Litha
The sun stands at its northernmost throw. The land is at full green and the herbs are at their peak.
Litha is the Anglo-Saxon name Bede recorded for the two summer months surrounding the solstice — the season 'when the light is longest'. In Germanic and later folk practice, midsummer was the twin to Yule: bonfires at Yule to summon the sun, bonfires at midsummer to celebrate it at its height.
Herbs cut on the solstice were said to be at their strongest medicine — St John's wort, mugwort, yarrow, vervain, meadowsweet — and were hung to dry in bunches for the year's stillroom. Fires were lit on hilltops, sometimes with a burning wheel rolled down the slope to trace the sun's coming descent.
Litha is the moment of fullness. There is no more waiting; whatever you sowed at Ostara is now in leaf. It is a day to sit outside long past the sun's setting and notice how slowly the sky lets go of its light.
- — cut herbs in bundles
- — the bonfire wheel
- — gold & sun-bleached linen
- — wild honey
- — long shadows
Warm gold, slow evenings, the smell of drying herbs.
