Summer: The Archetypal Experience of Frith & Fruition
All throughout history, various cultures have regarded the Summer as a season of growth and fruition. Marked by celebrations of abundance and plenty, the Summer was a time of great importance to our ancestors. In our modern day, it evokes themes of optimism, freedom, and community, offering us warming weather with which to adventure, explore, and gather.
It is during the warm Summer months that the crops planted during the spring finally begin to bear fruit. Wheat, barley and oats, carrots, summer squash, and cucumbers, berries, figs, and grapes, the dietary staples of many cultures came to harvest throughout the summer season.
After many months of relying on whatever food stores were left after winter and spring, the summer offers all of its fresh fruit and vegetable to indulge in.
Honor would be given to the Sun through rites and rituals, thanking it for its radiance and warmth, which allowed for an abundant harvest. Magnificent feasts would be held. Entire communities would gather in celebration to share in their plethora of produce. Specific deities that perfectly embody Summer’s themes of freedom, life, and vitality would be especially worshipped and venerated during this time of year.
By looking at the traditions and deities of Summer, we can uncover the narrative at the heart of this season, the archetypal experience that has been known by and lived by all:
Summer - The Archetypal Experience of Frith and Fruition.
Summertime Celebrations & Deities Throughout the Ancient World
The Swing (1767), Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732-1806)
Each culture has its own summertime celebrations and rituals because each culture has experienced the summer differently. Consequentially myths, stories, and deities were created in order to articulate their peoples’ unique experience with summer, along with the importance it held in their lives.
Common to these festivities are themes of joy, abundance, generosity. The warm summer sun has always offered a freedom not be found in the dead of winter. The diverse traditions centered on this time of year connected ancient people back to nature; to the Sun, to the cycles of sewing and harvest, to the part of our souls that never forgets its primordial origin.
Vestalia - Ancient Rome
The Temple of Vesta, Rome, Pietro Barucci (Italian, 1845 – 1917)
Vesta, the roman goddess of hearth and home was a prominent deity in the lives of the ancient romans. She was the embodiment of the sacred fire that lit up and warmed a domicile, making it a home, a space where people could gather, relax, and rejoice. She is the ever-enduring fire of the soul, the fire of life itself.
In the temple of Vesta, the priestesses kept alive her eternal flame. Behind closed doors they kept Vesta’s hearth perpetually burning, only to be extinguished during the new year.
Once a year, during Vestalia, at the threshold of spring and summer, the doors to the temple were opened to the public. Mothers and matriarchs from all across Rome would visit the temple, and Vesta’s eternal fire, to give offerings that would keep their loved ones in the goodwill of the goddess of home and family for yet another year.
Kronia - Ancient Greece
Chronos, Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (Italian, 1610 - 1662)
Many know Kronos as the mad titan god who ate his children to prevent them from overthrowing him, only to fall at the hands of Zeus.
As the story goes, Kronos learned he would be usurped by his own children, just as he himself has overthrown his own father, Uranus. His wife, Rhea, hid their youngest child, Zeus, sending him away so that he could grow strong and someday face Kronos. This is the origin story of the Olympians, the twelve major greek gods and goddesses we’re all familiar with, but Kronos is more than just mad titan who was defeated and forgotten.
The Ancient Greeks worshipped Kronos as the god of time. The myth of Kronos represents the changing of the times: the transition between rulers, the shift in freedoms and power dynamics, and the revolution and upheaval that comes with this change.
Kronos came to be known as the God who maintains the changing of seasons, bestowing agricultural gifts to those in his favor. He rules over the cycles of planting and harvest, and so he was central to the Greek festival of Kronia. Fresh flowers, harvest fruits and vegetables, and pastries were all shared between folk, and left as offerings near altars of Kronos in hopes of a successful rest of the harvest.
During Kronia, people from all walks of life, no matter their social status, were free to partake. City squares were transformed into hubs of merriment. All social hierarchy was suspended, erasing any divisions between slaves and free individuals. Everyone was afforded the same rights, the same respect, and the same opportunities to revel in the celebrations.
The Return of Sodpet - Ancient Egypt
Evening On The Nile, Albert Rieger (Austrian, 1934 - 1905)
In ancient Egyptian society, the river Nile was integral to their agricultural success. Early peoples based much of their farmland around the Nile itself and relied on its annual flooding to water their crops. As Egyptian society grew, these farms were not near enough to sustain everyone, and so, they developed an ingenious irrigation system which allowed them to grow crops in abundance.
The flooding of Nile was such an important event to the ancient Egyptians, it became their New Year celebration. As the star we know as ‘Sirius’ rose over the eastern horizon, Egyptian stargazers knew that the flooding of the Nile, and the revitalization of their fields and crops was soon to come as well.
The Egyptians named the star that foretold of the Nile’s flooding ‘Sodpet’ and made her one of the most revered goddesses. The rise of the star became one of the most ancient celebrations in egyptian history. Taking place around mid July, it was named “The Inundation of the Nile” or “The Return of Sodpet”. The goddess was worshipped for her connection to fertility, destiny, motherhood, nursing, and nurturance. She was a guide to the Pharoahs in the afterlife, the mother of the planet Venus, and was intimately connected to the goddess Isis.
Alban Hefin: The Light of the Shore - Ancient Ireland
Summer (1900), Alphonse Mucha (Czech, 1860-1939)
Many of the seasonal festivities in ancient Ireland begin with a fire. Community bonfires and the rituals performed around them were especially potent during midsummer, where the Sun was the object of the worship. Dancing and playing music around the fire, joining hands and leaping through it, gathering around it in community were all ways that these people of ancient Ireland celebrate the coming of the Summer.
The goddess Aine was especially worshipped and given offerings during this time of year. She represented the season of summer: the radiance of the sun, the abundance of the earth, the love felt between two genuine people, and, most importantly, sovereignty.
Aine appears in various myths and has varied roles throughout Irish folklore. In the most common telling of her story, she is sought by a King whose fields would not grow. He assaults her, and she gets her very swift revenge by maiming him and biting off his ear. Through this act of violence and vengeance, the King is made unfit to rule, as only those who are unblemished may be called the King of Ireland. Aine is not only a goddess of sovereignty, bestowing it upon those who garner her favor, but is also a sovereignty breaker, defacing an entire lineage of royalty.
The Vanir Gods and Goddesses of Midsummer - Ancient Norse
Freyr, Johannes Gehrts
The ancient Norse people held a deep reverence for the summer, and they celebrated it with great joy. Midsummer, taking place on the summer solstice, was the pinnacle of their summer festivities. Communities would be decorated in greenery and foliage, wreaths of flowers would be weaved and hung all around, maypoles would be raised to dance around, bonfires lit to gather around all to remind people of the flourishing of life that summer brings.
Baldr, the god of light, played an integral role in nordic midsummer festivities. He was thought to represent the solstice sun itself, embodying the Sun at its yearly peak. He symbolized the ultimate triumph of light over darkness, ruling the longest day and shortest night of the year. Worship of Baldr was central to many feasts, celebrations and bonfires held on the day of the solstice.
According to Norse mythology, Baldr's inevitable death is believed to trigger the beginning of Ragnarok, signifying the end of the world, the death of the gods, and the start of the earth's decline into frigid darkness. Later myths spoke of an end to Ragnarok. The start of a new age, characterized by the rebirth of Baldr.
Baldr’s fate parallels the journey of the Sun and its effect on the changing of seasons. He rises to the height of power on the summer solstice, as the Sun reaches its zenith. His death symbolizes the winter solstice and Ragnarok, the arrival of winter, and the Sun at it furthest from earth.
Freyja, mother of Baldr, had a special place in ancient midsummer celebrations as well. Many sought the blessing of Freyja, along with that her twin brother, Freyr. The association of Freyja with fertility and abundance, along with Freyr’s association with peace, virility, good harvest, and fair weather, made their blessings highly sought during the summer. Their good graces could ensure both a successful harvest, and also a lasting peace within the community.
The Significance of ‘Frith’
Humanity has long welcomed the Summer with all manner of celebrations, festivals, and feasts. Through revelry and ritual, our ancestors gathered to give honor and show thanks for the fruition and abundance that summer brings. As the days now grow warmer and our bodies more restless, as we seek fun and adventure in the Sun, as we spend more time with our friends and our communities, let us keep in mind the concept of ‘Frith’, just as our ancestors did.
The word frith comes from the ancient norse. It shares a common linguistic root with the god of peace, Freyr.
Frith means holding peace, security, and respect for individual freedom at the utmost importance. It means working together as a group, or a community, to establish a sense of lasting security, creating a space where everyone can be themselves, can feel like they belong, and can contribute to something greater than themselves. Frith is a sense of duty. A duty towards those that we love, and those who love us to resolve whatever conflicts get in the way of frith.
“Frith is the state of things which exists between friends. And it means, first and foremost, reciprocal inviolability. However individual wills may clash in a conflict of kin against kin, however stubbornly individual heads may seek their own way according to their quota of wisdom, there can never be question of conflict save in the sense of thoughts and feelings working their way toward an equipoise in unity. We need have no doubt but that good kinsmen could disagree with fervour, but however the matter might stand, there could — should, must inevitably - be but one ending to it all; a settlement peaceable and making for peace — frith.”
In modern times, the summer sees friends coming together and cherishing the simple pleasures of community and conversation. The summer is our time to adventure out, to form lasting bonds with those we love, to explore new destinations, embark on thrilling adventures, to remember the magnificent beauty of nature.
As this season fades, which it inevitably will, let us maintain its legacy of abundance, friendship and frith. Let us remind ourselves of the enduring power of frith and work to find it, and build it within our own communities. That is what the heart of summer is about, and what makes the summer an archetypal experience of frith and fruition.
