Lughnasadh and the Wheel of the Year
Hi there, and welcome. Happy Lughnasadh! :)
Gosh, this is my first-ever post as Folkflora. My idea with this project is to create a space where I can explore nature, folk wisdom, creativity, and meaningful living through my point of view.
And, to get us started, I want to take some time in this newsletter to properly introduce the concept of the Wheel of the Year.
What is the Wheel of the Year anyway?
The Wheel of the Year consists of eight festivals, about six to seven weeks apart. There are actually four solar points – the two solstices and two equinoxes – and four “cross-quarter” days which fall roughly between them (Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain). Together they mark the agricultural and seasonal year in an ordered and circular pattern, thus a wheel — sowing, growth, harvest, slumber, each with its own festival attached.
The idea we have today of the Wheel is mostly a modern reconstruction, built together in the course of the twentieth century by scholars and practitioners drawing on scattered older Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and European folk traditions. Also, if I’m being honest, the “eight festival” wheel as it is frequently presented today cannot be considered so much a single unbroken ancient tradition, as a thoughtful synthesis of genuinely old, separate practices. That doesn’t reduce its significance; it only makes its history a little more nuanced than is sometimes stated.
Lughnasadh specifically
Lughnasadh is named after Lugh, a prominent figure in Irish mythology, and was a traditional festival to celebrate the start of the harvest season, particularly the grain harvest. Its English counterpart, Lammas (from “loaf mass”), was a time for baking bread from the first cut grain and taking it to be blessed, a tradition with real roots in Anglo-Saxon England.
Both traditions share one central idea: the first true evidence of the year that the work of planting and caring has paid off. Not the whole harvest yet, that is later, at the autumn equinox and beyond – but the first, significant evidence of it.
Why this moment still matters
I find Lughnasadh to be a good time to reflect, regardless of religion or spirituality, on what I’ve done and accomplished this year so far. It is a little more than halfway through the summer season, so it is a good opportunity to meditate on what you have planted in your life (figuratively and literally) and see what harvest you have reaped for the first time.
A simple way to mark it
If you want to celebrate Lughnasadh, even in any small way, baking bread is the most intimate, traditional way to do so. Or cooking a meal in season, using whatever local berries and vegetables are available. And sharing the fruits of your (or your community’s) labour with friends and family, as a reminder of the harvest. But if you want something a little more simple and reflective, think about what has been reaped in the early, small ways so far this year – and what remains to be reaped before the great harvests of the autumn festivals roll around.
Thanks for reading,
Lorena @ Folkflora