We are all used to seeing the TV pictures of Druids performing their ceremonies at Stonehenge on 21st June each year. The attitude of those presenting these images in the various media seems to be one of bemusement and amusement – which usually comes from ignorance of what is really happening.
It was the Romans who wiped out the Druids because they were a “backward cult” with little use to the Roman way of worshipping. However, these backward cultists were the keepers of an ancient secret wisdom that existed to relay information about our Celestial connections. A kind of “lest we forget” moment from the ancient world.
This secret that they acknowledge during their rituals is about the divisions in the sky – or annual time – by four. In other words, the Druids knew that the relationship between the Earth and the Sun have four particular phases. These are two Solstices – Summer and Winter – and two Equinox points. These four indicate the amount of light the Earth receives from the Sun.
The Summer Solstice gives us our longest day – with more daylight for us at its peak on 21st June each year. The higher the earth’s latitude, the longer the day – if any one saw the Al Pacino movie “Insomnia”, then you’ll know how eternal daylight can effect the human brain. The two Equinoxes, Spring and Autumn, give us days and nights of equal length.
Together these four rhythmic cycles mark the divisions of the year into the seasons. The Spring Equinox takes place on the 21st March with the Sun at zero degrees of Aries; the summer Solstice on the 21st June at zero degrees of Cancer; the Autumn Equinox on the 23rd September at zero degrees of Libra; and the Winter Solstice on 23rd December at zero degrees of Capricorn which gives us the longest day of darkness, around which there are a legion of ancient myths about the birth of a Saviour/Solar Gods, etc.
The Summer and Winter Solstices are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere – which is how those “down under” get to celebrate Christmas on a hot beach!! However, the Celestial event is the same. The word Solstice literally means Sun standing still – which is exactly what it appears to do from the vantage point of the Earth. Like retrograde planets, it’s another apparent movement caused by the changes in the angle of our orbit around the Sun.
So for three days while the earth tilts away from or towards the Sun, we have a Celestial standstill. Then the days almost imperceptibly at first, begin to shorten or lengthen, depending on hemisphere. One quarter through the year after this we then get an Equinox – with an equal day and night. And so on throughout the year.
Today many of the older civilisations on the planet, including the Druids of the Celtic world and various groups of Pagans still celebrate these Earth/Solar shifts. As indeed do huge populations in the world when Christmas takes over our lives for a couple of weeks every year. More on that in December …
Our ancestors had an active and conscious relationship with these cycles and seasons, and they created standing stone circles and other monuments to assist in tracking these timings to capturing or maximizing the incoming energies activated during these seasonal shifts. “As above, so below”.
