Lughnasadh (pronounced LOO-NA-SAH) takes place on 1 August in the Northern Hemisphere and is the festival of the first harvest. It celebrates the harvesting of wheat in late July and early August. Lammas, a connected festival which may be a Christian interpretation of the earlier Lughnasadh celebration, is thought to mean ‘loaf mass’, which also references the wheat harvest. (I believe most of my readers are in the Northern Hemisphere, but for my Southern friends, here’s an Imbolc blessing)
When we stand on the spoke of the wheel of Lughnasadh,
We shade our eyes to look out across a field of hazy summer days
To the harvest festival of autumn
Like the outline of a tall tree on the distant hedge line
On this festival of the first flour
May you have beautifully enough
May your daily bread satisfy you and delight you
May your plate, and your life, be rich in flavour
May you take into yourself all the days
The grain has grown in sun-soaked and rain-washed fields
To nurture you and sustain you today
May you call to mind
The complex dance of interdependence
Which connects you to the seed which is planted beneath the earth
May you offer gratitude that you don’t have to do this all alone
In honour of the stalks of wheat whose time has come
May you find opportunities to bend in the breeze
May you rustle
May you sigh
May you soak up the goodness of the sun
And find you want for nothing.
May the season of summer be within you
And may you feel beneath the pulse of daily life
The deeper rhythm which sighs,
‘All is well, all is well, all is well.’
To learn more about Lughnasadh and the Celtic Wheel of the Year, I always recommend the excellent resources at the Goddess and the Green Man.
Grateful thanks to David Becker on Unsplash for the beautiful cover image.
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