Here Comes the Sun

Though this summer, as I am told, is uncharacteristically sunny for Seattle, there have been some gray days. After a day or two of the sun hiding behind clouds, it's so dramatic to see how the plants respond when it is shining brightly again. It's as if someone injected them with life power. Leaves are bigger, greener and reaching higher. It seems as if they are trying to prove themselves, “Look, look what I can do!”

Different cultures through history have worshiped the power of the sun or at least celebrated it's movement throughout the year. Equinox and solstice have had powerful meanings across the world, marking the passing of the seasons, something greatly lost in our culture. Since we have been able to remove ourselves from the seasonal rhythms, working and eating the same in winter as we do in summer, the seasonal landmarks have lost their importance.

May Day, the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, is often a fertility celebration (i.e. maidens dancing around the May “pole”) in the hopes a full summer bounty. For Beltane, the Celtic May celebration, great fires were built to purify the people, animals and the land. Especially in Eastern Europe, large bonfires were also apart of their summer solstice celebrations. As well as bringing the sun's fire to earth, it was also to ward off any wandering spirits that may damage the coming harvest.

Maureen Gilmer, a horticulturist writing in the Seattle Times, noted that that for the ancients “[p]lants harvested on this day were believed to be imbued with all sorts of special powers. Healers believed that herbs cut on this date would be better able to cure the sick.”
Gilmer wrote that this is likely true as prior to the solstice, many plants concentrate on making roots, shoots and leaves, but afterward with the days getting shorter, they will focus on reproductive growth. The medicinal oils present in certain herbs are more concentrated on solstice has they haven't yet been expended into reproduction.

Reading Rudolph Steiner's lectures on Nature Spirits, he tells how the sun (along with other elements of the sky) send the secrets of the universe into plants and the plants channel those secrets into their roots where root spirits (characterized as Gnomes) gather the secrets and then spread them through the underground as they travel.

When we eat food we eat the elements that brought it to life. The energy of the sun's firelight fuels photosynthesis and the growth of the plant. We eat the plant's response to the Sun's gift. I was taught to say thanks to God whenever I ate a meal, something I do not do enough anymore. Though when I do, I repeat a Buddhist prayer taught to me by a friend I met in Hawaii, “Earth, fire, water, air and space combine to make this food. Numberless beings gave their life and labour that I may eat. May I be nourished, that I may nourish life.”

(Orginally posted on growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com)