Death & Rebirth: Summer Solstice Spirit
Summer Solstice spirit doll carrying nettle, Sitka rose, hawthorn berries, and smoky quartz
We often hear about the high intensity, the expansion, the activation that comes with summer. We rarely associate the summer solstice with death, decay, desiccation, and the breaking open that this season also brings.
This second solstice doll explores the darker, earthy notes of summer and how they relate to the oft considered summer themes of growth and expansion. This is not expansion at its height, but the expansion that breaks the chrysalis. It’s the expansion of e m e r g e n c e. This doll carries the energies of death and rebirth. She has clawed her way through the depths, and has been birthed from the husk of an ancient tree in the depths of the forest.
Her energy is steady and grounded. She rises up from the Underworld, carrying the energy of death within. She is balanced on that precipice - connected to the rooting plants, the earthworms, the decay of the fallen tree that now gives life to so many forest beings. She walks the threshold between life and death, and she is comfortable there.
Death & Rebirth portal, decorated with a howlite skull and a red glass bead.
She is aligned with the Tarot archetypes of Death, Judgment (Awakening), and the Queen of Pentacles. She represents expansion, shedding, peeling off the layers of old identities to reveal the skin of your true self. She invites you to harness the energy of the summer solstice to fuel your own death and rebirth cycles. She invites you to play in the dark, to feel the warm mud slide between your fingers and toes on the longest days of the year.
She is liminality in motion.
I see the Solstices as a direct through line to each other. If we reached through the portal of the summer solstice, we’d find ourselves in contact with the energies of the winter solstice. We reach through the light and take hold of the darkness that lives within it. The same is true of the winter solstice - it carries the light of the summer sun inside of it. The two cannot be separated.
How do we recognize and honor the dark, even as we celebrate the light? How do we honor death at the energetic height of the summer solstice? This doll invites you into deeper relationship with these energies - and supports you as you move through your own death and rebirth cycles.
She holds nettle, Sitka Rose, hawthorn berries, and smoky quartz. These are strong allies for steady boundaries, heart tending, connection to Ancestors, the Otherworld, and your Intuition, and navigating through the Underworld.
She is adorned with a Death & Rebirth portal woven in wool and decorated with a howlite skull and a red glass bead. In her hair she wears three small bells.
I began this doll on the new moon in Taurus and completed her in the days following the Capricorn full moon. She carries these potent energies, as well.
