Alban Hefin, Litha Sabbat:

FACTS AND MISINFORMATION

The Beltaine season of April 30-May 1 each year is unique. It includes:

• A Pagan Sabbat: Midsummer, usually celebrated on or near the evening of June 21-22. Mainly celebrated by Neo-Pagans
• Two Christian holy days:
• A secular celebration
• A Welsh festival: GWYL CANOL HAF, Midsummer Eve, Alban Hefin, or Litha Sabbat, begins sundown, (June 20th or 21st or the day before Summer Solstice).  This is the day of the Heather and a  Feast of the Summer Goddess who rules Marriage. The Sun God is crucified by his Dark Self and his domains confiscated.
• Georgia Pagans -Witches & Druids celebrate Midsummer Sabbat in different ways.
• See a Basic Sabbat Ritual
• Visit Other Sabbat Festivals
• Go to Books about Welsh Faerie Witchcraft

There is a great deal of misinformation being circulated about this festival.  Read the following information and then go to the links to arm yourself with true facts researched by Pagans and Christians.

GWYL CANOL HAF

By D. Earnest

The following contains elements of a work authored by Mike Nichols, a Welsh Witch from K.C., Missouri.   Go to: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos013.htm for the original text.  Lady Cerridwen Gawr, June,  2002

Gwyl Canol Haf, also called Litha, is the height of the reign of the Green Goddess bringing her aspects to the fields and harvest. The Midsummer Sabbat is also celebration of the Sun God in all his splendor. At the Summer solstice, he is at his peak and brighter than any other day of the year. We rejoice at the full abundance of Nature, and honour the God of light and warmth. At Midsummer the Oak king falls to the Holly king. This is the beginning of the Holly Kings reign. The death of the Oak King takes the form of an arrow through the heart of Robin. The goddess by contrast, never changes except to present a different face. At Midsummer she is sensuous, fertile, and pregnant. Midsummer is a fire festival of the god with a water aspect of the goddess. A bonfire is lit on top of the hill nearby. When the fire is at its hottest, a flaming wheel is rolled downhill, and members jump over the fire. The Green Goddess rules.

The High Priest and High Priestess or Maiden shall set up the altar in the North of the Circle. The cauldron is placed in front of the altar, with water, flowers and fragrant oil filling it about halfway. A apple branch is placed inside with the leafy end in the water. This will be used to sprinkle water over the members. Two crowns, one of oak leaves and one of holly leaves should be prepared and placed on the altar. They then light the candles and the incense. The four watchtower candles shall be placed at the perimeter of the Circle, E, S, W, N. The entrance to the circle shall be to the Northeast. None shall enter or leave the circle except by the northeast gateway.

The High Priestess will cast the circle. Both are Inside the Circle as they cast it. The High Priestess casts the circle with the Rod, beginning in the East and proceeding Deosil thrice around the Circle. The High Priestess then places the Rod at the foot of the Altar and The Circle is then consecrated (purified).

The Summer Solsice is one of the four 'quarter-days' of the year, and modern Witches call them the four 'Lesser Sabbats', or the four 'Low Holidays'. The Summer Solstice is one of them.

Gwyl Canol Haf or Litha: (also known as Midsummer, Summer Solstice etc.), June 21-23. The sun is at it's strongest, the longest day of the year. The first day of summer according to the Farmers Almanac, this is a time to get out and enjoy yourself with others. The seeds have been planted, and you are tending your garden, but also there is a break in the gardening as things have taken root, the harvest has not yet begun. Colours for this sabbat: Yellow and green.

Technically, a solstice is an astronomical point and, due to the procession to the equinox, the date may vary by a few days depending on the year. The summer solstice occurs when the sun reaches the Tropic of Cancer, and we experience the longest day and the shortest night of the year. Astrologers know this as the date on which the sun enters the sign of Cancer. This year (1988) it will occur at 10:57 pm CDT on June 20th.

However, since most European peasants were not accomplished at reading an ephemeris or did not live close enough to Salisbury Plain to trot over to Stonehenge and sight down its main avenue, they celebrated the event on a fixed calendar date, June 24th. The slight forward displacement of the traditional date is the result of multitudinous calendrical changes down through the ages. It is analogous to the winter solstice celebration, which is astronomically on or about December 21st, but is celebrated on the traditional date of December 25th, Yule, later adopted by the Christians.

Again, it must be remembered that the Celts reckoned their days from sundown to sundown, so the June 24th festivities actually begin on the previous sundown (our June 23rd). This was Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Eve. Which brings up another point: our modern calendars are quite misguided in suggesting that 'summer begins' on the solstice. According to the old folk calendar, summer BEGINS on May Day and ends on Lammas (August 1st), with the summer solstice, midway between the two, marking MID-summer. This makes more logical sense than suggesting that summer begins on the day when the sun's power begins to wane and the days grow shorter.

Although our Pagan ancestors probably preferred June 24th (and indeed most European folk festivals today use this date), the sensibility of modern Witches seems to prefer the actual solstice point, beginning the celebration on its eve, or the sunset immediately preceding the solstice point. Again, it gives modern Pagans a range of dates to choose from with, hopefully, a weekend embedded in it.

Just as the Pagan mid-winter celebration of Yule was adopted by Christians as Christmas (December 25th), so too the Pagan mid-summer celebration was adopted by them as the feast of John the Baptist (June 24th). Occurring 180 degrees apart on the wheel of the year, the mid-winter celebration commemorates the birth of Jesus, while the mid-summer celebration commemorates the birth of John, the prophet who was born six months before Jesus in order to announce his arrival.

Although modern Witches often refer to the holiday by the rather generic name of Midsummer's Eve, it is more probable that our Pagan ancestors of a few hundred years ago actually used the Christian name for the holiday, St. John's Eve. This is evident from the wealth of folklore that surrounds the summer solstice (i.e. that it is a night especially sacred to the faerie folk) but which is inevitably ascribed to 'St. John's Eve', with no mention of the sun's position. It could also be argued that a Coven's claim to antiquity might be judged by what name it gives the holidays. (Incidentally, the name 'Litha' for the holiday is a modern usage, possibly based on a Saxon word that means the opposite of Yule. Still, there is little historical justification for its use in this context.) But weren't our Pagan ancestors offended by the use of the name of a Christian saint for a pre-Christian holiday?

Well, to begin with, their theological sensibilities may not have been as finely honed as our own. But secondly and more importantly, St. John himself was often seen as a rather Pagan figure. He was, after all, called 'the Oak King'. His connection to the wilderness (from whence 'the voice cried out') was often emphasized by the rustic nature of his shrines. Many statues show him as a horned figure (as is also the case with Moses). Christian iconographers mumble embarrassed explanations about 'horns of light', while modern Pagans giggle and happily refer to such statues as 'Pan the Baptist'. And to clench matters, many depictions of John actually show him with the lower torso of a satyr, cloven hooves and all! Obviously, this kind of John the Baptist is more properly a Jack in the Green! Also obvious is that behind the medieval conception of St. John lies a distant, shadowy Pagan deity, perhaps the archetypal Wild Man of the Wood, whose face stares down at us through the foliate masks that adorn so much church architecture. Thus medieval Pagans may have had fewer problems adapting than we might suppose.

In England, it was the ancient custom on St. John's Eve to light large bonfires after sundown, which served the double purpose of providing light to the revelers and warding off evil spirits. This was known as 'setting the watch'. People often jumped through the fires for good luck. In addition to these fires, the streets were lined with lanterns, and people carried cressets (pivoted lanterns atop poles) as they wandered from one bonfire to another. These wandering, garland-bedecked bands were called a 'marching watch'. Often they were attended by morris dancers, and traditional players dressed as a unicorn, a dragon, and six hobby-horse riders. Just as May Day was a time to renew the boundary on one's own property, so Midsummer's Eve was a time to ward the boundary of the city.

Customs surrounding St. John's Eve are many and varied. At the very least, most young folk plan to stay up throughout the whole of this shortest night. Certain courageous souls might spend the night keeping watch in the center of a circle of standing stones. To do so would certainly result in either death, madness, or (hopefully) the power of inspiration to become a great poet or bard. (This is, by the way, identical to certain incidents in the first branch of the 'Mabinogion'.) This was also the night when the serpents of the island would roll themselves into a hissing, writhing ball in order to engender the 'glain', also called the 'serpent's egg', 'snake stone', or 'Druid's egg'. Anyone in possession of this hard glass bubble would wield incredible magical powers. Even Merlyn himself (accompanied by his black dog) went in search of it, according to one ancient Welsh story.

Snakes were not the only creatures active on Midsummer's Eve. According to British faery lore, this night was second only to Halloween for its importance to the wee folk, who especially enjoyed a ridling on such a fine summer's night. In order to see them, you had only to gather fern seed at the stroke of midnight and rub it onto your eyelids. But be sure to carry a little bit of rue in your pocket, or you might well be 'pixie-led'. Or, failing the rue, you might simply turn your jacket inside-out, which should keep you from harm's way. But if even this fails, you must seek out one of the 'ley lines', the old straight tracks, and stay upon it to your destination. This will keep you safe from any malevolent power, as will crossing a stream of 'living' (running) water.

Other customs included decking the house (especially over the front door) with birch, fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, and white lilies. Five plants were thought to have special magical properties on this night: rue, roses, St. John's wort, vervain and trefoil. Indeed, Midsummer's Eve in Spain is called the 'Night of the Verbena (Vervain)'. St. John's wort was especially honored by young maidens who picked it in the hopes of divining a future lover.

And the glow-worm came
With its silvery flame,
And sparkled and shone
Through the night of St. John,
And soon has the young maid her love-knot tied.

There are also many mythical associations with the summer solstice, not the leaences not hitherto realized, I have elected to treat this subject in some depth in another essay. Suffice it to say here, that I disagree with the generally accepted idea that the Sun-God meets his death at the summer solstice. I believe there is good reason to see the Sun-God at his zenith -- his peak of power -- on this day, and that his death at the hands of his rival would not occur for another quarter of a year. Material drawn from the Welsh mythos seems to support this thesis. In Irish mythology, Midsummer is the occasion of the first battle between the Fir Bolgs and the Tuatha De Danaan.

Midsummer is a favorite holiday for many Witches in that it is so hospitable to outdoor celebrations. The warm summer night seems to invite it. And if the celebrants are not in fact skyclad, then you may be fairly certain that the long ritual robes of winter have yielded place to short, tunic-style apparel. As with the longer gowns, tradition dictates that one should wear nothing underneath.

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ON-LINE RESOURCES

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