Lughnasadh: Reflections on Summer

My “wicker” man perched atop my altar.

It feels like ages since I’ve posted, and yet like the summer has absolutely flown by in the blinking of an eye. A great deal has happened and it feels like a great unraveling and re-weaving of a tapestry. It’s all seemed a blur, but I’m able to sit now and reflect and give thanks for the process though I know the work is not yet over… but after all, that is what Lughnasadh is about, isn’t it? Giving thanks for the first fruits of our labor though we know there is still much left to do.

In the past months since posting, I’ve moved back to Michigan from Georgia and, on mutual terms, ended the long-term relationship I’d been in. I left a living and job situation that was not promoting growth and stability like I had hoped that it would. The stars (or energies, or whatever) aligned so that I was able to get my job back in my home town, and I have my own little bit of space in my parents’ house. Right now, I’m looking at returning to school to become an English teacher. I have the freedom to drive where I please. There’s a great deal I’ve been thinking and feeling, that for sake of privacy I won’t divulge here, but for the first time in I can’t quite remember when… I feel happy and fulfilled and hopeful for the future.

This year, as I was crafting my “wicker” man (he’s truthfully made out of sticks, wild grapevine, leaves, tigerlilly stems, and all manner of other foliage from my back yard), I began with a poppet. I’d wanted him to be a little bit more stable, but I also decided to fill him with written prayers of thanks, affirmations of the personal transformations I’ve been undergoing, herbs and scraps from spells over the past winter, and all my hope for the coming fall and winter.

Lughnasadh has always been for me one of those important touchstone holidays. I may skip nearly every other sabbat in the Wheel of the Year, but I’ll find time to bake and to get crafty and gather friends together to mark the start of Summer’s end. I make the first pumpkin bread of the year. The Halloween costume shops start to crop up around town. There’s a cool breeze now and again in the air that smells like the coming rains of autumn. The leaves and grasses are more yellowed with the languid late-July/early-August heat, and the spring and summer flowers are fading away. Crows have moved into my family’s yard and chatter away each morning. The countdown to the renaissance festival has begun.

As I write this, my bread has just finished baking and my wickerman is perched upon the altar awaiting a small rite tomorrow. I am deeply thankful for the lessons and the strength the beginning of 2019 has given me. I look forward to whatever the coming months have in store.

Forest Blessings,
Rachel

Lughnasadh Reflections

While last summer seemed to stretch on forever this one has just flown by. Lughnasadh has passed and though there’s a stretch of muggy days left, fall is coming, and I am very much ready for its return. I’ve now completed a little over a year working in the RV industry, and August heralds the winding down of the camping season, and a slower pace of work. It is both relieving (fewer people in the store, fewer broken parts to match up, etc.) and worrisome; the days at work seem longer when there’s less to do and it can be agonizingly boring at times. I fear stagnation and falling into a lull as the days grow quiet and dark.

This year was the first that I did not craft a “wicker” man to toss into a bonfire on Lughnasadh. This past year or so, as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, has been strange. I’m finding myself without the people and traditions that used to act as markers for my point of being in the cycles of time. It was a little disorienting, and I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it exactly other than it was just… weird.

All the same, Lughnasadh has come to take on yet another new meaning for me (I was musing as I wrote this post that it seems to be one of the festivals that changes for me in subtle ways all the time, and yet still remains my favorite of the eight). Rather than being a time to prepare and gear up for school and for being extremely active in an academic/work sense, it is now a time to breath a little sigh. I can look forward to quieter days ahead, more opportunity to take time off, my favorite local festivals and events, etc. It’s almost taken on a completely opposite meaning, and yet… It also heralds a time for myself to get working on projects. Newfound free time means work should be done on things like the blog, steps towards my future, my art, etc. It is only in working through these things I’ll avoid the brainfog that seemed to settle in between about November and June for me.

What is your relationship with the first harvest? How and when do/did you celebrate it?

Yours among the ripening apples,
Rachel

Re-Thinking the Wheel: First Harvest

Van Gogh’s Wheat Fields

As part of rebuilding my practice, I’ve wanted to begin reexamining how I celebrate the sabbats- if at all. Like many, I’ve found that the Wheel of the Year that has been used across the Pagan community at large, just simply doesn’t fit for a number of reasons: my local climate not quite lining up just right for the sabbats, simply not connecting with certain holidays, etc.

So, being that it is the first sabbat since the creation of this blog, we begin with Lughnasadh… The name for this sabbat comes from the Irish god of the Sun, light, and just about any skill under the bright blue sky. While I find the tales of Lugh quite enjoyable, I don’t feel myself exactly called to work with him, and thus find using the name Lughnasadh (the more I really think about it anyway) to be something that also doesn’t quite jive with me- nor do I really care for the way Lammas rolls off the tongue. I’ve begun my personal reflection on this sabbat by simply calling it First Harvest. It feels much more appropriate for the celebration.

Corn Dolly crafted by Walking On Fire.

Working with a group over the last several years has created a number of traditions and associations with the first harvest of the year. For me, it signals that Summer is coming to an end. Summer fruits and grains are ready to be harvested, days are gradually growing shorter, and for the great majority of my life, it has meant that school would be beginning in just a few weeks. Typically, there aren’t many big summer projects or trips taken after this date (at least in my circle of friends and family). So, for me, this has always been a time to give thanks for the fun and the work that I’ve gotten done during the summer. It’s also been a time for preparing what I need for the coming fall and winter months. School, generally, starts shortly after this sabbat, and I like to take this time to set intentions for the academic year. I reflect on lessons learned in the previous year, release old and useless patterns, and set about manifesting what I need for the coming one.

Beautiful Lughnasadh Altar by Vandrake Druidstone

Traditionally, my group and I have a bonfire at this festival. We create a wickerman (a small, corn-dolly sized one), and fill it with bread and our energy of giving thanks for what has come of the summer. The wickerman is then burned in our fire. We also have a tradition of tying clooties to one of the trees in my yard, baking bread and having a potluck, making herbal sachets and poppets for manifestation for the coming academic year, and doing tarot and oracle readings for the darker months as well.

Tonight, we’ll be engaging in these activities again. I’m looking forward to getting together with everyone once more. I’ve got plenty of plans for this school year’s releasing and manifesting; I can’t wait to get them started.

First Harvest/Lughnasadh/Lammas Blessings to you all,
~Rachel