This year the summer solstice occurs on Tuesday, June 20 in the Northern Hemisphere. (In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the winter solstice and it occurs on June 21.) For us in the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice is the longest day of the year. The word “solstice” means “sun stands still.” It’s when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky and seems to stand in the same place before it begins moving toward the winter solstice. We like to think that the primary solar deity is Apollo, but there’s a whole crew of solar gods who are born near the winter solstice and live for a season in great honor, after which they’re sacrificed, spend a season underground, and are reborn.
But before there were solar gods, there were solar goddesses. Patricia Monaghan’s New Book of Goddesses and Heroines (Llewellyn, 1997) lists 58 of them, from Aclla to Xatel-Ekwa, who have been honored all around the world. Monaghan also tells us that Cinderella and Rapunzel may have been goddesses before they became heroines of what the Brothers Grimm called household tales. (Not fairy tales—no fairies in their stories.) Cinderella might have been a goddess of fire, and fire includes the sun. Rapunzel might have been “a sun maiden who would bring spring if she were not held prisoner by the witch of winter” (p. 265). Let’s reimagine Rapunzel in a solstice story… Continue reading “A New Story for the Summer Solstice by Barbara Ardinger”
Feminism and Religion 