors for food, fibre and medicine. The Druid Plant Oracle (1) describes it as “a storehouse of goodness” bearing hidden gifts. Nettle tea is widely thought of as health promoting, and modern research confirms that it is rich in antioxidants and vitamins. It is suggested that its polyphenols are helpful in managing chronic illnesses that involve inflammation. I am taking it up as a drink.

There are other, varied riches beside the path, easy to ignore, but also easy to notice and enjoy for their beauty and vitality alone.

I went for this walk without any intention of taking photographs and I travelled quite a way before I began. I felt as though the landscape was persuading me to record the day, and thus bear witness to the midsummer stasis. Yes, it happened in 2021, as it happens every year. Here is the evidence. I am glad I showed up to be part of it,

(1) Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm The Druid Plant Oracle: Working with the Magical Flora of the Druid Tradition London: Connections, 2007 (Illustrated by Will Worthington)

8 Comments

June 18, 2021

A MIDSUMMER DAY’S DREAM

This post is about a midsummer day’s dream in the the Scottish border country, a dream which included a certain kind of waking up. I have written about it before (1,2) but this is the first illustrated version. Fourteen years have passed since that day, which in many ways determined the form which my expression of Druidry would take.

I was near Melrose. The wild rose was one of many on the banks of the Tweed. In this photograph, I am on a riverside path, with my back to the river. I keenly noticed then, as I notice now, the difference between a wild rose and the more familiar cultivated ones. I love both. But I remember feeling a particular delight at the simplicity of the native flower, a sense of easy integration into habitat, and of a plant not committed to being red or white.

Looking more deeply, I have said in my earlier writing how I had a momentary experience in which, gazing at a rose, subject/object distinctions disappeared and it is as if time intersected with eternity. I have identified this with the Seeing experience more systematically explored by Douglas Harding and the community built up around his work (http://www.headless.org). This was the beginning my sense that direct experience of the world, manifesting through a form of nature mysticism, would be my way forward, eventually becoming a contemplative Druidry and the backbone of my contemplative inquiry. I experience this as a direct and simple route to stillness, presence, resting in being., and identifying with source.

My walk amongst the wild roses had a prequel. Firstly, I had already spent time in the well-preserved ruins of Melrose Abbey. It was a building of Green Man carvings, but, sadly, neither the monks who occupied it nor the iconoclasts who abandoned it had access to the Gospel of Thomas (3) or the words:

“His disciples said to him:

‘When will the dead be at rest?’

‘When will the new world come?’

He answered them:

What you are waiting for has already come,

but you do not see it.” (3)

Here I see the abbey as a solid, material buildings, built with love and care. Even today, it belongs in its landscape, as much as the Tweed or the nearby Eildon Hills, with a semi-wild orchard of apple, pear and cherry trees. What I haven’t written before, in times when I was busy making distinctions between available paths, is that time and eternity intersect in this place too. But, on the day in question, I didn’t have that experience in the abbey grounds. I had it only among the wild roses, down by the river.

The Eildon Hills are also part of the same landscape, indeed a more primal one. But they are fairy hills and they can hide themselves. On that day, they hid from me. There was no invitation – or, rather command – from the Queen of Elfland, who had once ridden out to summon Thomas the Rhymer to her service:

“But you maun go wi’ me now Thomas

True Thomas ye maun go with me

For ye maun serve me seven years

Through weel or wae as may change to be.” (4)

At midsummer in 2007 I was looking for a spiritual home that offered both depth and simplicity. The grim half hidden hills were not appealing to me and I was closed to their magic, with an invitation or without one. I did not want to court danger by ascending into their conceivably treacherous mists. The low road by the river was the one for me.

It was a good decision, and good came of it. But I do also understand that on a different day, those hills could be seen in a different light. I do not now feel constrained to make a neat choice between a broad road, a narrow road and a bonny road. Two cycles of seven years on, well rooted in a nourishing life and practice, I find myself in a more open space, wondering what lessons this Otherworld might yet offer.

(1) James Nichol Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential Amazon/Kindle, 2014 See: https://www.amazon.co.uk/contemplative-druidry-people-practice-potential/dp/1500807206/

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2019/07/16/seeing-contemplative-druidry/

(3) The Gospel of Thomas: the Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus (Translation from the Coptic, introduction and commentary by Jean-Yves LeLoup. English translation by Joseph Rowe. Foreword by Jacob Needleman) Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2005

(4) R. J. Stewart The Underworld Initiation: A Journey Towards Psychic Transformation Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1985

Leave a comment

July 4, 2020

ELAINE’S CAULDRON: BURNING DEAD LEAVES

My wife Elaine created this midsummer cauldron fire, now ten days ago. It was fuelled in part by dry dead leaves. She chose the evening of the day itself rather than the traditional eve. The point about midsummer (24 June) is that the sun is on the move again after its moment of stasis, clearly beginning its decline. It acts as the polar opposite of the Sol Invictus or Christmas festival in late December. The Church gives 24 June to John the Baptist, decapitated at the wish of his nemesis Salome.

In our neighbourhood, there is a paradox about July. It is the quintessential summer month, in which the light begins to diminish. At the moment, sunrise is at about 4.50 am., with sunset at 9.20 pm. By Lughnasadh, it will be rising at 5.25 am and setting before 8.50 pm. In August, the process will accelerate while the earth and sea remain warm by North Atlantic standards. Getting up an hour or so after sunrise I am tending to find a dull and cloudy sky. There can be a stillness in the air, disturbed perhaps by blackbird pair flying low amongst the trees. I have a sense of latency.

The inquiry phase beginning at the 2019 winter solstice has settled a number of issues. I am re-confirmed in a modern Druid practice that is held within a circle and seven directions (E, S, W, N, below, above, centre), and is mindful of the wheel of the year. I also settled my approach to ethics at the beginning of this inquiry year (1) drawing on the work of modern Pagan philosopher Brendan Myers with his re-visioning of ancient Greek ‘virtue’ ethics (2). I have deepened in my experience of an at-homeness in the flowing moment, and its therapeutic benefits, which I wrote about last year (3). Fully established in my life, these are no longer fundamental inquiry issues. The uncertainties I formerly had with them are like dead leaves, now safe to burn.

For all that I have gained from other paths – Tantra, Tao, Zen, other forms of Buddhism, and Christian Gnosticism – I know that I will not be practising or following them. I will continue to appreciate their literatures and cite them in this blog, but this will be from the perspective of the appreciative outsider. Here too the active inquiry is over. Uncertainties have shrunken into dead leaves, and are safe to burn.

I know that, in the turbulent, airy mental realm, I have contending gnostic and agnostic energies. They are co-arising twins, and neither is going away. I still have work to do to find a settled home for them both. I am also concerned about how, more elegantly, to fit an ‘emptiness’ understanding into an earth pathway. A feeling about myth, and the truth and beauty of myth, is tied up with this. In the coming phase, I will look again at R. J. Stewart’s Merlin work for help with these questions. This reprise is also part of my older person’s looking back, recalling what I have valued, and asking what role it can still play. It sets my direction for the second half of the year.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2019/12/27/values-for-2020/

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2018/07/02/ethics-and-civilization/

(3) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2019/06/30/meditation-and-healing/

2 Comments

Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Midsummer

June 25, 2024

OLD MIDSUMMER’S EVE 2024

June 19, 2024

MIDSUMMER DREAMING 2024

June 21, 2023

FIVE IMAGES: MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION 2023

June 24, 2022

MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION 2022

June 26, 2021

MIDSUMMER STASIS 2021: A CELEBRATION

June 18, 2021

A MIDSUMMER DAY’S DREAM

July 4, 2020

ELAINE’S CAULDRON: BURNING DEAD LEAVES