Solstice

“ It is an interesting fact that the summer solstice, or the point which the sun occupies when it attains its greatest northerly declination, on the longest day of the year, is close by this great cluster in Gemini. In the glare of the sunshine those swarming stars are then concealed from our sight, but with the mind's eye we can look past and beyond our sun, across the incomprehensible chasm of space, and behold them still shining, their commingled rays making our great God of Day seem but a lonely wanderer in the expanse of the universe. ”

“ But if you plough the good ground at the solstice 1319, you will reap sitting, grasping a thin crop in your hand, binding the sheaves awry, dust-covered, not glad at all; so you will bring all home in a basket and not many will admire you. ”

“ Heaven, Thou dost look down on us and givest us the nation. All-seeing and all-hearing, everywhere, yet how near and how close: We come before Thee on this winter solstice day when the air assumes a new life ”

“ It is the floral solstice a little after midsummer, when the particles of golden light, the sun-dust, have, as it were, fallen like seeds on the earth, and produced these blossoms. On every hillside, and in every valley, stood countless asters, coreopses, tansies, golden-rods, and the whole race of yellow flowers, like Brahminical devotees, turning steadily with their luminary from morning till night. ”

“ We have been watching the year through the period of its decline, are arrived at the dreary season of its old age, and stand near the edge of its grave. We have seen the rich sunshines and sweet but mournful twilights of autumn, with their solemn inspirations, give place to the short days and gloomy evenings which usher in the coming solstice. ”

“ Did it indicate that the people who built such temples were great astronomers? Nothing of the kind; nothing is more easy to determine than a solstice or an equinox.
Let us take the solstice first. We know that at the summer solstice the sun rises and sets furthest to the north, at the winter solstice furthest to the south. We have only from any point to set up a line of stakes before the time of the solstice, and then alter the line of them day by day as the sun gets further to the north or south, until no alteration is wanted. The solstice has been found. ”

“ Mankind watched with rapture its rays gain strength daily in the Spring, until the golden glories of Midsummer had arrived, when the earth was bathed during the longest days in his beams, which ripened the fruits that his returning course had started into life. When the sun once more began its course downwards to the winter solstice, his votaries sorrowed, for he seemed to sicken and grow paler at the advent of December, when his rays scarcely reached the earth, and all nature, benumbed and cold, sunk into a death-like sleep. ”

“ From thence the sun, returning to the summer solstice, in the direction of the North, gives us the longest days. And, as it travels farther in the air, it burns that which is over our heads, dries up the earth, ripens the grains and hastens the maturity of the fruits of the trees. At the epoch of its greatest heat, the shadows which the sun makes at mid-day are short, because it shines from above, from the air over our heads. ”

“ On this subject Walter Kelly says:—"In the gloomy season of the winter solstice the Ribhus" (demi-gods, who aid in the ruling of the lightning and storms) "sleep for twelve days in the house of the sun-god Savitar; then they wake up and prepare the earth to clothe itself anew with vegetation, and the frozen waters to flow again. It appears certain, from some passages in the Vedas, that twelve nights about the winter solstice were regarded as prefiguring the character of the weather for the whole year. ”

“ Taking, indeed, a broad view of festivals throughout the world, we may say that there are four seasons when they are held: the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen and primitive man rejoices in the lengthening and seeks to assist it; [130] the vernal equinox, the period of germination and the return of life; the summer solstice, when the sun reaches its height; and autumn, the period of fruition, of thankfulness, and of repose. But it is rarely that we find a people seriously celebrating more than two of these festival seasons. ”

“ When the sun passes the line of the equator, the life-giving spring will become manifest in splendor, and when it is in the summer solstice, the fruits will attain to the acme of perfection, grains and plants will yield their produce, and earthly beings will attain their most complete development and growth. ”

“ The discoveries of science have at once quickened our imagination and compelled us to admit that what we know is the merest trifle. The pagan in his ignorance explained everything. Our knowledge has only deepened the mystery, and all that we shall learn will but deepen it further. We can explain the solstice. We are aware with absolute certitude that the solstice and the equinox and the varying phenomena of the seasons are due to the fact that the plane of the equator is tilted at a slight angle to the plane of the ecliptic. ”

“ In most nations of ancient or modern times, the period of what is popularly called the winter solstice appears to have been recognized as a season of rejoicing. The deepening gloom and increasing sterility which have followed the downward progress of the sun's place in heaven would generally dispose the minds of men to congratulation at the arrival of that period when, as experience had taught them, he had reached his lowest point of influence with reference to them ”

“ Earth, Air, and Water abide in fluctuation. But man, in the days between his birth and dying, fashions metals to himself, and they are without heat or cold. In the Winter solstice, they are not altered like the Air, nor hardened like the Water, nor shrivelled like the Earth, and the heats of Summer bring them no burgeoning. ”

“ In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice day has the most daylight hours, and the winter solstice has the fewest daylight hours each year. The tilt of the axis allows differential heating of the Earth’s surface, which causes seasonal changes in the global circulation. ”

“ The position of the sun at midsummer and midwinter, rising or setting, is associated with most important events; the winter solstice indicates the time when the fields should be prepared for cultivation ”

“ We consequently find the winter solstice, which occurs at the close of December, is practically set aside by all agricultural people as an occasion of a great festival in which sun-worship is dominant. ”

“ Could the earth at one season be adorned with flowers, at another be covered with snow? Or, if such a number of things regulated their own changes, could the approach and retreat of the sun in the summer and winter solstices be so regularly known and calculated? ”

“ Now, the plain facts regarding the phenomenon of the solstice are that the sun, in its apparent annual motion, approaches a certain point in the heaven, seems stationary there for a short time, and then recedes again towards the equator. In Hindu mythology, the sun is represented as moving in the heaven in a car, or rath. And so his car, or rath, is represented on earth, and made to conform to his motions in the heavens. ”

“ When the summer solstice has passed, the progressive change in the cause begins to take place the reverse way, but, for some time, the accumulating effect of the mere continuance of the cause exceeds the effect of the changes in it, and the temperature continues to increase. ”

“ To the thought that we should logically place the middle of the cold season at the solstice, when the earth receives the least sunshine, it may be replied that there is a lag in meteorological phenomena which is the interval between certain causes and the effects which follow. ”

“ When we remember that the corresponding inclination of the earth's axis is twenty-three and a half degrees, it will be apparent that the change of seasons would be quite similar to ours, the sun merely rising three degrees higher in the heavens at the summer solstice and three degrees lower at the winter solstice. ”

“ Now it passes into southern regions about the time of the winter solstice, now it returns to the sign of the equinox; from thence it betakes itself to northern regions during the summer solstice, and keeps up by this imperceptible passage a pleasant temperature throughout all the world.
Let the learned people see if they do not disagree among themselves. The water which the sun consumes is, they say, what prevents the sea from rising and flooding the rivers ”

“ As the four solstices are marked epochs in the sun worship of an agricultural people, the points of rising and setting at these times, or their cardinal points, are associated with minor deities, offspring of sun and earth. ”

“ Season-words yield a further hint of a northern Continental home, with a more or less humid climate in which the welcome change from the long ungenial winter was as the burst of sunshine through the cold and mist of a gloomy night, and the dawn of gladsome spring was merged in a too short summer day. Time was measured by the moon, of little service otherwise in that wolf-haunted forest-land, and therefore playing but a small part in primitive mythology. Day is the reign of divine, life-giving light, as night is the waning of Nature's powers in a death-like gloom. ”

“ We have returned, at least in an astronomical sense, to the budding, happy, radiant spring; the sun, in its apparent course, crosses the equinoctial line; the duration of the day, transiently equal to that of the night, will augment in proportion as the great luminary describes above our horizon greater and yet greater arcs of a circle. Yet this is not the budding, happy, radiant spring of the poets. No, if it be spring according to the law of universal gravitation, it is winter still by the law of life. ”

“ Eventful winter passed; winter, the respite of our ills. By degrees the sun, which with slant beams had before yielded the more extended reign to night, lengthened his diurnal journey, and mounted his highest throne, at once the fosterer of earth’s new beauty, and her lover. We who, like flies that congregate upon a dry rock at the ebbing of the tide, had played wantonly with time, allowing our passions, our hopes, and our mad desires to rule us, now heard the approaching roar of the ocean of destruction, and would have fled to some sheltered crevice, before the first wave broke over us. ”

“ The evening sun and aurora in the night, the sun and the verdant earth, which divests itself of its varicoloured attire in autumn, veil, cover, and lose themselves; their most vivid hues become obscure in the gloom of night, or are covered by the snow of winter; the hero becomes a dark-coloured dove, or a gloomy swan which crosses the waters. I have noted more than once how the night of the year corresponds to those of the day; the sun which hides itself in the night of evening, and the sun which veils itself in the night of winter, are often represented by the same mythical images. ”

“ And when the time is ripe there will come a transformation like the descent of the heavens upon the earth, flooding the dying world with unspeakable splendours; the sunset which closes the long summer day and leaves through the night of winter the fadeless promise of another dawn. ”

“ Thus sunset was described as the sun growing old, decaying, dying; the sunrise as night giving birth to a brilliant, beautiful child. Spring was Sol greeting the happy earth with a warm embrace, and showering his treasures into the lap of nature. Rivers, fountains, grottoes, forests, mountains, rain, storm, the ocean, fire, thunder clouds and the heavenly bodies were all clothed with the attributes of living beings, and all descriptions of them were myths. ”

“ You desire that it should always be spring in your soul, but that cannot be. We must endure vicissitudes of weather interiorly as well as exteriorly. It is only in heaven that we shall find the perpetual beauty of spring, the perpetual ripening of summer, the perpetual fruition of autumn. There we shall have no winter; but here winter is required for the exercise of abnegation, and a thousand little virtues which are practised in times of sterility. ”

“ Such a day, in this sad season of the year, when the glory of the woods is rapidly departing, and from the swollen streams and dewy pastures the vapours ascend in a dense whirl of clouds, is of frequent occurrence; and on such a day, the solar sphere, as it struggles through the screening mists, seems like the face of the moon at its full, when slightly veiled. ”

“ A single day amid surroundings where there are such infinite possibilities of change in cloud and storm, heat and cold, the dazzling glare of noon, or the calm romantic light of a full moon, and the slow progress of the seasons, gives but one picture, a single mood from out a thousand, and it may perchance be the very worst of all. ”

“ It was just that particular time in spring when the season exercises the strongest influence upon the human soul—when clear sunlight illuminates everything, yet sheds no warmth, when rivulets run trickling under one’s feet, when the air is charged with an odorous freshness, and when the bright blue sky is streaked with long, transparent clouds. ”