PAC635 Aine, Summer Solstice

Áine (Irish for "brightness, glow, joy, radiance; splendour, glory, fame") is an Irish goddess of summer, wealth and sovereignty. She is associated with midsummer and the sun and moon in her Moon Goddess aspect Her solar associations, refer to her mainly with the morning light and the dawn of the year, quite evident in traditional beliefs, that depicts her as the wife or daughter of of the sea god Manannán mac Lir., noticing that at each and every dawn “she rises up from bed” (the Sea). She is sometimes represented by a red mare, which lead us to associate her with the belief in the Goddess Epona, it is said that she even sometimes took animal form, as a red mare, in order to walk among her people. She is the daughter of Egobail, the sister of Aillen and/or Fennen, and is claimed as an ancestor by multiple Irish families. As the goddess of love and fertility, she had command over crops and animals and is also associated with agriculture.The Solstice festival also referred to as midsummer’s eve,was traditionallycelebrated across Ireland every year at midnight on the 23rd June, and fires were lit as part of a Celtic celebration honouring the goddess Áine and the Queen of Munster, is associated with the sun, fertility, and protecting crops and animals. It was the custom forthe fires to be thrown on fields as an ‘offering’ to protect the cropsAt midday on the 21st the sun reaches its zenith in the sky. It is the longest day of the year, and the point at which the on the Solstice day the sun seems to just hang there without moving – in fact, the word “solstice” is from the Latin wordsolstitium, which literally translates to “sun stands still.” The travels of the sun were marked and recorded and Stone circles such as the Great Grange Stone Circle, near Lough Gur, County Limerick were oriented to highlight the rising of the sun on the day of the summer solstice, and people have gathered for millennia to watch the sun rise there and to celebrate the sun and the year ahead.