Solstice, Bloody Solstice: Thoughts on the Darkest Day

Photograph Source: Summer Solstice Sunrise over Stonehenge – CC BY-SA 2.0

What the Romans called “the new sun” has risen. The seed catalogs are arriving and while the wood stove’s fire struggles against the strengthening cold, a new year is being born. This theme of death and rebirth, ebb and the flow has long occupied human thought and practice. Huge stones, hauled great distances and erected with astronomical precision at places like Stonehenge, for ritual observance testify to the long...