I have a friend who's a massive pagan. A few years back she wanted to do a rebirth ritual. A bunch of us took her up to an iron age hill fort and we helped her do the ritual overnight. It ended with her being symbollically reborn just as the sun rose above the horizon. Fucking awesome. Then we all sat together on the hillside, eating sandwiches and drinking whisky and mead while she recovered from what had been a pretty deep, trippy, and emotional experience.

10/10 - would help a friend be reborn in the dawn again.

[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This sounds amazing. How does one go about being reborn in the dawn?

[–] Hossenfeffer 4 points 2 days ago

It's not my faith and I don't feel that it's my place to share all the details but, broadly speaking, it involved a symbollic death, a journey through the underworld (and a real journey through some dark woods), and then the rebirth on the hill at dawn. I played the role of the final guide who helped her escape the underworld to her new life.

[–] Servais@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 days ago

For me it's more a combination of stories, but for me it was when I was younger, when we would spend the night together with friends in summer. Summer nights are quite short over here, the sun can rise up as early as 5:30, so if we were busy the all night, we were always a bit surprised to see the sun rise. It's definitely a strange feeling, in a nice way.

[–] Wytch@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When I was taking a photography class, we got up before dawn and went down the beach. I got to see colors appear over the Atlantic that I'd never seen in the sky. I watched them swirl in the low tide surf. The sun came up in inches, and the light was pure magic.

[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

It's cool being there on nature's time. It seems like it's so slow moment by moment but like 5 minutes later the lighting is so different

[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Took a flight with a stop in the arctic circle. It was winter so it was in 24 hours of darkness. Made it to the states and landed for customs in the early morning. When we took off we broke through the cloud cover just in time to see my first sunrise in 36 hours

[–] ZDL@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 day ago

Now imagine this:

I lived in Inuvik for three years (Dad was stationed there). For three consecutive winters I lived 30 days of night. You think you get SAD "down south"? You ain't seen nothin' 'til you've faced a whole month of nothing but twilight conditions or darker.

Which brings us to my first Sunrise Festival.

This is the most memorable sun-related event in my life, displacing even the total solar eclipse I experienced in Wuhan a few years back. For 30 days there was no sun. Further, for 15 days the "twilight" portions of the day got darker and darker until it was basically nothing but night. Then, for 15 days, in the depths of SAD you've never felt the like of, it got brighter and brighter at the high parts of the day.

Until the day of the Sunrise Festival.

This is the day that basically all work stops as close to noon we gathered out in the streets and playgrounds (in my case) and such to watch the sky. Watch the twilight get brighter and brighter and brighter. Until suddenly the sun peeks for a few minutes above the horizon, blood red, staining the sky, only to dip quickly back down.

Sure we've got another month of really, incredibly short days before we face something similar to normalcy, but it's all good. It only gets lighter from here.

The sun is back in town.

[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 3 points 2 days ago

Watching the sunset on the California coastal highway north of Malibu with a bourbon and Coke and my then pregnant partner was great