Sunrise and tilting at the Crawick

Sunrise and tilting

Midsummer at the Crawick Multiverse

21st June 2023

banners marked
the gateway

That cool blue stillness before a midsummer dawn. Mist pouring into the glens, clouds hiding the glow of the dawn 

We had gathered at Crawick Multiverse to mark the Midsummer Sunrise as part of the Multiverse’s “Summer Solstice Week”. Working with Open University Scotland , there was a week of events and seminars, talks, picnics, performances and ceremonies. The week set out to explore our world using the landforms of the Multiverse as inspiration and encouraging people to learn more, discuss and get involved in conversations about energy, climate change, lunar geology and ancient celebrations. The Multiverse itself is a spectacular piece of earth art, built on the remains of an open cast mine and now run as a charity, inviting people to explore both this landscape and the greater stories it holds, of comet trails and constellations, alignments and cosmic explosions.

A season for the blue-eyed hawks!

A season abounding in every harvest!

Glen of the ridged and pointed peaks.

Glen of blackberries and sloes and apples.

Glen of the ripening fruit. (1)


I was there to tell stories – and lead ceremonies. So, some 30 of us stood in the early morning light and watched for the sunrise over the hills. Marking the Solstice as a turning point of the year, we used poetry and teachings from different cultures that all mark this day in different ways. More animistic than anything else, our ceremony set out to invite people to reflect on the changing year, to appreciate the wonder of the world around them and to welcome that sense of wonder into themselves.

waiting for sunrise, c/o Mike Bolam

We drew on ancient Irish poetry and modern charms, Anglo-Saxon ideas and Sakha traditions and poetry. Some of our readings are available as a download if you want to read them – or use them for your own events. Download the readings here

We waited for the sunrise. The sun was shy and remained cloud-dressed during our ceremony, but to look away from where the sunrise wasn’t was to see that glory of mist and hills beyond the Multiverse, so we revelled in a morning of beauty

We celebrated with strawberries and tunes on a mouth-harp and we released people to explore the site and continue their celebrations in their own ways….all before 6am

Of course, Sunrise isn’t the actual moment of Solstice. That is the Moment of Maximum Tilt, which called for another celebration later in the day as we reached that pivotal point of the year. Noisier, livelier and altogether more raucous, our Maximum Tilt included a squad of school drummers (thanks, Mat!), a local choir and a harpist, a giant inflatable globe to demonstrate orbits, inclinations and tilts and the whole company walking into an inward spiral and cavorting out again.

The arrival of the musicians, photo c/o Mike Bolam

walking a Tilted spiral, photo c/o Mike Bolam

Sun, fair-wheel, elf-disk, candle of the sky, 

you empower the Earth while the wolf gives chase.

a local reminder of those
other traditions - an altar at
Brocolitia Mithraeum

The Crawick Multiverse Summer Solstice Week contained much more than the Solstice itself, but I wanted to mark the ceremonies – hence this blog. You can find out more about the week as a whole with Crawick’s own posts. On Saturday 24th among picnics and song and poetry readings, there was also an exhibition – "The Power of the Sun in the Greco-Roman World” from the The Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion to remind us of the lineage of our Solstice celebrations.

Visit this BBC news page for more coverage of the event

Grace of the clover,

Grace of the geese in the loch,

Grace of the gunmetal grey clouds,

Grace of the white clouds that catch the light

from Brodgar - the blessing in our readings

Many thanks to my fellow celebrants:

Graham Harvey, Liudmila Nikanarova, and Stephen Peake

Thanks, too to Mat Clements from Where’s the One, to photographer Mike Bolam (https://www.flickr.com/photos/landscapy/) to the Crawick team for all their enthusiasm, patience and hospitality, to Caroline (from the Crawick) and Kieran (from the OU) for managing the herd of cats that we were, with occasional toads creeping into the mix

And thanks to the singers, musicians, yoga teachers, school children, teachers and all the visitors who made 21st June 2023 so special!

Photographs:

unless otherwise credited, photos are by Gordon MacLellan


1: the verse pieces are extracts of the readings used during the sunrise ceremony. The full texts of the English readings from this ceremony can be found here

beautiful skies, photo c/o Mike Bolam