#lugh

[reejindeed]

Another Lugh-inspired drawing. He’s easy to go for inspiration, especially right now when things are feeling their craziest.

[goddessofstrife]

money comes easily to me and my hard work always pays off💰🪙

⋆˖⁺‧₊⋆˖⁺‧₊ ☽◯☾ ₊‧⁺˖⋆₊‧⁺˖⋆

[nestwrought]

Giftset of my OC amv (Without You/Oh Wonder)

Kindly, do not tag these as warrior cats. They are not Warriors OCs.

[ponysprouts]

happy lughnasa 🌽🌾🧺

[birdsofrhiannon]

Lugh

[sylverra]

Shop Update!

Lots of nifty new items this week, check it out:

Lugh statue

Cernunnos Plaque

6" Fluorite point

Rose quartz & tourmaline glass orb pendulums

1" Rhodonite pyramids

Gold sheen obsidian palm stones

Labradorite point necklaces

Aqua calcite points

Fossil coral chips

Tree agate points

Rough green aventurine

Drawstring compartment bags

> See all our newest additions here <

Happy shopping! 💚💜

Browse the full catalog →

[aodhan-art]

pov: Lugh Samildánach offers you a game of fidchell. your bet?

[hearthandheathenry]

All About Lughnasadh

Lughnasadh, also known as Lughnasa or Lúnasa, is the name given to the Gaelic festival that represents the beginning of the harvest season, which traditionally falls on August 1st in the northern hemisphere. The holiday is about halfway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox, and is one of the 4 Gaelic seasonal festivals. Although it is traditionally Irish, many neopagans celebrate the holiday as well.

Traditionally named after the Irish God Lugh, Lughnasadh has been documented to be celebrated since at least the middle ages and involved great gatherings, ceremonies, athletic games like the Tailteann Games, feasting, horse racing, matchmaking, trading, and more, and were traditionally celebrated on top of hills and mountains. The festival remained widely celebrated until about the 20th century, where it seemed to be replaced by Christian counterparts.

Lugh, the God the festival is named after, is said to have founded the holiday as a funeral feast and funeral games to commemorate the death of an earth goddess. The Irish stories vary throughout regions and times, but it usually involves a woman who is stolen away or held against her will and dies of grief, shame, exhaustion, or unspecified causes. There is notable similarities to the Greek Persephone tale. According to a tale about the Lughnasadh festival site Tailtin, it is said to be a funeral for his foster-mother, Tailtiu, who was said to have died from exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agriculture. A tale about the Lughnasadh site Naas, says the festival was founded in the memory of his two wives, Nás and Bói. Another theory states it was a mourning for the end of summer.

Máire MacNeill, a folklorist, studied the later lore of the holiday and claims it is about a struggle for the harvest between Lugh and another god, often named Crom Dubh. In some stories Lugh must seize Crom Dubh's treasure of grain to give to all of mankind. In other stories, it's over a woman named Eithne who represents grain. Othertimes, its a battle of Lugh defeating a figure representing blight. There doesn't seem to be one agreed upon legend, other than it's revolving around the God Lugh.

As for ancient customs and traditions, they can vary region to region and have morphed throughout time. However, a big tradition was the gathering at Óenach Tailten, a type of olympic style games and gathering where kings declared truces during the entire festival in order to partake and compete against eachother. It included ritual athletic and sporting competitions, horse racing, music and storytelling, trading, law-making and settling legal disputes, creating contracts, and even matchmaking. A common matchmaking tradition was allowing couples to enter a trial marriage that lasted a year and a day by joining hands through a wooden door, after of which they could make permanent or break without consequences once the trial marriage was up. One gathering, called the Óenach Carmain, also consisted of a food and livestock market along with a market for foreign traders.

Other traditions also included a solemn cutting of the first corn to be offered to the deity by bringing it to a high place and burying it, a meal for everyone consisting of the new food and blueberries, a sacrifice and rituals involving a sacred bull, a ritual dance-play, reenactment of the lore, and closing ceremonies. Climbing hills and mountains were also a popular tradition, but has been rebranded overtime as Christian pilgrimages. At some gatherings, everyone wore flowers and climbed a hill, where they buried said flowers at the top to signify the ending of summer. At other gatherings, the first sheaf of harvest was buried instead.

A popular tradition up until about the 18th century were faction fights where young men fought eachother with sticks. One such game consisted of building towers of sod topped with a flag to defend from the other team's sabotaging. Bull sacrifices were also recorded into the 18th century, being used as offerings to various deities, along with special meals made from the first harvest. A special cake called the lunastain was also recorded. Visiting holy wells was also a very prominent tradition, just like during the other yearly festivals. Although bonfires were associated with Lughnasadh and the other main Celtic festivals, they were considered rare for this holiday, most likely due to the very warm summer temperatures.

Some traditions are still celebrated today in Ireland, with festivals being held in honor of Lughnasadh and re-enactors and historians reviving and teaching new generations old lore. There are still markets, traditional dancing, traditional storytelling, arts and craft workshops, feasting, and much more during these modern gatherings, keeping the traditions alive and well, even if they differ region to region. Some pagans and Wiccans also celebrate Lughnasadh, usually differing in their practices, but still using it as a signifier of the first harvest and summer's ending.

Lughnasadh Associations

Colors - yellow, orange, red, brown, green, gold, bronze

Food - blueberries, blackberries, grains, fruit, vegetables, bread, corn, beef, stews, lamb, wine, beer, cider, fruit drinks

Animals - bulls/cows, roosters, sheep

Items - scythes and harvest tools, grain/corn stalks

Crystals - citrine, aventurine, tigers eye, carnelian, topaz

Other - sporting/athletic competitive games, storytelling, matchmaking, cycle of life, harvest

Ways to celebrate:

gather blueberries or blackberries

enjoy grains or breads

make homemade bread

have a feast

climb a hill/take a pilgrimage

offer food to your deity(ies)

commit or recommit to your partner

harvest fresh food from your garden

visit a farmers market

complete a craft or make art

participate in an athletic competition or game

[traditionalwitch]

Blessed Lughnasadh!! Also August 1st is the original beginning of Autumn (I googled it briefly !!!) so Fall has begun as far as I’m concerned :) 🧚🏽‍♂️

[thehazeldruid]

Forgive the mess, I’ve been doing a lot of work on this little corner lately. Both literally, spiritually and magically in order to get my altar to a place where it feels like new again.

And the result is not a disappointing one.

It feels like mine again. It feels like a small place of safety and spiritual awareness for me again. And I can tell this is only the beginning of me deepening my practice.

[a-studious-reej]

sometimes while journeying/meditating I see something that catches my eye and I make it a point to log as much away as possible for while I’m drawing it

This was a really special one. I tried to take as many notes as possible and record what I could, but this was the best I could get from memory. I’ll probably revisit the design and try to get it more accurate if possible (it’s still missing a few things), but I still like looking at it even just like this!

[reejindeed]

Been wanting to make more work based on Irish paganism and its stories (sort of a blending of jobs hahaha), so I started with an obvious option for me.

Lugh, master of many skills! The "many skills" bit comes in handy for work and an endless sea of special interests, for sure.

[blackcrowing]

Important Facts about Lughnasadh from an Irish Celtic Reconstructionist

Spelling and Pronunciation

OI. Lughnasadh (Loo-na-sa), sometimes spelled Lughnasa or Modern Irish Lúnasa. Not to be confused with other harvest festivals like Lammas.

Dates

Most reconstructionists celebrate Lughnasadh on July 31st - August 1st from sundown to sundown by the Gregorian calendar, while others choose to celebrate the transitional period between the months as they would have been by the Julian calendar (about 13 days later by the Gregorian calendar).

Traditionally this festival likely would have happened as the grains were ready for harvesting or possibly even when the wild bilberries were ripe (as some scholars mention that if the grains were not ripe they would still preform a ritualized ‘first harvesting’ but it is possible this tradition came after the festival was firmly tied to a calendar date.)

Importance in the Mythos

In the mythologies it is well documented that this festival coincides with Lugh’s funeral games in honor of his foster-mother Tailtiu, known as Aonach Tailteann. In the mythologies she is said to have died of exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agricultural needs. The first documented instance of Lughnasadh in the mythologies was in the Wooing of Emer, Tochmarc Emire, which makes sense given the importance of marriages at this time of the year. It is not known specifically but widely speculated that the curse of the Ulstermen by Macha took place at a horse race for this festival.

In later time periods it is common to see a form of struggle, normally between the ‘protective’ forces and ‘destructive’ forces. The modern equivalent being the struggle between Saint Patrick and Crom Dubh but this is likely a reflection of an early struggle between Lugh and Balor (which I previously mentioned in my info-dump on Bealtaine).

Celebration Traditions

Aonachs, funeral games, have (to the best of our knowledge) been a custom in Ireland since the bronze age and were practiced on and off into the middle ages. They had both personal and community functions and occurred in three stages. Stage one was the funeral proceedings themselves. They would last one to three days, likely depending on the importance of the individual in question. Mourning songs and chants were participated in by both the attendees and the Druids. The second stage was for proclaiming of laws. Aonachs were a time when universal peace between túaths was declared. The third stage was that of Cuiteach Fuait, games that tested mental and physical abilities. These games included the well known horse and chariot races, wrestling games, boxing, high jumps but also competitions in strategy, singing, story telling and between various skilled craftsmen.

It was incredibly common for marriages to be arranged and preformed during this festival. More well known ‘trial marriages’ (lasting a year and a day) were still preformed at this festival up until the 13th century. It is likely that the coupling occurring at this time of year had an effect on the relationship to births seen at Imbolg (which falls 9 months later).

MacNeill, a leading scholarly expert on the festival, notes that a ritualistic bull sacrifice was made at this festival and the bull would then be eaten. I could not find any definitive evidence to support the idea, but I think it was likely that bulls in general would be culled from the herd at this point in the year to supply the feast.

Art credit @ire-ethereal

My Kofi

[spiritusloci]

A Blessed Lughnasadh (2023)

Happy Lammas, Friends.

[raining-tulips]

Alternatives to breadmaking for this lughnasadh:

Boa buns - custard dessert ones, or savory dinner ones. Can be decorated. Bread-ish, but takes less time than bread.

Pasta making - or buying fresh pasta - celebrates the grains

Rice dishes - rice is just as much about abundance as wheat is

Baking with fruits like apples, berries, and late-summer melons

Tortilla making, if that fits with your culture better

Cornbread - homemade, or that 99 cent Jiffy mix.

[birdsofrhiannon]