A 21st Century Wheel of the Year: Re-Visioning at the Summer Solstice

Human cultures throughout the world, modern and ancient, recognize the incredible power, potency, and magic of the sun. This is why so many cultures have sun gods and worshipped the sun, and this is also why so many ancient kings and rulers are also associated with the sun. The sun is the center of our solar system, it provides light, and heat, and allows everything on this planet to thrive.  At the summer solstice, we have the triumph of the light over the darkness, the time of greatest light, and the time afterward where we move into the heat of summer and eventually, the season of harvest.

It is at this peak time of year that we can focus on some of the most important work–visioning a brighter future. I believe that right now, creating a new vision, and working our hardest to bring that vision into reality, is critical for all life to survive the coming age.  And because it’s that important, we need the power of the sun in its zenith to do this work effectively. Last year, I wrote about visioning the future from the perspective of the bardic arts–how using storytelling, artwork, music, and songs, can help us create a brighter tomorrow.  The problem that’s come up since I wrote that post is that in my meditations and in conversations I’ve had it seems that we have a stronger sense of the problems than the solutions–we know what is wrong, but we don’t necessarily have a clear sense of what to do to fix it and create hope. So the questions I have are: What does that vision look like? What are the specifics? Where do we find inspiration for that brighter vision of the future?  Who creates these visions? Who enacts them?  How can we draw upon that summer solstice energy to do this work? Thus, in today’s post, I’m going to dig into these questions and offer you some mundane and spiritual tools in order to begin to shape–and share–this vision.  The more of us that do this incredibly important work, the more hope we have for a brighter today and tomorrow.

This post is part of my 21st Century Wheel of the Year series where I’m offering insights on how to adapt the traditional neopagan wheel of the year to fit our present age.  I have found that as we move deeper into the age of the Anthropocene, the traditional wheel of the year no longer fits, and thus, I’ve been creating a new wheel of the year with themes more appropriate to help us navigate, respond, and do good in this difficult age.  Previous posts in this series have included: Receptivity at the Fall Equinox; Release at Samhain; Restoration at the Winter Solstice, Reskilling at Imbolc, Resilience at the Spring Equinox, and Regeneration at Beltane. As you can see from the previous posts–we’ve laid a tremendous groundwork of excellent skills and tools in the previous wheel of the year: receptivity, release, restoration (tools for humans to adapt internally) and reskilling, resilience, and regeneration (tools to do good in the world) as the first six holidays. Today’s post explores the idea of visioning and revisioning through the Summer Solstice. For more traditional interpretations, I will also point you to my other summer solstice posts: sunrise ritual at the summer solstice; journeying at the summer solstice; standing stones at the solstice; working and honoring the sun; and sustainable practices for the summer solstice. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, you might want to check out my winter solstice posts: restoration at the winter solstice, herbs for visionary work at the winter solstice, sacred dreaming at the winter solstice, and the lessons of nature at the winter solstice. 

Visioning and Re-Visioning: Basic Principles

So what does it mean to have a vision for the future? You might think of a vision as a plan or set of principles, principles that you can live, principles you can share, and principles you can build with others in the community or in the world around you. You can think about this like any other guiding principle–establish them, enact them, and reflect on and revise them as necessary.

Visioning work is often powerful work, but work that takes time.  You want to first figure out who you are doing this visioning with: are you working with yourself? A small community? A group of friends and/or family who are looking to build a better tomorrow?  If you are working with others, you’ll want to think about the practices of collaboration and consensus-based decision-making as part of what you do to enact your vision.

Empowering yourself and others is part of the magic of visioning. We have been culturally disempowered to put our power and sovereignty in the hands of experts–and where has that gotten us? It is painfully obvious that present leaders/politics/government/corporations aren’t doing enough about the ongoing crisis.  Don’t wait for someone else to fix it–take steps to fix it yourself, in your own way, in the places that you can reach and impact. Take back your sovereignty and make a better life for yourself and future generations. That’s the real power of visioning–it is making a decision to do something, to see a better way forward, and to enact that in your own life.

Another part of visioning is that visions are often grand, big, and not always easily attainable. You’ll see my own vision below–it may not happen in my lifetime, but the act of articulating it and working toward it itself is a powerful magical act. So give yourself permission to think as radically as you can–don’t let our current views of how to live or limitations stop you from weaving the magic of that grand vision for the future.

To start visioning, you might start by reflecting or meditating on these questions:

• What are the problems you see at present that are most pressing to you personally? To your community? To the world? (You don’t have to dwell on this, but it’s a good idea to have a clear sense of problems)
• What are inspirations for you–things that you see are going in what you consider the “right” direction for the future? Can you take that “right direction” further? Where could it lead?
• What kind of world do you want to live in?  What are things that could make that happen?
• What do you see as the role of humans in relationship to the land?
• What do you see as the role of nature in relationship to humans?
• What kind of world do you want to leave behind?

These are some questions that may spark ideas within you, ideas that you can mold, shape, and work with.  Discursive meditation, the practice of meditation taught by the Ancient Order of Druids in America, is a particularly useful practice in thinking through these questions for yourself. You may also realize that as you are doing this work, you don’t necessarily have all the answers.  That’s ok.  This work takes time–and taking the first few steps on that journey is the idea now.

The other piece is that it’s good to go and experience other ways of life, and other people’s perspectives, read lots of books and learn and grow. Additionally, I believe it is critically important to privilege the voices of indigenous peoples and make room for these traditions to provide leadership in offering wisdom for visioning the future.

Finally, there is also power in the word “re-visioning”  here; the idea here is that we have a vision that has been handed to us by the present culture that none of us are too fond of (a world spiraling out of control with climate change, humans’ inability to stop the sixth mass extinction, a world that grows dark and unstable).  By re-visioning, we are revising that vision to a better one.  Since this post is already quite long, next week I’ll share the second part of this post with my own visioning principles (as very much a work in progress).

Visioning through Summer Solstice Activities

A lot of personal and community visioning work can come through spiritual practices.  So for the rest of this post, I share some practices that can help both with visioning and considering your own visioning principles as well as in addressing some of the above.

Connection and Decentering Work at the Solstice

A final spiritual practice that can help us with visioning the future is what I call “decentering”.  As I wrote about in my recent post on ecocentrism, humans have placed themselves at the center of reality, and it is useful for each of us to recognize that we are equal to other things, equal to each other, and in relationships and service to the living earth.  Thus, one way of doing this is a simple decentring practice.  Go into a natural place, a place where you can interact with some form of nature.  It is easier to start with animate persons (squirrels, fish, rivers, trees, etc) before moving into less-animate beings (stones, shells, mountains).  Once you are in nature, spend some time breathing deeply and grounding yourself in the living earth.  Then, open yourself to your senses and simply observe in quiet.  See what draws you in.  See what you are led to–a stone, the tree swaying in a breeze, a flower, a nearby grazing goose.  Imagine your human body fading into the background, and instead, imagine what it is like to be that being.  Start by experiencing the moment as that being, spending all the time you need to realign your senses.  If you can, you can move your own body in mimicry of that being (if it makes sense–e.g. get down and nibble grass with geese).  Once you’ve experienced that moment, stay with that being through the course of the seasons. What is it like to experience the heat of the summer sun? Rain? Wind? heat?  Hunger? Passage of time? Take all the time you need to fully experience this perspective.

Then, when you are finished, slowly return to your own body and present.  Meditate on the following: What lessons did you learn from this experience?  How does it help you recognize the equality of you to this being?  How does it help you develop a more nature-connected and ecocentric perspective?  How does this experience help you create a vision that takes into account this being’s perspective, needs, and gifts?

Finally, offer gratitude and some kind of offering to the being.  It might just be a simple thanks, but for some beings, you might be able to do more (e.g. leave some seeds for the squirrel, pick up garbage along the river, or give the tree a liquid gold offering).

Summer Solstice Vision Board

As you are working with visioning your own future and the future of your descendants, it is a perfect time to create a solstice vision board.  I describe this more fully in my book Sacred Actions, but in a nutshell, a vision board is an intuitive approach to bringing together ideas and concepts that help magically shape the future.   You tap into your subconscious as you do the work, which usually leads to really interesting insights.  Usually, vision boards are for shorter amounts of time–a year at most–but there is no reason you can’t make one for a broader vision.  Try it out!

To make a vision board, the traditional approach is to create a comfortable place where you can work–candles, sacred music, and a cup of tea.  Using a stack of old newspapers, magazines, and other print resources, and look for words, phrases, and images that stand out to you. Cut them out and put them in a pile.  When you feel your pile is complete, get a piece of cardstock (usually larger, like 12×18″) and start intuitively gluing your images, words, and phrases to the board.  The board will slowly take shape, and then you can see what your subconscious created.  What messages in there are potent and powerful for you? Meditate on this experience and see what messages emerge from it.

Summer Solstice Visioning Circle

With your larger community, you can engage in community visioning. One strategy that I’ve adapted comes from Joanna Macy’s work called “letters from the future.”  People sit in a circle in pairs–an outer ring and an inner ring.  On the inner ring, are the people from the future.  On the outer ring are the people of today–you, yourself. The people of today share their experiences living in the world, they share their fears and their hopes, and their dreams.  The people of the future simply listen, and when it’s their turn, they respond, sharing a future vision that is powerful and healing.  After that, the group comes together to discuss the experience and insights that arise from it. Usually, many different things emerge from this practice, so if you are doing it in a group, it is a great idea to write these down and use them as future talking points.

Summer Solstice Meditative Mandala

Another wonderful practice to “mull over” things in your mind as you are considering how to craft that vision is to create a nature mandala.  I shared more about this practice in the linked post, but I’ll offer a brief explanation here.  Find a place to create your mandala, a place where you won’t be disturbed.  Gather things that you would like to use–flowers, leaves, sticks, stones, anything natural that will not disturb the ecosystem.  Then, simply lay your material out in a pattern; the pattern can be a prayer, an offering, and a way of focusing your vision.  Here’s the best part–you can simply raise the question in your mind (What is a good vision for the future?) and then let the question work in your subconscious while you work on the mandala.  As you work on the physical mandala, your subconscious will work on the question and ideas will arise from it. (There’s some really great research out there about daydreaming, movement, and taking time away from a problem in order to come up with solutions–so this really works!).

Sunbathing Meditation

Spend time in the sun, baring yourself as much as you feel comfortable, and laying in a spot to allow the sun’s rays to soak into you. feeling the radiance of the sun warm your skin, and draw that energy in.  Feel yourself drawing that energy and it warming you, refreshing you, and healing you.  Now you are ready to do the good work of visioning the future and bringing that vision into alignment with the present!

Concluding Thoughts

Perhaps the most powerful magical act we can do as humans are put forth a vision of the future that is life-honoring, balanced, and regenerative. The more of us that do this visioning work (and continue to do it, returning to it at least once a year on the solstice, if not more often), the more powerful of a magical act we create–one that has the power to shape the future. In order to work this world-changing magic, we do this work at the time of greatest power and light–the summer solstice. I firmly believe that change starts with each of us who has found ourselves returning back to nature and nature-honoring ways; it is through having a vision that we can maintain our hope, our joy, and our determination amidst the challenges of this age.

Readers, please share–what is your vision for the future? What does it look like?  What is important to you?