Harvests
The wheel spirals us now towards the end of the season of light and masculinity we greeted at Bealtaine; the dark, rich feminine of the traditional darker half of the year now calling us forward. Lughnasadh greets us this coming Tuesday on the full moon in Aquarius, while the Sun is in Leo. A double celebration! This is the ‘wheat moon’ and sure enough, Lughnasadh (sometimes called Lammas - the ‘loaf mass’) is the first of the three harvest festivals in our Celtic tradition and it is the festival of the grains, of wheat. This is also the season of peak light and peak heat. The ‘dog days of summer’ have been upon us, brought on by the heliacal rise of Sirius - the dog star - who will begin his descent in just a few short weeks.
Celebrate with Animisma - All Things In-Spirited
You are warmly invited to listen to the podcasts I currently have dedicated to the first harvest. It can be found here on my Substack, on my website, or on all podcast apps:
Season 2, Episode 6: Lughnasadh, The First Harvest
Lughnasadh is the festival of the God Lugh and his stepmother Tailtiu. A cross-quarter fire festival (halfway between the solstice and the equinox) this beautiful day is the peak of summer and is celebrated as the first of the three harvest festivals. It is a time to celebrate accomplishment, transformation, wisdom, strength and beauty. In this episode we make a traditional pilgrimage to a Clootie Well and learn of the wisdom that is offered by the blessed and sacred Hazel tree of knowledge. Transformation, strength, accomplishment, pride, celebration of the first harvest, the grain harvest - Lughnasadh is a time for honoring all that has been achieved in the warmth of the summer sun, while starting our gentle walk away from the light towards the darker half of the year.
Season 1, Episode 5: Lughnasadh
This time of heat and light is a celebration of all that has been seeded and grown. In the face of our human awakening and the clearing of old wounds and old ways making space for the growth of the new, we can take a pause at this time to reflect on all that has grown, all that is beautiful, all that is true.
Sacrifice is also a common theme here at Lughnasadh - that we too must now sacrifice the warm part of the year, the light-filled energetics of the growing half of the year, and welcome the cooling, deepening, and going within. The invitation here is to celebrate life and the harvest with great intention, in preparation for the darkening and cooling ahead. Take stock and assessment of the harvest of your year - what was planted and has now flourished? What blessings can we be thankful for? While the days are long and warm, while the flowers blossom and the trees bear their fruit, let’s unite in our deepest appreciation for all that we have on this resplendent, green, beautiful Earth and fill our hearts and our cups to the brim.
In this offering, we explore the story of Lugh, the Great Goddess Tailtu, and the festival celebrating their myth at this time of year. We pause through poetry and reflection to honor our divinity, wounds, and healing journeys. And we close with a rattling to honor the Sun Gods and the well Divine Masculine energy in our world. May you and all you hold dear be blessed by the radiance of the Sun, the Season, of the Ancient Ones honored by this festival, Lugh and Tailtiu. I wish you a beautiful, sacred, and health-filled high summer festival of Lughnasadh!
A Blessing
May you and all you hold dear be endlessly and gloriously blessed by the beginning of the divine harvest season, may Meadowsweet delight your senses and bless your connections, and may Hazel’s divine wisdom and inspiration nourish you for the cooling times ahead.
Heartbreak
My dearest kin. It has been a tender time. My beloved niece, a professional skydiver and shining one, left our earthly realm on June 24, 2023. She experienced 29 solar returns during her time here with us. It was an immediate departure, she did not suffer, and she leaves behind a loving family who trust that her spirit is shining, and who miss her embodied self deeply. Beyond deeply.
Being an Aunty has been one of the most profound experiences of my life, and it was with her birth that this beautiful name was bestowed upon me. I have no children of my own, it was clear to me from a very young age that human motherhood was not a part of this life’s journey. Aunty, however, was always clear. She called me Aunty, even as an adult, and it warmed my heart and made me feel important and whole, giving my life meaning every time she said it. We were cut from the same cloth, her and I. Travelers, journeyers, spiritualists, and lovers of life. Connected with the plants and the stars. Adventurers, seekers, and compassionate providers of comfort to those in need. She showed me the continuum of our bloodline and made me feel less alone in the world of man. I showed her the magic in the family and that she too was not alone. She made me feel like I belonged and honestly, I miss her desperately. Had I ever had a child, I could have only dreamed she would have been as my Mel. Our Melissa. Our beloved.
Her death has had a profound impact on my life.
Death can do this, of course. Reckon with our senses. Recalibrate our inner compasses. Remind us of who we really are and why we’re really here. The death of each season has an impact on me as well, of course in a far softer way. Mel’s death and the grief that has accompanied it has been kicking up all sorts of dust within and around me these past weeks.
Why do I write?
What do I really want to share? I mean really want to share.
What is this song that sings deep in my bones and flushes through my heart and sometimes leaks out onto a page?
What are the trees and waters and clouds and dusk skies asking of me? Am I listening?
Am I listening?
Are we listening?
I have been on my knees in prayer, my altar changing shape and form almost daily. I have laid in a heap and cried before it, more than once. The candles have burned down and ash has spread. It’s a mess right now and I refuse to clean it. My heart, my guide, has needed to moan, and keen, and bellow the deep grief songs as they have lifted from my skin and my hair and my teeth. I have a white rose on my altar from her service, the service I held for her community in Texas, the service where a team of her beloved sky kin flew in an ‘M’ formation in the sky and released her ashes forming an immediate cloud we could see from the ground, a cloud that grew arms and legs as it began to dissipate, a final goodbye.
We undertook a rose ritual, everyone present was offered a rose, and then together we walked across the runway of the dropzone to the waters where her body landed. After the sky team had returned to the earth, I shared one more poem with the gathering, whispered prayers of love and safe passage into my coral-colored rose, a rose the color of her beautiful hair, and offered the first rose into the water. Everyone participated, releasing roses, sending prayers and wishes. The pond filled with roses, the sun set in a warm, neon glow, and together we hugged and shared stories and watched a most beautiful memorial film made by one of her dear, dear friends. There is so much more I could share about the service, the etheric tree that held us, the song of the land and the sky, the hearts of her kin, her mother, her brother, and her friends.
The white rose on my altar was the rose I placed on the bag containing her ashes. Her beautiful, dusty remains were with us throughout the service. Right next to me. I felt her spirit, smiling and shining, offering prayers to the broken hearts of her family and friends. I’m not sure how long the rose will stay with me, maybe forever, maybe not, but for now it sits and waits and dries in its good time, and I hold it close to my heart and pray for its medicine to soothe my roaring sadness when the waves of grief engulf me and the warm seas rise above the dams of my eyes.
Peace be with my beloved Mel.
Peace be with all of our departed ancestors and descendants.
Peace, be.
Death brings awakening.
Oracular shamanic work, the witch work, the sage work, has returned to me. It informs my writing and the way I move through the world, however, I am seeing new things and learning new lessons with each and every day. Old lessons. Known lessons. This death has reaffirmed the path and the practice within me and I feel my deceased, departed niece smiling and nodding every time I say the words aloud.
On my 44th birthday this year, I asked the ocean and sky for reminders and blessings. I was in the Pacific Ocean in Mexico. Two giant jaguars appeared in spirit. The ocean was direct and clear.
This is who you are. This is what you do. Whether through your words or your work in the world you hold rites, strengthen the weak, balance power, and connect through the realms. This is who you are and you are here to shine. Be a beacon of hope. Tell stories of wonder. Show the humans what it feels like to be intimately connected to all of existence. To love unconditionally and in that love create a field where only healing lives. To offer spiritual connection, vitality, and hope. You are a seer and that is simply all there is. Go to Crete. Help others. Show the humans what a heart filled with love is. Partner with your plant kin. This is all there is. Onward daughter. Onward sister.
Onward.
Who might you be, dear reader, dear kin?
What is your beautiful medicine?
What stories are written on your heart in letters of light?
Do you see that you are a vessel of divine beauty?
Whose song do you sing oh beloved family of mine?
What’s Next
Changes… I love the wheel of the year. I live by it. It holds me and binds me in the most gentle of ways to the cycle of the plants, birds, and the seasons, to this glorious blue jewel of a planet. I have tracked it now for many years, sharing these missives as the wheel turns, and this year, on Samhain, I will shift away from this cycle of sharing. Perhaps I will write to you on the cross-quarter festivals. Perhaps I will follow another cycle close to my heart - that of the moon - perhaps. Maybe mercury’s retrogrades… Clarity is hard won in these mists of grief yet a path slowly reveals itself. All I know is that Samhain calls me home to other stories, other work. The cycle of the wheel will always be here, and I deeply encourage you to calendar it, journey with it, work with it, and celebrate it.
Musings on how to not be stung/carried away with/overwhelmed by the prevailing issues of our times seem to resonate with people... Perhaps I might offer more reflections on how to navigate our world through my beloved, ancestral, Earth-based lens of Celtic Animism. Elizabeth Oldfield of Fully Alive recently asked for advice on how one deals with the Climate Crisis. You can read my response to her request here.
Sleep. Something about Animisma soothes listeners and helps their inner chatter to rest, while Celtic lore and myth drift their minds across the mists into their dreaming time. In service of this, I’m warmed to share that I will release a limited podcast series later this year to be used as a rest/sleep aid. I will be slowly reading a children’s book my grandmother won in 3rd grade in 1939. It’s about fairy gardens. It’s long. It has a few tiny illustrations that she colored in with pencil 80-odd years ago. For adults and children alike, the goal of this offering is that you never actually know what happens, simply play the story and let it drift around you, calling you to a feathered land of soft, nourishing sleep. The project is called “Magical Stories for Sleepy Strawberries” and was inspired by my younger, most beloved, red-haired twin nieces, Abby and Evie, my sweet strawberries. Just as with Mel, these two magical, gorgeous humans, give me life, they are beyond loved, and it is my true privilege to be their Aunty. Funnily enough, I won a book prize almost 50 years later in 4th grade and chose ‘Elves and Fairies’ - perhaps I will offer some of its poems too… The ancestral connections… the lands of the fae.
Incubator. This winter, writing, leadership, and the creative path will be in full focus. From the autumn equinox of 2023 to the spring equinox of 2024 I will be participating in the ÁES DÁNA INCUBATOR - MYTHICAL LEADERSHIP FOR ‘PEOPLE OF THE ARTS’ For women who desire to bring Irish (Celtic) mythology to life through their art (all forms from visual art to writing and poetry to theatre to filmmaking), healing professions, creative industry—and pioneer a new wave of feminine leadership in the process. Jen is an incredible human and a mythical powerhouse and I can’t wait to undertake this incubator during the richest time of my creative process with her. If this also sounds interesting to you, perhaps you might like to reach out her way and join me on this journey.
Memoir Update. This project like so many writing projects has taken some interesting twists and turns. Still the story of my mother and I and our remarkable healing journey, the story has asked me to expand the timelines. What was once focused solely on our relationship has now expanded and it may well morph again. The plants are guiding my fingers. Either way, it continues, slowly decaying and sprouting, as all good gardens do.
Ritual and Counsel. A humble offering of gratitude. What an incredible honor it has been to provide counsel for my beloved clients and to hold ceremonies for weddings, memorials, and menarches this Summer. I’m so looking forward to the next wedding I’ll be undertaking in Ireland in a few short weeks, it’s going to be a truly magical ceremony for a truly magical couple. Ceremony unites us, strengthens our ties, releases our pains, preserves our traditions, evolves our minds, resolves our hearts, and offers us important rites of passage as we mark our lives along the passage of time. Please know that if you are ever looking for ritual support, ceremony, or a sounding board, I’m here for you. Ritual and ceremonial work is moving through my field in beautiful and profound ways at this time and I wonder what creative gifts this work has in store for us all…
Thank you.
Thank you for joining me on this journey, for your curiosity and patience to see what lies ahead for us, and for your kind, beautiful, and courageous hearts. Whoever, wherever, and whenever you are, I see you, and for you, I am eternally grateful.
I will write to you again at the Autumnal Equinox. You are welcome to write to me anytime. I will respond. I love penpals and writing companions. I also love feedback and requests. And plants. All of them.
With endless love, warmth, and care, I wish you grace.
Your kin,
h. x
Awe I missed this earlier - I'm glad you can share the magic of ceremony to meet us in our greatest pain. So much love!
Sending much love for the earthly loss of your niece. 💜 The ceremony sounds like it was a beautiful tribute.