Wheel of the Year Almanac: Lughnasadh

Explore the first harvest of the autumn season.

The Wheel of the Year refers to a visual representation of the eight annual Celtic pagan celebrations honouring the cycles of the Earth. In some schools of thought the Wheel represents the journey of the God and Goddess as they dance through the seasons, demonstrating themes of birth, courtship, marriage and pregnancy, death and circling back to a period of rebirth. These themes mirror the change evident throughout the natural world; new life beginning in spring, growth and strength in the summer, reflecting great abundance at harvest season in the fall and the need to retreat and reflect in the cold depths of winter. We can look to these stories as a guide for our own lives and show our inextricable connection to Nature that forever links us to our origins and those who walked before us.

To quote from my first instalment of this series - An Introduction to the Wheel of the Year:

The Wheel is a modern concept, developed in the early days of Wicca (which if you didn't know, is a more modern pagan organised religion), but I find it a really wonderful visual representation of the seasons and how the natural landscape evolves throughout the year. The weather changes - the temperature is different, the trees change and our desires and inner landscape changes also.

These changes shift and then repeat each year, moving like the literal turn of a wheel. This is also a wonderful reminder for me that although sometimes things can feel hard or like you are in a situation that you can’t see a way out of, even in the darkest of times; the wheel continues turning. There is no end, just a slow perpetual unfurling of the Earth’s magic month by month, day by day.

An unending series of opportunities to make different choices, new choices or the same choices if they are truly serving us well. The symbol of a circle, like the ouroboros, offers a sense of hope that there is a new dawn and a new dusk and that we have the chance to renew ourselves with each passing moment.

In this newsletter I want to offer my first in-depth written introduction to one individual sabbat (I have covered many of the sabbats on the podcast already), discussing Lammas or Lughnasadh, the first harvest festival. We’ll talk history and folklore, deities, associations and correspondences, activities and ways to celebrate, giving you a well-rounded understanding of this spoke on the wheel and how you can observe and celebrate the sabbat in your own life.

History and Folklore of Lughnasadh

Lughnasadh is known by many names, including Lammas, Lughnasad, Lughnassadh, Gwyl Awst (Wales), Lla Lluanys (Isle of Man) among others. In other countries, this festival signified the end of summer and the beginning of the harvest season which was of great importance as it was the first idea of whether your family was likely to have enough food to preserve and consume through the cold winter months. Would your family starve, or would you have the supplies to sustain you as the nights grew longer?

In terms of the namesake of Lughnasadh, Lugh was a god of craftsmanship, skills and the arts who has many varying stories of his origin. The roots of the first harvest festivities mostly fall into two schools of thought; one being that Lughnasadh was the celebration of Lugh’s marriage, and the other that it was an occasion to honour his foster mother Tailtiu who died of exhaustion after clearing the land in Ireland for agriculture.

It is said to be a bad omen to harvest the grain before this time of year, as if you needed to harvest the grain early it meant that your supply from the previous year was not plentiful enough to last your family through the seasons.

If we were to look at the more Wiccan journey of the God and Goddess, this is a time of year when the Sun God has realised that he must sacrifice himself in order to provide for his people across the next cycle and transforms into the God of the Harvest, ready to be cut down and kept for the winter. There is a significant archetypal representation of the themes of death and rebirth at this time. The Mother Goddess is pregnant at this time, and also ready to journey into the underworld to complete her pregnancy, readying herself to birth the God once again on the winter solstice. This is why the winter solstice is considered by some (myself included) as the witch’s new year as this is the time that the wheel completes its turn and begins again.

There is so much more I could say on this, but as always I like to refer to Frances Billinghurst’s book “Dancing the Sacred Wheel”. Frances’ book covers each sabbat in great depth with a focus on the experiences following the wheel in the southern hemisphere. She covers migration of native animals, what our actual weather is like across Australia and her interpretations of the wheel as it applies to our part of the world.

Frances reflects that the beginning of February is one of the hottest times of the year, and instead of our crops being ripe and ready for the picking we see what hasn’t already been harvested burn up and die off. She speaks to our experience being more aligned with a time of the high summer goddess, and yet how this still ties into being a time of release and letting go or burning away what no longer serves us. These are just some additional thoughts to ponder when figuring out what feels right for you in applying the wheel to your life if you happen to live in Australia.

Correspondences and Associations

There are so many wonderful ways that you can work with colours, stones, symbols, herbs and more to ground in and connect with the Lughnasadh season. As with every sabbat and even every esbat (we can cover esbats in another newsletter) I find they are best celebrated holistically. This means that we work with our observational practise - noticing how the seasons are changing in front of our eyes, feeling the temperature shift in our bodies and noticing even how our appetites and moods transition during these times - and take it to another level by experiencing these changes in a tangible and external way.

This could be through building seasonal tables, and altars, decorating our homes or switching up our weekly menus to include more seasonal foods. These are all ways to honour the Earth’s rhythms, live in a way that is more aligned with nature and to develop a strong devotional attitude to our everyday life. I find this is a fantastic way to also build up a solid foundation of gratitude, which I will share more on in future newsletters too.

So, what are some of the correspondences that you can incorporate into your home and daily rituals?

• Colours: Autumnal colours including browns, oranges, yellows, greens and reds - think the colour of a maple tree as it begins to turn and prepare to drop its leaves in the fall. Think of the flames of a bonfire as our ancestors celebrated the bounty of the first harvest. Imagine the golden crust of a piping hot loaf of bread made in honour of the harvested grain that would sustain your family through the winter months. Look at the world around you and be inspired by the colours that naturally exist this time of year!

• Stones: Citrine, Aventurine, Carnelian, red and brown Jasper, Tiger’s Eye, Moonstone. When considering which crystals to use you could look at the colour of the stone, but it’s also good to look at the meaning of each gem. Choosing stones that represent abundance, prosperity or protection are all excellent qualities to look for during the first harvest.

• Symbols: This is a harvest festival and a fire festival, so you can look to symbols that may represent these themes. Examples of these include fire and flames, wheat, corn dollies, bread, scythes or sunflowers. You could also decide to work with symbols of the deities that are tied to this sabbat - for example, a sheaf of wheat or a torch to represent Demeter.

• Deities: Speaking of gods and goddesses that represent Lughnasadh, there are several that are tied to the season and can be considered when building spells, rituals or when adorning the home or an altar space.

  • Ceres - the Roman goddess of the harvest and the grain

  • Demeter - Greek goddess who rules the changing of the seasons, mother of Persephone

  • Hestia - Greek goddess of the hearth and protector of the home

  • Lugh - the namesake of this sabbat, Lugh is the Celtic god of craftsmanship and the harvest

  • Renenutet - Egyptian goddess of nourishment, the hearth and fertility

  • Saturn - the God of the harvest and agriculture

  • Vesta - Roman guardian of the hearth and home, protector of the sacred fire

• Plants: This time of year we are beginning to turn inward and tuck ourselves away as the weather grows cooler. Looking for herbs that offer cleansing, protection and nurturing the hearth of the home would be ideal. You could consider rosemary for protection and cleansing, yarrow for protection, mint to call in abundance, mugwort for dreaming and guardianship or meadowsweet to ward off negative energy and attract love, peace and happiness. You could also start looking for plants that will support your immune system as the weather slowly starts to change. Examples might be thyme, elderberry, ginger and cinnamon.

Ways to Celebrate Lughnasadh

There are so many beautiful ways to slow down and cultivate a simple yet meaningful seasonal ritual practise for yourself and/or your family. While there are some seriously stunning internet accounts out there showing glamorous and very extensive means of celebrating, that isn’t necessary (though fun if you’re into that). Your time and resources should decide what is reasonable for you to achieve and maintain, and your unique interests can be a focal point for what activities you decide to participate in for each sabbat. We covered designing sustainable seasonal celebrations for your family in a podcast episode with naturopath Holly Moffitt which provides some fun, realistic and meaningful ideas on how to weave in your nature-based spirituality into life with kids.

In saying this, there are some common ways that you may enjoy when celebrating Lughnasadh. They include making corn dollies, baking bread to share or making grain-based food, partaking in a harvest feast, building your altar, completing a candle ritual, or writing down things that you would like to release with the new season ahead and burning the paper. Bonfires are a great way to mark a fire festival, as well as harvesting the bounty from your garden if you have one. Cleansing and protection magic, literal deep cleaning to prepare your home for the darker times ahead and setting intentions for what you’d like to call in are additional ways that you could choose to harness the energy of the season.

There are no right or wrong ways to get festive and honour Lughnasadh or any other sabbat. My greatest piece of advice is, again, to let nature lead the way and take inspiration from the world around you to create solid foundational practises that will serve you and your loved ones for many moons to come. The ways that you participate in a sabbat are allowed to change and should be flexible so that you can avoid any feelings of overwhelm or disappointment! This is not in the spirit of the season and no one needs to bring additional stress to a time that is meant to be enjoyable and sacred. Your needs and how you celebrate may also change as your family grows and as your interests and desires develop.

I hope this offers some insight into the sabbat of Lughnasadh, and that you feel excited to begin putting together a day curated to what lights you up about autumn. Let me know if you have any tips or ideas to share with me or our community!

Blessed be,
Hannah.

p.s. If you want to ask your questions directly, I have a small, low-cost visioning workshop coming up on Saturday the 15th of February. This workshop will address diet, lifestyle and your spiritual needs - learning how to create a life that is in flow and allows you to more easily call in your dreams and goals in a holistic way. You will receive a recording if you can’t make it live, but there are limited spaces so take a look and book your ticket now!