The Summer Solstice brings to my all of the wonderful and magical things that I have experienced during the summer months from my earliest recollections to now that I am an old geezer. This is interesting because summer magic is so different than what I have experienced as autumn and winter magic. I am a decidedly an autumn and winter kind of person, or at least late autumn and early winter. The dregs of winter before spring is a time where the magic of winter has completely disappeared and is just something that must be endured until rebirth of spring.
For me the start of summer was a release from the drudgery of school and the ability to be active outdoors without any kind of boundary or restraint. It was a time for vacations with my family, although that was a mixed bag of both good and bad, depending on the mood of my parents and how obnoxious we three kids were to each other.
One of my earliest memories was when I was four and I was sitting in the kitchen with my mother when my father and older siblings had gone off to work and school. It was early June, before school let out. My mother did not work at that time, and so she was in her summer dressing robe and I was in my jammies, and the sun was brilliantly shining into the kitchen because it faced the east. Because the shades were down, the kitchen was cast in warm and beautiful golden light. A little later, I went outside to play while my mother began her daily chores.
Summer time was idyllic, with the kids on the block playing games all day, going to the park and doing artwork or playing board games in the park building, riding bikes, and being fully outside from morning to late afternoon, when we had to return home for supper at exactly 5 pm or receive punishment. After supper, we went out again and did not return until after the sun had set. Twilight was the perfect time to play hide and go seek or kick the can. It was all very magical, in a childish but wondrous way.
Despite those magical times when I was a child, as an adult ritual magician I have typically worked my greatest magic during the autumn and winter. In fact, after Summer Solstice, the magical order and temple that I helped to found closed because the members saw summer as a kind of recess from magical workings. The temple would close for the periods of July and August and not reconvene until September. However, summer is a magical time all unto itself, and I would be disingenuous if ignored what it has to offer. It is not a time to be cooped up in a temple, of course, and it is a time where magic and pagan liturgy would be shifted to the outdoors. In a grove, whether a part of my home, or at a pagan retreat, I have had many amazing experiences being fully immersed in nature. Yet nighttime is preferred by me over daytime, which is just my preference, since the magic of living and thriving occurs every single day during the summer months. This is because global warming has turned summers into periods of deadly heat, and only the shade and the evenings give folks a refuge or respite from the untenable and blazing sunlight.
From a mythic and pagan liturgical perspective, the boundary between spring and summer occurs when the light of the sun has reached its apotheosis. In the northern latitudes, vegetative life has fully awakened and the growing season has commenced. In northern Virginia where I live, summer weather actually occurs in May, so that Beltane is more like summer with leaves and plants resplendent and fully matured, and the flowers of spring have already faded away. Still, the moment of the apotheosis of light that is the solstice, points to a mystical fact that darkness, death, and the wasting tides of winter are not permanent. The light shines through the gloom and illuminates the hearts and minds of the people of whatever religious stripe or creed, since it does not discriminate. Trees, plants and animals seem to rejoice, simply because there is the beginning of an abundance of food in various forms, whether warm sunlight and gentle rain, edible plants, and the fullness of life to prey upon for those who are predators. Summer is also light-hearted, adventurous, outgoing, flirty, downright sexual, and a paean to all things of the flesh and blood. It is also a sign post for transformative ascension, illumination, and conscious enlightenment. To occult neopagans, such as myself, the Summer Solstice is the beginning and the end, the moment of the highest spiritual and magical accomplishment, and the completion of all the work that occurred from autumn through winter and spring.
One of the ordeals that I developed, based on the writings of Jean Dubuis, was the Talismanic Portae Lucis, or Gateway of Light. A central magical operation within Mr. Dubuis’ occult system was a process whereby a person could achieve a direct connection and rapport with the powers and intelligences of the Supernal Triad. He called this the Experience of Eternity, and it was a necessary step for a magician to achieve the proper connection and linkage with their higher self.
While Dubuis focused on the generation of talismans via the passive and auspicious method, and integrated spagyric alchemical medicine into the working, I found another way. What I did was develop a comparable methodology that used only talismanic magic to achieve a similar sort of powerful ascension and alignment. I generated metallic talismans for the Moon, Sun, and Saturn as the pathway from Yesod, to Tiphareth, and then to Binah on the Tree of Life. I used a metallic talisman for Mercury to represent myself as the theurgist. These talismans contained all four elements for each planet, representing a condensed magical artifact of four talismanic elementals fully active within it. These four artifacts were highly charged, consecrated, and then had four consecutive talismanic elements projected into them. They generated a powerful magical machine, and I used these talismans in a ritualized variation of the Portae Lucis on the exact moment of the Summer Solstice in the year 2012. Five years later I repeated that exercise, and both times were absolutely mind blowing.
I have annotated this entire journey through developing the Portae Lucis in my blog, and I think that you might find it interesting. I did this working back in 2012, which was 14 years ago, but I believe that it is worth sharing. I posted ten articles about my adventure, and you can find them in the following links.
Link 1 - beginning.
Link 2 - First working - Talisman of the Sun.
Link 3 - Second working - Talisman of the Moon.
Link 4 - Third working - Talisman of Saturn
Link 5 - Fourth working - Talisman of Mercury
Link 6 - Ordeal Preparations
Link 7 - Portae Lucis - part 1
Link 8 - Portae Lucis - part 2
Link 9 - Additional workings
Link 10 - Fifth Year Anniversary
I believe that the ordeal of the Talismanic Portae Lucis is where I truly opened the door into summer in a manner most becoming to an adept ritual magician. These experiences should be incorporated into a book, and someday they will. Right now, they are buried amongst nearly 500 blog articles, but they can be found just by using the index search for Portae Lucis. I decide on this Summer Solstice of 2026 to resurrect them here for you to read and examine.
Frater Barrabbas
