“I hosted the esoteric meeting on the day of the feast of Saint John the Baptist, which falls on the summer solstice. That afternoon my neighbors were at home. Seeing all those cars parked in the yard, they were surprised.
“While the white girdle brethren purified the living room, the others waited on the upper floor. In fact, we were not allowed to see how the purification ritual took place. Rino was one of those who performed the ritual, and later he told me that it was a kind of exorcism. We burned a lot of incense. Moreover, there were intervals of silence,  specially when we did the chain. Surely my neighbors wondered why so many people stayed silent and burned incense. That evening, the grand master talked about solstices, equinoxes, and rites related to those special days.
“He said, ‘Equinox and solstice come from the Latin words aequinoctium and solstitium. Since time immemorial, people have celebrated solstices and equinoxes. The winter solstice is related to Jesus’s birth, the summer solstice is related to St. John the Baptist’s birth. They were second cousins. The former was the son of Mary and the latter the son of her cousin Elisabeth. The birth of John the Baptist preceded that of Jesus by six months. On the summer solstice, herbs have a special energy. There are many practices related to the magic night of St. John. On that day people start bonfires, which are the symbol of purification, and pluck special herbs, above all, the hypericum also called Saint-John’s-wort. Spring equinox is related to Cybele, the goddess mother who symbolizes the earth, and to Attis, her son, who symbolizes the vegetation of the earth.’
“When the meeting was over, everybody left, and I remained alone in the house. That night, when I was about to sleep, I sensed that something was happening downstairs. I felt that there were ghostly presences in the living room. I wanted to go there, but I feared an unpleasant encounter. I got up and headed for the landing of the staircase. I thought I saw a ghostly figure with horns coming toward me. As we met almost face-to-face on the landing, he went back downstairs, and I returned to my bed.

This is an excerpt from The Vibrations of Words: second edition by Ettore Grillo
Ettore Grillo author of these books:
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
-Travels of the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/author/ettoregrillo