JUNE THE MONTH OF CONSUMMATION
By Anna Franklin

Mother Earth is full and flush of her maturity, soft and ample; foliage and flowering is at its fullest just before fruiting begins. This makes it the ideal time to gather herbs and flowers. Herbs are a part of the bounty of the sun god who is always a patron of healing and medicine. The month is sacred to the goddess Juno, after whom it is named. She is the guardian of women, so the month is the most propitious for marriage. In Norse lore this is called the Fallow month because it is the time when the hay is ready.
Though the summer solstice marks the zenith of the sun and the day of longest light it is also a day of sadness, because from this day the light begins to decline, the days shorten and though this is midsummer we are moving inevitably towards winter.
It is therefore natural for people to want to protect themselves, their crops and animals from the powers of decay, winter and blight that are an inevitable consequence of the decrease of the suns warmth and vigour.
Fire, the little brother of the sun, naturally gains power when the force of the sun is at its best. Bonfires once blazed across Europe and North Africa at the solstice. People leaped the fires to cleanse themselves. The fire was lit at sunset on Midsummer Eve; either with need-fire kindled by the friction of two pieces of oak, or with a twig of gorse, itself a plant sacred to the sun. Men and women danced around the fires and often jumped through them for good luck; to be blackened by the fire was considered very fortuitous indeed. A branch lit from the fire was passed over the backs of animals to preserve them from disease.
This is also the season of necessary rain and the time of thunder storms. This is the time when the Earth Goddess is fertilized by the life giving rain, or by the lightening flash of the Thunder God. However, another form of this sacred marriage takes place at the summer solstice Megalithic people would gather outside Stonehenge to witness this hieros gamos. As the sun rises behind the heel stone a phallic shadow is cast into the circle and touches the so-called ‘altar’ stone inside the circle which represents the Goddess womb, consummating the marriage of earth and sky.
In the Craft the fertilization of the Goddess by the God takes place when the wand is plunged into the cauldron, representing the womb of the goddess.
Now is the time of brightness, long days and warmth. There is the promise of the harvest growing in the fields and gardens. The earth is pregnant with goodness, made fertile by the light of the sun. The Sun God is in his glory, strong and virile, the husband and lover of the Goddess. The power of the sun on this day is protective, healing, empowering, revitalizing and inspiring. It imbues a powerful magical charge into spells, crystals, and herbs. It is a time for fun and joy, for enjoying the light and warmth.

THOUGHTS FOR JUNE
By Ron Fox

Hi Folks,

What a wonderful start to the month, a very hot weekend for members of our Hearth to go along to the Wessex Gathering, we joined in with all the learning, sharing and comradeship shared by the Wessex group along with many other pagan/craft related people that had gathered from various parts of the country.
A weekend of Labyrinth building, workshops, music, fire jumping, rituals, and sharing time together. The Labyrinth was lit on the Saturday evening with lots of drumming followed by everyone dancing through it making as much noise and summoning up as much celebration as they could muster. There was the odd tipple or two when there was singing and the telling stories around the fire, all done with a great deal of love and trust shared by those who sort the comradeship and warmth of our hearth.
On one occasion there was a few concerns when we learned the news of an escaped Hamster, some poor soul in the field next to ours had put up notices asking for his return, they had even set out a humane trap in the forlorn hope that he would find his way home.
Well as you can imagine, a rouge hamster can be quite a handful, a good job we had some strong brave men and women true. Not the sort of thing you want to wake up to in the middle of the night, that awful gnawing sound and the hissing of an airbed loosing its life’s breath. The last I heard he had met a good looking field mouse and set up home near to the woodlands edge and in true pagan fashion set about working on practicing the hiros gamos in honour of the Sun God and the Earth Mother who had been instrumental in the gaining of his freedom from a life behind bars, but I digress.
At this time of year the many plants and herbs that surround us are at there best, a good time to collect these on the summer solstice. This brought home that weekend when one of our party asked for help in identifying some Ribwort Plantain.
There were a few small specimens around the close cut field that we were in but not that useful for identification or collection for use. A drawing, description and its healing properties was done and left at that for the moment.
The following day while on my way back from the shower block the gods put a man in front of me, he was camping in the next field to the one we had hired for the weekend. Your all Pagans and witches aren’t you was the start of the conversation, we entered into a short talk about Paganism, our beliefs and so on, it turned out that he and others had tried to come into our camp and had been turned away by the Dagda, our wonderful security team that weekend. Funny how others who know little about who we are and what we do become really keen to join in the fun when they see and hear everyone having a really good time. As we stood and talked I noticed a very large single specimen of Ribwort Plantain behind him, this standing in the field from where the Hamster had made his bid for freedom earlier that day, perhaps he too had seen a possible way forward from the bars of life imprisonment into a life of free thinking, love and sharing.
I took a stem and a couple of leaves from the plant and gave them to the person that had asked the day earlier, moments later Anna came across with a stem and some leaves, she also gave these to the person that had asked for help in its identification.
The funny thing is, earlier that week before the Gathering I had cut my finger at work and picked up a little contamination of the blood resulting in a small amount of sore skin around some fingers and behind my ears.
Plantain makes a very good remedy for treating small wounds that are reluctant to heal, it was also used externally to treat inflammation of the mucous membranes and infected haemorrhoids, it’s not recommended for use during pregnancy and lactation.
An infusion from 2 to 4g of leaves is administered externally three times a day.
Just to drive the point home that we need to be aware of what a plant spirit is telling us from time to time, the weekend came to a close and on our drive home my car engine began to tell us that it was not very feeling well. The next day I took it to the garage for a checked over. It was not something too serious so booked in to have the work done on the Friday. After dropping the car at the garage that day I was given a lift home by a friend, as I waved my goodbye and turned around, there in the crack of my now empty driveway was a solitary Ribwort Plantain. Its stem erect standing within a rosette of base leaves the hieros gamos in symbolism, a reminder that the suns warmth and mother earths bounties are given freely, these born from a conjoining of the two.
Sometimes it is not only enough to look up the name and uses of a plant, but on many occasions strive to become aware of what the plant spirit has to teach you. Many plant spirits may make themselves known to you at a time when you need it, or when the time is right for you to learn this knowledge within.
Many mystery schools teach a way to access this, but it takes time, quietness and patience to recognize what you are being shown.

Blessings Ron Fox