The Summer Solstice and Herne

          Wiccan practice says that for Litha the Oak King dies and the Holly King takes

up his crown. I am not Wiccan so I don’t really follow that tradition specifically but I do believe that the Summer Solstice has everything to do with the Lord of the Forest and King of Witches, my Patron deity Herne. The summer solstice is one of the Lesser Four Sabbats of the Witches Year. It marks the time when the sun is closest to the earth and enters the sign of Cancer. Aside from the astrological significances of Cancer the time of the Summer Solstice is a time for new beginnings not unlike the spring equinox.

         It is the time when Herne as the Lord of the Hunt is ripe with power and strength because he draws his power from the sun. The sheer energy of the Summer Solstice can be used to break through barriers in your life and burst in a ray of light through the darkness that you may find yourself in. Herne as King of the Witches offers to his children his power and strength and you may come to him during this time of the summer and pledge yourself to him. However, you have to remember that Herne is the representation of the Divine male. His energy is raw, powerful and very sexual. Often times his ritual’s either include sex or masturbation of some form. If you do a ritual for Herne you can definitely expect that you lower bits will definitely feel the tingle of his raw masculinity, whether men are your thing or not. The Herne consciousness is very sexually orientated but instead of using this energy for literal sexual act you can use it to *take* what you want.

         This energy of taking what you want and leaving no qualms is exactly what the Summer Solstice is all about. It was especially powerful for me this time. That energy was only amplified by the Solstice happening at the end of the Dark Moon as the New moon began. Mixing those two energies amplified the experience of both and I literally felt the whole world around me break down and change. I cried for several hours during that night.

         Unfortunately that night I was not able to do ritual. A friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a long time came over for a visit and I was busy for most of the day and night with her and the rest of my group of friends most of which I hadn’t seen in a long while. Overall it wasn’t a bad way to spend the Solstice. However, the next night was my ritual night. Around midnight I dressed in my ritual garb, painted my blue crescent moon on my face, grabbed my Grimore, and headed out to the backyard. I am extremely lucky that my back yard is mostly private with a lot of trees and an open space for a fire pit and circle. That night I used the Dragons for my elemental guardians because I knew that I was going to need that extra power for everything I was feeling.
         I won’t go into extreme detail, but most of all my ritual involves songs and dancing. It’s how I raise and direct energy. I love to do both and the Pagan community has so many good songs that I use in almost all of my rituals. Very rarely do I ever use legitimate spells or invocations. I do use affirmations and sometimes spells if I am feeling extremely up to it. I called Herne and I gave him everything I had. I danced for him, I sang to him, and I offered him up my self. It was one of the truly most powerful nights of my life. Even though it was after the initial solstice.
         Even though, I did call on the goddess, I felt that in that night that I was the goddess. It was a really powerful experience that I know that I am truly blessed to have gone through. There is a tremendous amount of things going on in my life and before that night I wasn’t really sure if I could actually handle them. Herne reassured me that I could handle it and when the time was right he would deliver to me a Hunter of his to share in my life journey with. To be comforted by the sheer energy that was manifested is not something that every witch gets to feel during every ritual. Do I attribute this to solely the energy of the solstice and New moon? Not entirely.

         I am a firm believer that the divine exists within ourselves, and that we hold the power to make things happen and call on certain universal energies to help us in our time of need. This is what being a Witch is about to me. I have met the gods face to face and I know that they exist though I believe that it is within my own personal reality. The power to change your life is given to us as a divine birth rights. We are wholly apart of the gods, because it is the gods that created us. There are certain times when different energies are converging and amplify one another. Such as the Solstice and the New Moon opening up a powerful amount of new and fresh energy that we, as witches, can harness and direct. This was made such an emotional and powerful night for me because I was in a very emotional and powerful place. As Sully Erna writes “That which is like, unto itself is drawn”. I was so open and willing for something powerful and in such an open state I drew in this energy of Herne and brought it to reality.  

         The Summer Solstice may be one of the lesser Sabbats, but it can be as powerful as Beltane or Samhain if you open up yourself to the power that is Herne.

Blessed Be

Faewynn Lunaise Evenstar
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