- Ancient Pagans celebrated Midsummer with bonfires, when couples would leap through the flames, believing their crops would grow as high as the couples were able to jump.
- Pagans called the Midsummer moon the "Honey Moon" for the mead made from fermented honey that was part of wedding ceremonies performed at the Summer Solstice.
- Midsummer was thought to be a time of magic, when evil spirits were said to appear. To thwart them, Pagans often wore protective garlands of herbs and flowers. One of the most powerful of them was a plant called 'chase-devil', which is known today as St. John's Wort and still used by modern herbalists as a mood stabilizer.
More:
Here is a QuickTime movie illustrating the tilt of the Earth's equatorial plane relative to the Sun. To understand the movie, you have to pretend you're (quite impossibly) standing on the Sun, looking at the Earth through some giant telescope as it orbits you for a full year. You'll see how the earth's tilt has the effect of tipping one hemisphere towards you (it's summer there!) and then slowly tipping the other one towards you.
Still more:
http://www.chiff.com/a/summer-solstice.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice
And Happy Solstice to you! :)
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