With an excerpt from two-volume Order SS – recently published by the Thule Italy publishing – We would like to wish our readers and Readers a Happy Solstice.

SS notebook n° 7. 1938

Solstice

The farmer walked with heavy step in deep snow. Its high and wide figure stood out, Black, blue on white winter landscape and under the starry sky of night. The man who accompanied him was dry and the skived edge. Left float to wind his coat of fur and advancing so gallantly that you would have said it was just out of adolescence. The biting cold that had hypnotized and petrified the landa and the forest seemed to touch him, Since his vest was half open. From time to time with his left hand he scratched his beard gray in which his/her breath is condensed into small crystals. Behind the two men, at a certain distance, as agreed to in relation to age, followed by Eid, the farmer's son. He was wearing, like other, his arms: the long sword, the dagger and the spear. Had put a shield on his back and from his right flank was a trumpet crafted artistically, preserved and transmitted for generations from father to son.

Walking, they crossed into silence of the hills where they were buried their ancestors. There were resting Kings and Princes who, Once upon a time, they were powerful and of which the singers celebrated the Warrior. Elder, skived edge, He was also an initiate who erred farm farm narrating stories and that ' knew more than his breviary». Eib saw that the grizzled man, When passed in front of a large mound, the waved with the spear. During this March alone, dialogued perhaps secretly with the dead?

The young farmer is reminded of the stories the black-haired shopkeeper who came from the South had told, some moon before. Over there there would be people who avoided the places of residence of the dead because they were afraid of the deceased. In this memory, Eib shook his head. Why fear the dead because they too were part of the clan? The bonds that unite generations not dated maybe so far in time that no one knows the origin, and it would continue through the generations in the future nobody knows the end? The dead were perhaps transmitted their heritage to live as a sacred bond which imposed respect?

The Southerner had spoken of demons and ghosts, scary beings of whom lived in the dead, beings who were playing a cruel game with men, not dreaming but harm them and bring evil. The death would be so changed the fathers that rested on those hills? Incredible, no: impossible, replied the young farmer to that question. He who had remained consistent with nature in life could not change in death. One who had worked for the good and the future of his clan and its people could not, once buried her ashes in the bosom of the Earth, become the enemy of his own race.

It is possible that at the peoples of the South, they fear the living during the lonely nights. Black-haired men were of a different nature, with a character so gloomy; maybe their dead were different from our. The young farmer decided to interrogate this gray-haired elder, After a few days was a guest of her father. He knew that this man so lean had seen many countries and peoples.

The three men had reached the central plateau of landa, that was the end of their journey. Glacial night seemed to have brightened. The circles formed by massive vertical boulders clearly outlined and the peasant and his host we approached, stopping in front of the Boulder in the center of the circle. This stone had a secant plane that seemed headed toward a point on the celestial sphere.

With a quiet gesture of the hand, the peasant took the blanket of snow that covered the tip of the stone.

He knew what to do. Was it not come to this place for years with his father, at the time of the summer solstice, both in summer and winter? Facing north, She steamed between two circles of stones up to one third, at the Centre of which stood two blocks next to each other. Took off all the snow that covered them was like a cloak and headed back toward his father. Meanwhile, These had carefully inspected the starry sky and had finally turned to the Southeast, where glowed a faint glow that announced the dawn of a new day. The South became increasingly clear as the North still slept in the darker blue.

Then the farmer raised his hand. «The hour has come» he said solemnly. «The star of the day (Arktur) down to Earth». He knelt behind the standing stones so that the sharp edges of its surface does not become nothing more than a line in front of his eyes. This seemed to pass in the narrow gap between two boulders on the other circle and achieve the clear sparkling star just above the horizon. Then he stood up and took place at the old, just as scrupulously, looked through the breach the star who disappeared in Northern steam while the sky schiariva ever further South.

' You're right ' noted the thinner, «the star of the day goes down in the direction that announces the feast: in three days we will celebrate the culmination of winter».

The old man stood up and, After a father's sign, took the trumpet of Eib, brought it to his lips and launched the chainplate traditional signal. He played three times and three times the call rang. The men were then listening in the morning rising. Shortly after, the appeal received a reply. He had heard the sound of the trumpet in the villages at the edges of the LAH because now it seemed that all the trumpets awoke on the horizon, follow the lure and the farm were saying on the farm, Announcing the celebration of the summer solstice for which they would be assembled from three days of clans and the populations of villages.

(These watchdogs multiply that served to study the stars to determine the holidays, in particular the solstices in winter and summer, they were very numerous in the German districts. They were destroyed by monks and Christian zealots. We have however retained one. Are the stone circles of landa of Tuchel, near the mouth of the Vistula. These circles of rocks present their stones partly oriented North-South and East-West, partly toward the two solstices. A fifth line points to the sunset of the fixed star Arktur, called "star of the day" by our ancestors, from which the Solstice was announced three days before. This stellar Solar Observatory and of the ancient Germans was studied by professor Rolf Müller of the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam and scientifically certified to be an observation post).

Deployed to clans and villages, well-armed men, as if it were a battle, the women all dressed up and with their jewelry, around the entire Hill of Thing upon which burned a large fire. The flames got up in the night. The elders of the clan came to fire and listened, as their comrades, the words of the old grizzled, explaining the meaning of the ceremony.

The Eib had heard young father often talk about this stone, but he seemed to understand only now the sense of these traditional words. Now the host of the farmer, all clan worshipped and which recognized the wisdom, He spoke of the eternal order that governs the heavens and the Earth, the Sun and stars, the trees, animals and men. The secular symbol of this order is the eternal Sun. In winter sinks deeper and deeper into the belly of the Earth, to find the earth mother giving again life and climb higher and higher in the sky until the day of summer solstice. A death and an eternal rebirth.

He said the elder: "Death is not the end of life: It is the beginning of a new future. The Sun does arise a new life from the womb of the Earth. The grass and the flowers, the leaves and the trees full and bloom again. The young seed grows, the livestock it fortifies the landa, a new generation grew up on farms. The year of the men passing as the solar year of growth. Hair snow weighs on older, similar to snow on the fields. But as the light, Thus reborn generations after generations. The flame that we honor as an image of the Sun and to which we entrust the bodies of the dead, purifies and enlightens. It frees the soul who is deadly and leads back to a rebirth into eternal light. What comes out of the belly of the mother she never end, How come it stops nature accomplishes its cycle just like the Sun».

Eib meditated again about these words even after the elder had stopped talking. Around the bonfire bright, constantly powered by some guy, the girls began their round dances. Would one day become mothers and would have generated life, as the belly of the earth does with plants and animals. Three women broke from the circle. They went to clan clan, offering a gift.

«Do you know what do these three women?» Eib heard murmuring beside him.

Looked around and clear eyes gazed upon the old grizzled.

"Those three women were the Norns ' said the voice of the elderly. "Urd, Werdandi and Skuld. Urd l'anziana, resting in terra, Werdandi this, the blood that beats in our arteries, Skuld duty, this fate that every human being carries within itself and that turns into error when it is not and will not obey».

The circle of dancers had enlarged. Their walk and their gestures mimic the game of good and right against evil and wickedness. Then came masked figures that symbolised the struggle between light and darkness, and behind them a boisterous group that, each snap of whips, between DIN and clatter, cast out winter for the seed to become green grass and all terrestrial creatures were in good health.

The rigid order of clans and villages loosened; on the one hand the old, reserved and silent, on the other hand, young people, allegri, including the first couple, fidanzatesi during the warm summer nights, launched and jumped over the flames.

When, at the end, the morning appeared, clans resorted again and lit their torches with the flame of the fire of the summer solstice that was dying, Why could awaken in their homes the Focolare dead. The farmer turned to his fellow clan, guarding the Holy flame that bore.

Eib knew that the companions were found in the great Hall dinner that awaited them. Returned behind its towards the farm, while secretly his arm to the girl who was chosen by time, He had jumped over the flames and now, following the ancient costume, led to the farm that someday he would inherit. Linked to nature and the Earth, like all farmers of the North, joined on this night of mothers who had raised her children and prolonged the clan. What wasn't that a symbol would have been early life, as I ordered the eternal order. A great joy filled his heart at the thought that his wedding would be substantiated by members of the clan of the great Hall, At home, before the new focus of the outbreak and below the Green Branch, symbol of eternal life and immense trees that soar skyward. The companions of the clan would not have opposed the happiness that the flame of the winter solstice had already blessed.

*

Linked to nature as were our ancestors, they saw in this celebration of the winter solstice the divine law of death and birth.

La notte delle madri, Holy night, was, more than all other parties, the clan, as it is still today the holiest and most majestic of family celebrations. When we turn on the lights on the tree, We know yet what is the symbol of light and life renewing eternally? When we gathered around the Evergreen FIR, We doubt that our ancestors there saw the symbol of continuity of our race? We still know we have before us the big tree whose roots lie in the past, whose trunk represents intense life and whose branches rise skyward, towards the future?

The ancient stories and traditions of all our peoples the Arians prove that representing this party for our ancestors. You must pull the ear attending this ancient wisdom.

Kurt Pasternaci