By Fire Well and Tree

  Photo by Simon Berger: https://www.pexels.com/photo/purple-flowers-in-bloom-1353126/ Yay!  The sun is at her peak, and there were some days even in the cooler-than-I-wanted-it-to-be Spring that part of me  doubted we'd get here.  But here we are! A couple of notes. One of the names assigned to this holiday is Liða, sometimes spelled Litha.  I have never known many people locally to call it that (usually Midsummer or Summer Solstice). But if you're going to call it by the Anglo-Saxon name, PLEASE pronounce it correctly!  The "i" is a long e sound (so ee). The ð is called a 'thorn' and it is a hard-Th sound, like "that."  (It's kind of like saying my name with a weird lisp on the 's' really).  I may have talked about midsummer before (sorry to repeat), but it falls between the planting season and the harvesting season. So, really, there's not much to DO besides just maintenance.  If my memory serves, this may have been prime time for ...

 I remembered to do this! And now I've remembered to share it! I used the Druid Oracle.  These are TWO sets of cards designed to work together.  The Druid Animal Oracle I am more familiar with. The Druid Plant Oracle complements it, and I'm less familiar with it. Normally, I take pictures, but as there are likely copywrite issues there, I will kindly request that you Internet search.  They also have a phone app, but I did use the physical cards.  I drew 9 cards from each deck.  There is one for each high day to reveal the energies (animal) and insights (plants) at play starting on that high day through to the next.  The ninth cards are sort of a keynote or theme of the whole year. (I do this type of thing often. Sometimes it's interesting to compare the Samhain card themes with the Yule Rune spread for the year, and then my own Tarot horoscope thread... but that's kind of crazy obsessive too, so I don't know if I can recommend it. So, with out further ...

Yes, I see the date on the calendar.  I actually did it about three to four days afterward and between flitting here and there with festivals and such, well.... Still, the patterns and energies are still there, so for completeness' sakes..... Again, I'm using the Druid Plant/Animal Oracles combined.  The significator or keynote for the Midsummer to Lughnasadh period is "Celtic Bean."  The first sentence describing the meaning of this card is "Something which you thought was dead has come back into your life in a new form." After the reconciliation of the last six weeks (Beltainne to Midsummer), the fruits of that burst forth in this one.  Projects get restarted or something that was long forgotten comes back to light, and some of these things may do so in unexpected ways. From the mental, intellectual side, the card is Owl.  (One of my favorites!)  Owl respresents wisdom, and especially that of turning "disadvantage into advantage."  This can...