Summer solstice reflection

Today is the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere, home of #the40project. Kookaburras started cackling well before the first rays of light crept over the horizon. Perhaps they were seeking the sort of special moment that cultures for millenia have sought on the morning of the summer solstice.

Archaeologists, historians, and scholars of ancient religion agree on one thing. Early human societies, regardless of their location, saw something profound in the moment when the longest day of the year arrived. The first rays of light represented something special, something transcendent, a moment when life on earth connected with something far larger than our human experience, perhaps even something beyond description and beyond our understanding.

Stonehenge. Machu Picchu. Chichen Itza. The pyramids of Giza. Across vastly different cultures, timescales, and locations, endeavours to mark the predominance of the sun can be found which testify to this particular day.

What did, or does, it signify?

It seems hard, to be sure.

There’s some evidence that the summer solstice was a guide to help ancient societies keep track of the seasons, an important consideration for fragile agricultural societies dependent on the whims and fancies of harvests for their survival (remember, it’s not too long ago #the40project reflected on the meaning of Thanksgiving for some northern hemispherical communities who celebrate the summer solstice around June 21 each year). Yet there is also significant uncertainty about what function these structures served.

Beyond the specifics, there seems to be agreement that the summer solstice, as with the winter solstice, and the spring and autumn equinox, is an attempt to understand the connection between humanity’s ongoing annualised and repeated existence and a larger source, a power, a force, a purpose, some meaning which extends beyond the pragmatics of daily life.

And one of these is seen in the temples of ?a?ar Qim in Malta. There is something deeply spiritual about ?a?ar Qim and other Maltese structures like Mnjandra and It-Tempji tal-?gantija. For a brief period, at the earliest light of sun on the summer solstice, light floods in to the inner most parts of these temples and illuminates them in a most extraordinary manner, if for no greater reason than in occurs only once a year. The glory of a moment appears, but also quickly disappears.

Each seems to be asking the same question: why are we here, and what are we to make of these changing seasons across our human year?

Given these, and similar, structures have significant history (3,000-4,000 years old), it seems imprudent to dismiss the quest which drives these disparate cultures. Frustratingly, we have few answers.? So where does our own existence fit within this larger astronomical cycle? And what might that mean? For many of our sophisticated and modern mindsets, we have jettisoned the connection between our own world and the possibility there might be something further we ought to consider.

Curiously, though, even more recent constructions have built structures around celestial rhythms. Bernini’s grand space, the Piazza San Pietro, leading up to St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City, has some significant geometry that speaks of an earth-heaven connection. The quirk that is an Egyptian obelisk in the centre of the piazza turns out to be a remarkable connection to the geography of the piazza within celestial orbits.

Then, it turns out that Bernini’s work on the structure of the basilica opens similar questions. The image below, regardless of your theological or existential position, speaks to an extraordinary harmony of belief and aesthetic.

Finally, the same piazza Bernini designed to be a symbol of the welcoming arms of the Church carries a link to celestial certainties which, again, attest to humanity’s yearning to connect with something larger than ourselves, a yearning to which myriad traditions and archaeologies attest. Its symmetry doesn’t answer this yearning, but it underscores how deeply humanity seeks meaning and purpose.

Perhaps some will find this meaning in the ritual of this season, perhaps some will find it in story and myth, but perhaps some will also find it in the ongoing story of Christmas. Not the commercial “love” and “giving” mantras which seem to abound, but in the “God with us”, “incarnation” type of conversation that gets less of a look in these days.

The ancients seemed to embrace moments when other worlds connected with them, or at least tried to. Maybe on this summer solstice, we can again embrace the notion that worlds beyond our grasp may exist, and that acknowledging this might make all the difference!

Reference

Sparavigna, A.C. (2015). Light and Shadows in Bernini’s Oval of Saint Peter’s Square. PHILICA, Article number 540.