Summer Solstice

36,500 people went to Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice today. This is the first year I know what this means. I have been largely oblivious of Astronomy and even more of New Age types. Does it mean something that now I know about the Solstice?


I don't believe in fate, but right now my situation is unsettled to say the least.


This being the International Year of Astronomy, since four hundred years ago Galileo Galilei looked up at the sky with a telescope, I've been busy inviting kids to look up.


There are some Mexican traditional ideas about the ball game and the four important sun positions in the sky. Let's start with today's. The Sun was going away towards the North, more and more each day, then today it stops and starts going South. At the Vernal Equinox, on September 22, day and night will be equal. Then comes Winter Solstice, when the Sun seems to be going South to not come again. But it does stop on the Solstice. In its way North, we have the Spring Equinox, equal day and night again.


Nearby in Teopantecuantitlán, there is the Ball Game, oriented with the San Andrés Cross, not like Christ's, which is crossed, but more like the X in MeXico. The lines in X are aligned towards the solstices. I've been told, that it was no game, the warriors actually died to stop the Sun from leaving us.


Is there a message here?


I leave that to those more informed on New Age lore. Maybe this year when I know what the solstice is, 23.44^o missalignment between the Earth's spin, and the Solar System plane, I can start thinking on 2012. Maybe something will happen, maybe nothing. But now I know that people around here in Guerrero, Mexico, have been looking up for a long time, and if they start talking about sky signals, I'll listen.