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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Lunasa

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Find Your Anchor

I am thinking that anchors are probably cast iron which can corrode, but the earliest ones were huge rocks. Ancient Greeks are alleged to have filled hollow logs with lead. But iron was the first choice of metal for anchors. Which then led me on to the fairy tradition of being averse to iron. Iron is only used when they wish to sever ties with a particular realm or dimension forever. Which may be why they landed on Iron Mountain when the Tuatha dé Danaan pitched up in Eireann. Also why they are alleged to have been piking it back to Iron Mountain after their defeat at the Second Battle of Moytura and their subsequent shift into the sídh.

The global news in grim and it is understandable why you might be rubbing some haemotite and mumbling 'Beam Me Up, Scotty!."

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Trouble with Lammas

Lammas < Old English hlæfmæsse, “loaf mass.”

“A harvest festival formerly held in England on August 1 when bread baked from the season's first ripe grain was consecrated.”

Blessing the harvest's first grain: something we've probably been doing since the end of the last Ice Age.

But (etymologically speaking, anyway) the name is inescapably Christian. What to do?

Well, there's always Lúnasa. (That's the simplified Modern Irish form of the feast known in Old Irish as Lughnasadh [and by many other spellings]).

But that name has problems of its own. For one, it's specific to a specific culture and a specific pantheon. For another, for English-speakers, it is and always will be a foreign import.

Some Old Craft folks that I know wouldn't be caught dead using a Pagan Revival term like Lúnasa. In the old days, under the radar was the only safe way to fly. Where they come from, it's Lammas all the way.

Here's one you probably haven't heard before: the Gule of August. We get Gule (rhymes with Yule, which is nice) from French, although there's a Welsh form (Gwyll) too; its ultimate origin may be Latin vigilia, “vigil.” Well, in the Wonderful World of Polytheism more is generally better; “Gule” is fine if you want to mystify your friends.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Mariah Sheehy
    Mariah Sheehy says #
    This Gaelic polytheist/Druid/ is glad the pan-Pagan Celtic trend seems to be waning a bit. I'm happy to share Lunasa with anyone
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    So, your down home famtrad would have home made bread, preferably from home grown grain. The making of corn dollies, especially th
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Please, please, please, O gods: Please may every dish on the Lammas table not have zucchini in it. So mote it be!
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Thanks Tasha, I love "Word to the Wise." Happy Lammas.
  • Aline "Macha" O'Brien
    Aline "Macha" O'Brien says #
    Wonderful, Steve, as always. Thanks! Sharing on Macha's FB page.

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

It is Lunasa in a week's time. Here in Ireland the hints of autumn have come early. The billberries are already plump. My husband has cut down some rye grass for me to make harvest decorations. The rowan berries are already reddening.  Everything in nature feels a bit rushing the season, early, out of sync somehow. The actual weather has been bucking previous summer trends as well.  We have had long spells without heavy rain, only soft smatterings, more extended bursts of sunshine than unusual, but also warmer and more humid spells, with lots of oppressive low cloud. Which may not be so unusual since our celestial, astrological weather is pretty maverick right now, too. But this summer season has also felt like an extended dreamtime to me.

I know that in some places readers are drowning in record rainfall. My friend in Arizona has endured 50C/120F days with only water condensers to cool them down. The hot, humid NE USA means my friend with MS is very grateful for supermarkets that are open 24/7; she has to avoid the heat of the day to do shopping since that might trigger an episode.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Colors of Lunasa

What are the colors of Lunasa?

Green and gold, one might think: the unripe grain, and the ripe.

And so it is. But these are the Lunasa of the fields, the Lunasa of Earth.

And there are other Lunasas.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Time of the Mother

We call it Lammas or Lunasa, and think of it as marking the commencement of the grain harvest.

And so indeed it does. In Western Minnesota, they're beginning the cutting of the “small grains” even as you read this.

But here in the New World, this was a festival long before the ships from Europe arrived with their sacks of seed wheat and barley.

“Green Corn,” they called it, and among many peoples, it was the greatest feasting of the year.

Maize cultivation came into Northern America from Mexico about 2000 years ago, and spread up along the river valleys. In the Upper Mississippi Valley, where I live, they've kept Green Corn for almost 1000 years now.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Yep. There's Betty Windsor up there on the right. Pagan holiday stamps: may we live to see them.
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    Love that postage stamp at the top of the page. I'm guessing it's English.

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

In Ireland we have already had a chilly intimation of autumn. Last weekend was spent at a Bards By the Hearth event, since the weather was too abysmal for going out, even to walk John's lovely Tree Labyrinth. But being so close to Lammas, and since it was a Bring and Share event, I made my standard soda bread. It is technically a Northern Irish 'wheaten' loaf, except I make it with spelt. Like so many in Ireland, if I can't get organic wheat flour or buy an artisan loaf in a Farmer's Market, my gut pleads with me to stick with spelt.  Even one of the owner's of Ireland's big bread companies has just announced that he is gluten intolerant.


But I digress from Lunasa. You need to celebrate the harvest and baking bread is the best way I know.  It seems cheating if you resort to the bread machine, which I often do during busy weeks to make sure that I have a decent loaf in the house. Baking yeast bread can be tricky and takes time and patience to get the knack. But Irish soda bread is a sinch.  Our ancestors made it on an open fire. Indeed, a Belcoo woman still goes up to her ancestral cottage to make her 'fadge' (as thy call it in Fermanagh) on the open hearth, just as women down the centuries have done. It tastes better according to Margaret.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Trouble with Lammas

OK, I'll admit it: “Lammas” bugs me.

Yeah, yeah, purism is its own punishment, I know. But it's Hláf-mæsse: “Loaf Mass.” Not our ritual, not our word.

There's always Lúnasa, sure and that's a nice pagan word. (You can keep all your Gs, Hs, and Ds for all of me: if Lúnasa is a good enough spelling for the Irish Language Academy, it's good enough for me.) But it's Irish. It's a borrow, an import. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

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