Summer Solstice occurs Wednesday, June 21st at 10:57 am (eastern time). In the northern hemisphere, this marks the longest day of the year and the onset of the Summer season, when the Earth has fully breathed her flowering forces out into the cosmos. And while nature gets more vibrant in Summer’s light, the northern world passes into the enchantment of dream.
In the sky this week, Venus is brilliant in the evening twilight, getting ever closer to the red planet Mars. On solstice evening, Wednesday, one hour after sunset in the West, the crescent Moon will take Venus into her arms ~ this is always a breathtaking scene, and worth looking for.
Consider, Venus and Moon are two of the three brightest objects in our sky (the other is the Sun!), and though the Moon can outshine Venus, it never will, because the Moon will only ever be near Venus at crescent phase. Such deference from Moon to Venus belies an amazing cosmic harmony, as though they were celestial confidants, quietly and beautifully sharing the deep mysteries that draw us ever on.
This is, as Shakespeare wrote, the stuff that dreams are made on, and if we hold to the idea that now our lives are rounded with the sleep of the season, then a question presents itself: what is a dream? In the words of Rudolf Steiner: a dream has to be interpreted as an utterance of the gods.
Further on in this same lecture, given one hundred years ago this summer, he said: Dreams are a series of symbolic pictures that reveal to people their true nature, and spiritual beings are telling them this.
So pay attention, because what you dream at Summer Solstice, or what the gods utter, has in it the power and majesty of celestial encounter.
In the stillness of the season,
Mary
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Cover image from Sky&Telescope