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The solstice celebration
and St. John’s Fire
By Flora Desondes
The celebration of the summer solstice is a continuity of the agrarian rites which honoured the goddesses convenient to the plentiful harvests.
In shamanism, the fire lit the day of the solstice is used to cleanse itself of acts or negative thoughts. Those, among whom it is the faith, enumerate on a paper all ills that afflict them, and of whom they wish to get rid. They put then in the fire this paper. Others enumerate them mentally, and they ask to be cleansed of it.
If you have no garden, if it is too small to draw up a fire, set fire some embers in a dish which that not burst in contact of the fire (do not use petroleum, raise dry twigs in mixtures with wooden brightness, or peels of bark of birch). Put your dish on a tray that will not accidentally be ignited. Fire escapes quickly, be careful. Close to the fire that they built, the Ancient provided always to have available, water or earth to spray on it.
When you light your fire to celebrate the summer solstice or the one who commemorates Saint John (between 19 and on June 24th), the custom recommends preparing only sweetness’s to share them with your friends.
All the dishes which you will prepare will be of a sweet flavour. For example, cook rice with some vanilla, raisins and with some milk; accommodate your vegetables with seasonal fruits. It is a vegetarian meal of sweetness where you also share the pleasure and the flavour of a good wine.
For this ritual, take a part of your meal, put above some petals of flowers of red, blue colour, and white front to offer it to the fire.
The usage also recommends pronouncing in a loud voice one thank you. It addresses the divine Spirit of the Earth Mother, in all her benefactions and for the abundance of the harvests to come.
By respect in front of the divine Presence which receives your offerings (here, realized in your ritual fire), her mystery obliges you to keep your eyes lowered and at the middle closed. It is an obligation for all the participants of this ceremony, none of them has to look at the fire which consumes your offering. Do it during the formulation of your prayer, and until your offerings are consumed. Then, feed your fire so that it remains alive, and share then, with your friends, the meal which you prepared.
As all return near your fire put in a bundle of Lavender, Wormwood, and Yarrow and of St.-John’s Wort. One by one and barefoot, appear in front of the fire in front of the direction of the Southeast. In the direction of the Southeast, in front of you the sacred Grandfathers look at you. In the direction of the Northwest (in your back) are held the Masters of the karma, the guards of the laws. Take this smoke to pass on your face and your skull Make repentances according to your faiths, to cross this fire grants you the forgiveness which you seek, since you jump through. That you do it for feet-joints or by a big step, you receive on your right foot!
All this night, and till morning, you can go to meet sacred beings which are the divine energy of plants.
The shamans distinguish the fire of the nature, and the Fire spiritual appearance which uses the fire to establish its presence. It is then the Spirit of the Fire. It’s the same for the water and the Spirit of the Water, the air and the Spirit of the Air and the earth and the Spirit of the Earth. It is the Fire the Water, the Air and the Earth, considered as the appearance of conscious beings which have an activity and a spiritual responsibility; it’s the same for trees and flowers, about is their size.
Flora Desondes
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