This diary is written for the pagans and other interested people here, to celebrate one of our sacred holidays. Please enter here as you would into any religious service, with respect, and if you can't be civil, please leave.
The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, the day in which the powers of light have triumphed over darkness, the day when our Lord is crowned King in the Wiccan wheel of the year. He is not king by right of birth. He is King by decision. The position is offered to him. He must decide to take it. And with the privileges of kingship, come the responsibilities. It is a double edged sword. It is one we take up when we become adults.
Adulthood is a slippery thing; to some it happens when a parent listens to their opinions, to another when they get the right to drink, when they move away from home, or become parents themselves. But it all has the same paradoxical nature. When we move away from our parents’ supervision, we don’t have anyone telling us to get up in the morning. This is freedom! We can sleep as late as we want! But with freedom comes responsibility. You may theoretically be able to sleep as late as you want, but you have the responsibility to get up in time to make it to work. This is adulthood, and this simultaneous embracing of freedom and responsibility is our own way to grasp our own kingship and truly know our true will.
The Lady invites the Lord to share Her life’s calling, to become what He can be. We too are called to the kingship of our own lives by the call of the gods. You can’t have true freedom without responsibility, and while from the outside of it the responsibility can look like restriction, often it proves to give rewards unimaginable. Parenthood is proof of this. We regularly give up the pleasures of the moment for the longterm rewards.
Sometimes adulthood requires denying yourself some things... you leave your friend’s house and the conviviality within sooner than you’d like, because you have to work tomorrow. Sometimes it means doing things you don’t want to do...you take the class under the professor you don’t like because it frees you up to take what you need to for your degree next semester, and you take work home and do it rather than just flaking out in front of the TV or mindlessly surfing the net. We in the pagan world call this, “following your true will”... knowing what it is you want your life to become, and making it happen...knowing what you want out of life.
However, you don’t have to be the ruler of your own life if you don’t want to. You can give up kingship. You can give it up to a life partner and let your spouse make all the decisions. You can give it up to drugs or alcohol, to unhealthy relationships with the pleasures and the excitements of existence, to people who say they know what’s best for you. It is easier not to be king. It’s easier to turn over the power to someone else, let someone else make the decisions and do the thinking. But no one can really be trusted to take over for us, to let us retire into the luxury of kingship without needing to actually do any of the boring, annoying, work of governing. Not even the gods will do that. They stand with us, Their hands on ours, but They will not do it for us.
But there is another side to kingship. Sacrifice. Parents know, deep within, that they would die to keep their children safe. Policemen put on their uniform and know that today could be the day they die to keep civilians safe. Firemen know when the siren sounds that this could be the last run of their lives. Taking kingship of yourself and of your own life requires a knowlege of the necessity of sacrifice, and of an understanding that someday it might be worth it. The knowledge of this necessity makes the wonders of kingship even better, just as memories of winter’s cold makes summer all the more deliciously enjoyable.
So this is the challenge of the Summer Solstice. Know your kingship! Own your kingship! Be yourself, in all the wonder and glory and beauty that you as a child of the divine possess! And with your soul in right relation to the Divine, set in harmony with the flow of the world, rule! Know your true will, and live it.