We celebrated the Summer Solstice at Stanstead Stone Circle on Saturday, June 23
It was fabulous! The circle was decorated with colorful things, a sun/moon, a sun, a banner of the chakras, a dragon, a hobby horse/unicorn, and colorful banners. They also had strings of colorful plastic “prayer flags” with cut out designs.
The ceremony began with Julia calling the directions. Anne Catherine repeated her words in French. The first half (2 hours) was dances with recorded music. I taught the Stivell An Dro (and wound them into a spiral around the center). We danced An Dro Retourné, Maize, and Standing Stones among others. I didn’t do all the dances, it was energy intensive to dance on grass.
At 5:30 we had supper. In little groups on blankets, we ate and shared what we had brought. After supper, the fire basket was brought into the center and a fire lighted. Then we danced to live music which was just wonderful!! We danced Dark Spiral, Winds on the Tor, La Bastringue, Shepherds’ Dance, and By a Quiet Stream among others.
The sky was AMAZING. Puffs of cumulus at first white, with lower wispy grey clouds passing across. Then the white turned to cream, to gold, to peach, and finally red. In the west there was some cumulus with white edges, it really looked like another world beyond the edge. One pile of grey clouds had a sort of red-grey mist under it. I realized it was probably rain and worried until we could see that it was clearly passing us by.
The spirits of the directions were bid a fond farewell — in both English and French.