Lughnasadh 2024

Lughnasadh is the Celtic fire festival celebrating the first harvest. It’s when our ancestors would have harvested the grain and made offerings to the land and in Celtic traditions, to the god Lugh to ensure a good harvest next year. It was a time of fire and feasting, celebrating with gratitude for the abundance the land is providing.

It’s hard to imagine these days when we have food from all around the world available at all times (for better and worse,) that in times gone by, the arrival of the new crop of grain for bread would be such a reason to celebrate and be thankful. So the season is connected to bread and the later Christianised festival of Lammas celebrated at the same time, is an old word meaning loaf-mass.

It’s the time of year when we have noticed the peak of Summer that we celebrated at the solstice has slowly been waning over the last six weeks. The lushness of the grass has usually faded, the bright greenness of the trees has dulled and the hedgerows are full of ripening berries. The blackberries are ready for picking, the Rowan tree berries are beginning to glow their orangey reds; the Hawthorn haws are growing a deeper red before our eyes; the apples and other larger fruits are beginning to hang heavier, and the early mornings and late evenings have a crispness of air that signals the change of season.

It’s a beautiful thing to be able to sniff the dewy air in the early morning as the sun rises and sense the wheel has turned. I imagine that’s what our ancestors would have done, using all their senses to know when the time has come for the first harvest.

We can utilises the Wheel of the Year for our own honourable harvests. We can use these markers to check in with ourselves. How is our year going? Are there any areas we need to tend, give more care and attention to?

Just like plants we might need a little more water element, or a little more nourishing compost, tending to the Earth element needs, tending to our root. Are we ready to harvest anything? Any small goals or plans coming to fruition from the ‘seeds’ we planted earlier in the year? These needn’t be major ‘doing’ things, perhaps we planted seeds to give ourselves more kindness or connect to more things that bring us joy. Our harvest can be to show ourselves some gratitude for having made it this far.

We might need to attend to some weeds, or realise those seeds didn’t take, rake the ground and plant some new seeds, maybe different ones? In every harvest there will be part of the plant to leave behind, a husk, the stem, the dried leaves etc. What might we need to release and discard, to sift through and to save? What resources might we need to cultivate to hold in our stores for the coming autumn and winter?

Thinking and journaling in this way with the season and the elements, with curiosity and gentleness can help us with our healing journey. It can help us tune into the seasonal cycles and feel more aligned, connected and in balance with the world around us.

It occurred to me recently that us human beings are all like seeds in fleshy pods! That our essence, our spirit is contained in these pods, and our roots, shoots, blossoms and fruits are metaphorical and are the ways we learn, grow and evolve as people on an inner level. Our branches, blossom and fruits are how we express our connection, creativity, love, friendship, kindness, joy, ease etc, in the world around us. At the end of our physical lives we can think of us having to relinquish our seed pod, to let our essence bloom forth into it’s infinite true nature. Or bodies/seed pods then compost down and mingle with the earth and other elements, just changing form and cycling and recycling like the rest of nature.

This Lughnasadh I made some offerings to my little plot of land, grateful for the herbs and sanctuary it has provided me over the past year. I don’t grow any grain so I couldn’t make a traditional corn dolly, but I did make an improvised ‘Plantain dolly’ as a nod to that tradition! I collected some black berries, some grasses and herbs, burnt some dried herbal incense and lit a candle.

My own little harvest has been this website, and I’ve been giving myself a pat on the back for following through with some plans and while making a few new plans, planting some new seeds for more recorded meditations and drumming songs.

What are you harvesting, discarding or replanting this Lughnasadh?