Ep. 47: Psi Friday with Mason: The Summer Solstice

The Summer Solstice is here, and on this week's Psi Friday, Mason Winfield talks about the traditions, folklore, and strange stories connected to the longest day of the year. We also take a detour into the story behind the (spooky historical) shirt Mason is wearing, proving that conversations with paranormalists never stay on one topic for long.

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Transcript

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Hi everybody, Mason Winfield again at the brink of the summer solstice for another episode of Cy Friday the Mason. As you may recall, we have been talking about the zone of silence, we've been talking about arcs across the planet, but um, you know, the opportunity to chat a little bit about the solstice, it's too good to pass up. First of all, the summer solstice. It's the longest day of the year pertaining to daylight. It's a big festival in many cultures, particularly northern ones. I believe for the Vikings, midsomar, summer solstice. I mean, in parts of Scandinavia, that's the only time you have daylight, you know, sustained daylight, and they may have it for three weeks straight. It's a remarkable event. But I should tell you just a little bit about the holidays of the Celtic people because we are getting into a kind of a pagan culture today. The solstices, longest, shortest, days of the year. The equinoxes, they're the horizontal points. Day and night are equal. They tend to be big days for festivals in many cultures. However, for the Celtic people, Irish, Scottish, Old French, Old Germanic, I mean, big story. I can't tell it all in one afternoon. But Celtic holidays were the cross-quarter points in between. Just make the diagonals. And um we don't know that the Celts did a lot of big stuff on the summer solstice. We think it might have been Halloween, May Eve, Imbulg, February 1st, and Lunasa, August 1st. We think those might have been their festivals. But uh we're gonna talk a little bit about the summer solstice today. The shirt I'm wearing is a little bit of a joke. I can't help but tell you. It's a little bit of an in-joke. I'll tell you what it's about at the end. But I would first of all use my solstice to try to find a little time for the next couple of days for real peace, reflection, meditation, get a get a pen and a pad out, a journal, see with yourself, relaxing circumstances. Light a candle, make a bonfire, have a cup of tea, glass of wine, relax yourself, and catch up with yourself. Really think. Because that's so lost in our contemporary world. There's coaches out there who try to tell you to do all this. You can find it. You may find a new level to yourself if you can really get out of the out of the mental bustle. And the effect of the solstice, first of all, the exact day of the maximum daylight, it it's not it's not consistent on the calendar. It's generally 19th, 20th, 21st, maybe 22nd. I think there's a handful of days in which it might fall, but that is the longest day. But the effect of the sun setting in the same place every day will linger for a couple of days. That's what solstice means. In Latin, solstice. Sun stands still, because that's what it does. You're on a horizon, you're on a high point, you're watching where the sun goes down every afternoon for all year, and you see it. Start over here and it goes out to here, and then it stops, and it stays there. Doesn't move for a couple days, and then it starts coming back. Goes all the way across, stops. Winter solstice. Stays there. Doesn't move for a few days, then it starts up again. It's been doing that since uh the world was here. Very important time of the year. I really hope you can get a moment of meditation. As far as the shirt, I'm giving a talk tomorrow. If you do happen to see this today, I'm doing a uh a ghost walk tonight in East Aurora, Friday the 19th, on the supernatural Roycroft, on Elbert Hubbard's 170th birthday, 1856, 2026. We'll see if the old rascal comes out for a visit. Tomorrow I'm giving a talk in the morning about midsummer's customs and festivities up in um Gasport. A little bit of a drive from East Aurora, but it's at the Greystone event. For today, I should probably explain the shirt. The 1973 Summer Isle May Day Festival. Okay. In 1967, an author named David Pinner, I think he's British, wrote a book called Ritual. It's about a little tiny island off the coast of Scotland. They've got a bunch of small islands. And this island is like, it's not exactly medieval, but it's very conservative in its customs and its dress and it's, you know, it's it's in the and they have a lord. I think they call him Lord Summer Isle. That's the name of the island. And apparently there's been some disappearances. So an inspector for Scotland Yard. And they made a movie out of it. And the guy is portrayed by no less than Edward Woodward, the original equalizer. You will answer to me, and you know, he was a good detective. And um the villainous Lord Sommerize is portrayed by Christopher Lee, Sauron, in the Lord of the Rings, and Christopher Lee was a remarkable person. If I had any good reason to, I'd tell you about him, but he was a secret agent. Um he was a James Bond. He actually knew what a man sounded like when he got stabbed. They don't go, you know, the the the he'd be in a in a film, and the producers are trying to coach him on what it sounds like to get stabbed, and he goes, No, I know what a guy sounds like when he's stabbed. It's an inhale. He goes, Anyway, Caesar, Julius Caesar used to write about the evils of the druids. And he talked about this one ceremony called the Wicker Man, in which the Druids would make, or someone would make these big effigies resembling men and animals, maybe a giant man, maybe 30 feet high. They'd make it out of this light, highly flammable wood called wicker. And then they would put sacrificial victims in it and set it on fire. Chop chop, lovely to see. Now, it's a horrible ritual, and there's no evidence anywhere but Caesar that this was done. And we know the Celts were not innocent of human sacrifice, we're just not sure it was on that scale that way. But at any rate, the film, The Wicker Man, 1973, is about this festival in which the investigator himself is the sacrificial victim who's put in the wicker man and burned alive. And if you're wearing a shirt from that festival, it implies you were there. I got this at a horror conference. And I've always I don't wear like rock or anything t-shirts, but I always wanted to kind of wear this and explain to people the joke that I found so humorous for today. Have a wonderful solstice. Thanks for joining me with Cy Friday with Mason. Thank you again.