Midsummer Apocalypse
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing c.1786, William Blake
A goddess evoked at Irish Midsummer is Danu, patroness of rivers, wisdom and mother of the Tuatha de Danaan, the supernaturally gifted people of legend who escaped into the Irish hills to avoid conquest. They became known as the Fairy people who remain invisible behind a veil which parts at certain times of the year— including now, the days surrounding the Summer Solstice. This year’s parting of the veil comes with a dash of doom. The story of the Tuatha de Danaan is reminiscent of the history of the Kogi people. They too fled into hitherto unreachable mountains to escape conquest. The Kogi are real but, like Fairies, they inhabit an intermediary realm between the physical and the spiritual. Although they prefer to stay hidden in the Columbian mountains away from our sight, they parted the veil so-to-speak last December to share an urgent warning from a nature spirit they call The Mother. The Mother, they say is ailing, and if we don’t commit to her healing by Summer Solstice 2024, She will take things into Her own hands and begin washing Herself of our poisons in a way that will feel violent to us. Her self-healing will begin 18 months from now.
This isn’t the first time a creator will have washed the earth of us. Noah rides one such cleansing to safer shores, and the wrathful God of Revelation arrives on clouds to announce His day of wrath with the voice of “many waters” and the “sound of mighty thunder.” However, whereas this god of storms is a father who cleanses to preserve a few, the Kogi associate water with woman, and their creator god is a mother who washes and renews the world for the sake of all. This story, too, has a long history. The path is winding and the Kogi version is darker, yet I recognize its constellation of themes from another fascinating narrative of Solstice and doom, water and wisdom, goddess and creation.
The further north one travels from the Tropic of Cancer on the Summer Solstice, the more welcome the noontime sun and the more likely that festivities will involve fire, fireworks, and cinders. Elsewhere on Earth where the fields are not clover-laden and the air is less dewy, the summer sun is a scorcher or soon will be. Around these parts, eyes of survival are not fixed on fire but on water. Egyptian priests in 3000 BCE looked to the eastern sky at dawn for the arrival of the star Sopdet (our Sirius) whose co-rising with the sun near Solstice heralded the imminent inundation of the Nile, a message momentous enough to simultaneously signal the start of the Egyptian new year, Sep Tepi.
At least two goddesses were evoked at this time: Maat and especially Isis. On Sep Tepi, the world was restored to the primordial paradise designed by Maat at the beginning of Creation. Isis was in the air because Sirius is her birthplace, and her tears are responsible for the inundation of the Nile. On Summer Solstice, life-giving water and a feminine wisdom that designs worlds mingled in Egypt to renew ours.
A millennium later, a neighbor to its east would call the star Sirius Tir after Tishtrya, the Indo-Iranian god of rain who rescues the water from the demon of drought. Tishtrya is remembered on the fourth month of the Iranian year—also named Tir--which begins on the Summer Solstice. Sirius, Summer Solstice, Water.
Water means a great deal in the Indo-Iranian mythological tradition which migrated from Central Asia, went west to Ireland and south into India and Iran. In this tradition, water is synonymous with the current of wisdom flowing from the source of life: what flows visibly on earth to support the physical world, flows invisibly through consciousness to support psychic reality. The Iranian goddess Anahita and the Indian goddess Danu each embody both water and wisdom, and they are connected with the Summer Solstice. Anahita comes rushing in with the waters released by Tishtrya, while Danu becomes the goddess of water and wisdom evoked by the Irish at Midsummer.
May Maat-Isis-Anahita-Danu-Mother shower our world with purifying life-loving wisdom this Summer Solstice and beyond!