The Great Loosening

Summer Solstice, moon on the wax

Happy Solstice everyone! For those of us in the north, this is the first official day of summer, and there’s a kind of sweet unzippering that wants to happen. The Summer Solstice is the longest day, the most sunlight we will experience in the cycle of light and dark. The sun is the center of our solar system, and the source of light and life for us, so it’s a good day to just be in literal worship of the sun if you can. Like get out into it, feel it on your face, get the top of your head toasty. And should it be cloudy where you are, reach into your body memories and remember a time you got to do that, in a beautiful place that made you feel like yourself.

As an archetype, the sun teaches us how to shine, how to be awake and consciously alive and giving life and light just by being who we are fully. In some mystic traditions, the sun represents our highest Self or soul, the guardian angel part of us or the divinity within us. As we bask in the sun at its full power today, we can remember all that, or we can just receive this gift of warmth and protection and joy, let it recharge us and loosen us up a bit. We have changed and grown, and the entire season of summer is party where we get reveal that growth by living it.

In the four-part cycle of alchemical transformation, summer is associated with the fourth and final stage.