Lughnasadh is a festival of the beginning of autumn and the gathering of the first harvest. It is celebrated between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, usually on the first of August. Sometimes the celebration is moved to the Sunday closest to this date, because the weekday may be busy with the harvest.
The Irish pagan Lughnasadh coincides with the English Christian Lammas, which means “bread mass”. The first bread baked from the new harvest was brought to the church for blessing. This custom emphasizes that the first fruits are sacred. The Lammas tradition connects religion and agriculture, spiritual and material.
Lughnasadh is dedicated to the sun god Lugh, a representative of the supernatural race of Tuatha de Danann. Lugh is experienced in many arts, so in his honor they organize fairs and sports competitions, do handicrafts, cook, trade, dance and make corn dolls from freshly harvested sheaves.
Lugh’s multi-skilled nature encourages us to try ourselves in many things, not to limit ourselves to one thing. If you are always drawn in different directions, then now is the time to welcome your versatility.
If you like only one thing, then you can consider what different skills it consists of. It is time to recognize that just as the long summer helped the fruits to grow, so the accumulated knowledge and experience made us masters of different arts. In our own abundance, we are like Lugh. It is time to share our skills.
Lughnasadh is a festival of love and death. At this time, short-term marriages were concluded and the dead were honored. The festival is celebrated on hills and hills, near cemeteries.
It is not for nothing that Shakespeare’s Juliet was born on Lammas Eve and did not live to see her fourteenth birthday by only two weeks. The beginning of autumn marks the death of the goddess of the earth, who suffocates under the weight of her fruits.
Any harvest that we receive is always the result of teamwork. Even if we cultivate our garden alone, the laws of nature and higher powers help us.
Therefore, when celebrating Lughnasadh, it is customary to make a sacrifice: bury the first fruit on the top of a hill and share the harvest with the earth, splash your favorite drink into the river, treat animals with a piece of cake.
The energies of Lughnasadh are earthly. This is the time to bake bread and make jam, share with the whole world by participating in fairs, and be immensely grateful for everything we have.
Natural materials such as sticks, clay and stones are perfect for magical work, and the magical practice itself should be directed towards abundance, protection and communication with the spirits of ancestors.
This is the best time for transformative work. Any practice on Lughnasadh is enhanced by the joy of the first signs that our efforts were not in vain.
It is now that something that was not possible before will work out.
