Source: Filip y Kito
Tuesday 1st August marks Lughnasa and a full moon. Lughnasa is the the fourth and last major cross quarter festival before the Celtic new year - Samhain, and the seventh festival in the Celtic Wheel Of The Year calendar.
Our ancestors recognised time as seasons of energy and cosmological events. The calendar they created is a valuable source of essential wisdom, especially during this current time of change and conscious evolution.
Lughnasa is one of the four key earth and agricultural festivals, along with Samhain (Nov 1st), Imbolc (Feb 1st), Bealtaine (May 1st, It is associated with the moon and considered to be a feminine festival.
We’re now in the latter half of the samos part of the Celtic Wheel calendar, which is ruled by masculine energy and is the bright half of the year. The bright half of the year is very much about ‘doing’ in a linear rational way of living and being. It has the energy of performing and action, activity, work and outward expression. It’s a time of outward energy and focus.
Lughnasa marks the beginning of a breathing out and pausing period. This energy of slowing and winding down begins at Lughnasa and stretches through Autumn Equinox culminating at Samhain (the Celtic New year) when we dive into the deep surrender of the feminine dark half of the year.
We’re entering the season of harvest.
It’s time to celebrate work and gather in community with others, to thank nature and to celebrate Lugh and his skilled masculine and creative energy of this time. Like all the festivals of the calendar, Lughnasa lasts for three days and three nights and is a time of ‘time out of time’. The festivals allow us to acknowledge and remember a different way of living, a different worldview based on our connectivity and inextricable links to nature and the cosmos.
As we become more familiar to these festivals, we can enrich our lives with their wisdom and learn ways of using these ancestral gifts to move forward today in a conscious new way.
There is a fundamental relationship between us humans and nature, one we can’t get away from, It’s a knowing deep inside of us that our spirit and consciousness will not allow us to forget. This is because our spirit is nature and nature is our spirit.
Welcome the Lughnasa season at this time, contemplate times of harvest in your life. Look beyond the linear season and begin to experience and welcome the energy that this season brings. Don’t struggle against the energies of these natural rhythms, to do so is to struggle with yourself, allow yourself to surrender a little and trust in the earth to hold you.
Lughnasa Energy = Acceptance / Harvest / Community / Exhale
Rituals
HARVEST - Food, Ideas, Energy, Words, Spells, Art, Music, Movement, Joy, Love, Pain, Hair…
Hair - I’ve been ‘harvesting’ my hair a lot recently, it’s definitely a significant rite for me as I transition into new space and energy. Cutting your own hair can be an empowering crowning ritual. Once cut, offer your hair to the land, bury it or place it under a bush or a tree - Your hair is way too precious to be swept into a bin, it contains energy you no longer require.
Art - Creativity is flowing right now - Harvest your art.
Agnes Denes is a renowned Hungary-American and artist with numerous pioneering artworks that carried a prophetic message.
In the act of protest against global warming and economic inequality, she planted an expansive wheatfield in a landfill created after the construction of the Twin Towers, in downtown Manhattan, in 1982.
The field stretched two acres and was planted and harvested by the artist herself in the summer of 1982. It is planting a field of wheat on a property worth $4.5 billion created a powerful irony. The field referred to mismanagement, waste, ecological concerns, and world hunger. The act drew attention to the world’s misplaced priorities.
Denes deliberately selected the location due to its proximity to Wall Street, a financial hub and home of the stock exchange where goods such as wheat are traded. This concurrently referenced the economy of the world as well as the state of the earth itself.
Speaking about the work, Agnes Denes said1:
Making art today is synonymous with assuming responsibility for our fellow humans. We are the first species that has the ability to consciously alter its evolution, even put an end to its existence. We have gotten hold of our destiny, and our impact on earth is astounding. Because of our tremendous ‘success’ we are overrunning the planet, squandering its resources.