Lughnasadh: Bring It On Home

checking the harvest

Lughnasadh (Lammas):
Traditional–August 1
Lunar–Full Moon in Aquarius, August 1-2
Solar–August 6

Lughnasadh is the festival of first fruits, when we see how good the harvest will be. It's a time of festivals that celebrate abundance, of games and races, of contracts and marriages, of music and dances.

We're in the season of Lughnasadh now, with the traditional August 1 date of Lughnsadh behind us, as well as the glorious Aquarian Full Moon of last night, and the astrological Lughnsadh a few days ahead, when the Sun reaches 15 degrees of Leo, the midpoint.

This year's Lughnasadh chart points to a time of abundant energy moving into manifest form. The energy jumps off the chart: The Sun at 15 Leo in close trine with an Aries Moon, and a wider trine to Uranus. Mercury, still retrograde in Leo, closely trines the North Node in Sagittarius. The Moon is waning now, just after Full––this is the time we receive, and see the fruits of our labors.

Jupiter at 11 Gemini and Ceres the Grain Mother at 16 Gemini, sextiling both the Sun and Moon and trining Mars at 19 Libra point to a superabundance of whatever we're harvesting. All that firepower is a tremendous resource that wants to go somewhere––the question is, where?

You know, the whole free will thing really messes up our ability to predict what people will do with the energy in their charts. We choose, every day, to flow with the energies around us or resist them, and likewise choose the means and the ends.

The energy in this chart is all about free will, desire, libido, the heart. It's about choice.

The Pluto–Uranus square is still there, pushing, prodding, poking, not letting us alone. Chiron is semisextile Uranus and sextile Pluto, reminding us that no choice is also a choice, and that hurting and healing are choices, too.

Choices are not necessarily easy. Crops have had a tough summer around the world, experiencing drought in some areas and drowning rains in others. For farmers, this time of first fruits will be challenging.

There are choices to be made.

Following on the illuminations of mind and heart offered by the Full Moon in Aquarius, the Lughnasadh sky shows us the sky's the limit. All bets are off, anything can happen, and we can participate.

These are the dog days of summer, the hottest, edgiest times. Leo Sun–Aries Moon with Uranus nearby could bring explosive anger. We could say, "Bring it, show me what you got." Explosions can really shift things around, but leave a lot of destruction behind. Cleaning up the mess takes way longer than pressing the button.

In ancient Egypt, the dog days were the days when the Dog Star, Sirius, rose with the Sun. This star added to the Sun's heat, raising temperatures, and also signaled the time of the annual Nile floods, which assured the ongoing abundance of croplands along the river.

And this is Lughnasadh, the time of harvest and celebration. This year, we celebrate choice. There are always options. Jupiter, Ceres, and Venus all in Gemini offer an abundance of perspectives, lenses, windows, portals, connections, and ideas.

You don't like what you have? Toss everything into the air, and instead of letting it crash to the ground, juggle. Try a bit of sleight of hand. Shift your perceptions just a little, and see a whole new world come into focus.

Feel the fire of life, know you have amazing amounts of energy at your fingertips, celebrate your choices.
   

Waning Moon, Void of Course ... Heading Toward Leo!

Monday's New Moon in Leo offers a time to plant new seeds in Leonine soil ... connecting with our passions, playfulness, creativity, confidence, and leadership. Connecting to our heart, stepping into our power, and bringing our light to the world. The House in which the New Moon appears in our birth charts can point to areas of life where we will feel Leo's fire, or perhaps where we most need to light things up. Planets in strong aspect to the New Moon will show which areas of our psyche will be highlighted, and how.

Today we are in the waning Moon phase; for most of today, the Moon will also be void of course. This is not the time to plant seeds for the cycle to come. Instead, we finish work we've begun to release whatever holds us back. This Leo New Moon will call us to stand in the spotlight and embody who we truly are. Now is the time to release whatever thoughts, feelings, memories, concepts, anything that keeps tripping us up, getting in our own way, and blocking our time to shine.

In Simone Butler's post Dancing With Fire, she places the New Moon in the context of the Cardinal Cross and other key sky events, and recommends Sariah Mikaels' Fire Breath for burning away whatever we need to release. This breathing with visualization allows us to anticipate the Leo New Moon and bring its fire into this waning, void of course time.

Today, astrologically, is Lughnasadh, third of the four great fire festivals in the ancient Celtic calendar. During the waning time in the Moon's cycle, we reap what we have sown, gaining understanding and perspective, and sharing our experience with the world. Lughnasadh is marked by the sacrifice of the first fruits, the offering of the first sheaves of ripening grain and the first succulent berries to be sanctified.

Letting go is not easy for the Cancer Moon. And yet the deeply held tradition of sacrifice to acknowledge the gods, goddesses and ancestors and ask their protection for the home, family and tribe, is something tradition-loving Cancer can honor. To sacrifice is to make sacred. In her description of the Fire Breath, Sariah Mikaels reminds us that as we burn whatever it is we need to release, we create light.

Think of the release work you are doing not as rejecting, denying or burying but as offering. Today we celebrate our willingness to let go of what we no longer need, and give the energy we've had locked up back to the universe. We live in an evolving, growing cosmos. Maintaining old forms can move from honoring tradition into a kind of frozen inability to flow with the currents of life.

Today as we are suspended with the Moon in her time between times, we move toward completion of this cycle of experience, insight, sharing and release. Breathe. And as you breathe, dance.

Today's images are of the solar storm that erupted on the Sun on August 1, from NASA, and an image of the aurora borealis that was WikiMedia's picture of the year in 2006.

Waning Moon in Aries

The Moon continues her quest in pioneering Aries today, with no classical aspects until her final flow of bright energy with Neptune, planet of dreams and visions, at midnight tonight. Today, we feel energized, motivated to take action on whatever is holding us back. A good day for clearing clutter, blasting through barriers, and exploring new territory.

In the Wheel of the Year, this is the time of Lughnasadh, third of the four great ancient Celtic festivals. Celebrated as Lammas or Lammastide, this is the time of first fruits. Seeing the shape of the harvest to come, we offer the first grains to the gods and goddesses. We collect the ripe fruits from hillsides, gardens and trees for pies, jams and wines.

The Sun in Leo revels in his home sign, resplendent on his shining throne. Each Celtic festival falls in one of the four fixed signs, and Lughnasadh is the sign of fixed Fire. Astrologically, Lughnasadh falls in the middle of this middle-of-summer sign, at 15 degrees of Leo (August 7 this year). According to the calendar, Lughnasadh is celebrated on August 1, or on the first Sunday in August.

Fitting for a solar celebration, Lughnasadh is a time of games and sport. Traditional events included foot races, horse races, and competitions of skill in battle and in song. Lugh, champion of the Tuatha de Danann and patron of Lughnasadh, was also invoked in matters of commerce, and so this was the time of the great fairs, where all manner of goods could be bought and sold, and deals struck. As people from many communities mingled at the fairs, marriage contracts were also made, including the ancient Irish trial marriage for a year and a day.

At night, great bonfires blazed on the hilltops, marking another turning of the year. In the ancient Celtic calendar, Lughnasadh marked the middle of the bright half of the year. Some communities marked the turn toward darkness by setting great wheels aflame and rolling them down a hillside to be doused in a pool or lake, signaling the coming loss of the Sun.

Underlying the games and contracts of Lughnasadh fairs was the understanding that a year of growth was coming to a close. Ancient tradition says that Lugh created this festival to honor his foster mother Tailte, queen of the Fir Bolg. It was Tailte who cleared the plains of Ireland, making them ready for the grain crops to sustain the people. After completing her great labor, she died, and Lughnasadh is her funeral celebration.

At this waning of the Moon in Aries, we have the chance to feel keenly what it means to let go of something, perhaps something that has been dear to us, knowing that this letting go is the next step in our cycle of growth. Today we harvest our own first fruits, sharing the food of our labor with our communities, trusting that all we need for the next turn of the spiral will be provided.

The images of bilberries, bonfire and barley were adapted from photos available through WikiMedia Commons.