This year we are celebrating Lughnasa by it’s older name of Brón Trogain. For my family it begins today, July 31st as we go out and start picking berries. Berry picking for several years has been the main activity of our holiday, the way we officially begin celebrating.
Category Archives: By Land Sea and Sky
Celebrating Lughnasa, Together or Alone
It is clear from my last blog that for a modern practitioner there is an abundance of material to work with in finding ways to celebrate Lughnasa. I’m going to offer several suggestions for practice that could be used for anyone with a Irish leaning, or who would like to celebrate this holy day in a Irish manner, but I leave the actual ritual up to the individual or group to design. Personally I follow a basic structure of blessing the space, invoking the ancestors, daoine sidhe, and Gods and offering to them, praying or saying something about the purpose of the ritual, making a main offering for the holiday, divination, thanking the Powers, and feasting. My own approach is Irish Reconstructionist in nature and that doubtless colors my view, but I would like to offer this to anyone of any faith who celebrates Lughnasa.
Lughnasa – Festival of the Harvest
Lughnasa is also called Lughnasadh, Lunasa, Brón Trogain, Lunsadal, Laa Luanys, Calan Awst, and Gouel an Eost, and Alexei Kondratiev conjectures that the Celts of Gaul may have called this celebration Aedrinia (Kondratiev, 1998). The many names of the holiday show it’s pan-Celtic character, and demonstrate that it could be found across the Celtic world. Several of the names for the holiday are references to the beginning of autumn or of the harvest.
Odin By Any Other Name
Most Gods have a variety of different epithets attached to them and some have several different names that they are known by but none may have as many as Wodan who many know as Odin. If we look at all the different mythology and lore we find that Odin has more than 200 different names that he uses in different contexts or is known by in different places. Each of these names can be useful in helping us better understand who this enigmatic God is and I have also found it very useful to call on specific names of Odin when I need to honor or pray to different aspects of his energy.
the Story of the Sword
“Fergus dixit ’ ‘Fó fer fris tibther manip sceó mera mórgnímo merthar airbiur mo chlaidib mache mind mosdísem calga de Galión gáir…”
“Fergus said: ‘By the point of my sword, halidom of Macha, swiftly shall we wreak vengeance on swords following on a cry (for help)…”
-Tain Bo Cuailgne
Finding Your Gods
If there’s one thing that seems to be a constant in neopaganism and polytheism it is the rush by newcomers to the concept of multiple deities to find “their Gods”. I have seen endless iterations of this over the years, of people who have converted from another faith who then immediately feel the need to declare who their Gods are.
Isa
The third rune of the second aett is Isa, which is equivalent to the letter I in English. The rune looks like a straight vertical line. Isa is most strongly associated with ice. The Icelandic rune poem calls Isa:
“bark of rivers
and roof of the wave
and destruction of the doomed.”
St. Gall’s Incantations
There are a collection of healing charms which include some fairly overt pagan references found in the Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus grouped under the heading of St. Gall’s Incantations. Below I’m including three of the originals and my own modified and updated versions.
"I am Guarding Your Death"
Saturday morning I was home, getting ready to head over to my friend’s store when my mother called me. She and my oldest daughter had gone over to my grandmother’s apartment, a few minutes drive from my house, to check on her. My mother’s voice on the phone was small and hesitant, “Morgan, your grandmother’s died. What do I do?”
A Dream of Lughnasa
I had a strange dream last night about a ritual at Lughnasa. In the dream the people had gathered to honor Macha and Nuada at the harvest, which they were calling Brón Trogain. Everyone had met at a recently harvested field, the earth exposed with only a stubble of stems left jutting up in ragged rows. Two horses had been harnessed together with someone walking behind them, driving them. Two older girls walked in front and to each side of the horses tossing handfuls of straw in their path. The horses were driven over the straw as someone prayed to Macha to bless the earth and Nuada to ward it. I do not remember all the words of the dream prayer, only this part – “…walking, may your steps be sacred steps, walking, may Macha, raven of fierceness, bless this earth, walking, may Nuada, hound of battle, ward what we hold dear…”.