Dancing Lughnasadh
Fruition. The first Harvest. What wisdom have we gathered, what is the harvest of our soul self? What do we still look to reap?
Lughnasadh, Lúnasa, Lammas, is a Cross Quarter day, approximately halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox. In old Gaelic, Lughnasadh is a combination of Lugh, a God of the Celts and násad, or assembly.
One of the Celtic fire festivals, this day marks the turn of the season and we step into Autumn as Summer declines into Winter. A time of fruition and completion, Lughnasadh is the first of three harvests on the Wheel of the Year. The Land is ripe and full and bursting with Earth Mother’s Bounty.
We celebrate the Celtic God Lugh, God/Master of all skills, known as the Bright One or Shining One. It was/is a day to honour Lugh and also his foster Mother Tailtiu. She who, it is told, died of exhaustion and a broken heart after clearing all the plains of Ireland for agriculture. Tailtiu was possibly an earth Goddess who represented the dying vegetation that fed all humans and animals. In this, we also celebrate the role of Women who take on the role of Mother including those to children they might not have born.
Great gatherings and celebrations were held at Lughnasadh; bonfires, games, fairs and festivals, the ritual cutting and offering of the first grains, games of skill and strength, horse racing music and storytelling, trading, proclaiming of laws and settling of legal disputes, drawing up contracts, and matchmaking. Lughnasadh was also the traditional time for handfastings, a trial marriage that lasted for a year and a day. Lugh’s original festival was said to have lasted for two full weeks.
Traditionally a festival of bounty and abundance and a celebration of community and family, of reaping what we have sown, and sharing the harvest, we have forgotten these ways. What joy that we are now returning to these rituals, celebrations and rites of passage that mark the passage of time in the cycle of life.
The Wheel turns.
Heathir
- What do I need to release right now?
- What am I looking most forward to for the rest of the year?
- What can I anticipate coming to fruition for my highest good?
- In what ways can I give gratitude for the gifts of growth and change I have received this year?
