Lughnasadh Reflections

This festival was more intensely magical for me than I expected. With all the limitations and weirdness of 2020, I anticipated going through what motions I could, then spending quality time with my TV. Instead, what is usually the hottest, driest part of the year has had rain and temps up to 30 degrees below normal. It was a great time to be outdoors. I attended two events that would normally be open, but were instead mask-required, invite-only outdoor rituals. Rituals with masks on, no sharing of food, hugs, or hand holding were were weird, but after months of social distancing, the weirdness also made me more appreciative of community. Lughnasadh, after all, is about gathering community to work the harvest.

The first ritual I attended focused on using the fire and water of the season to sacrifice something we no longer needed to make room for something we wanted to manifest. The second, with the druid grove, celebrated transmutation with the transformations of Taliesin and John Barleycorn. Taliesin begins as Gwion Bach (Little Innocent) and has many rounds of change through learning and shape shifting and resting to become Taliesin, Radiant Brow, greatest bard. John Barleycorn transforms from a seed to a sacrifice into bread and brandy for the strength of the community. We work with the process of letting go at Samhain but Lughnasadh we first have to do the actual work it takes to get to that point. The work of transforming crops into harvest, ideas into manifestation, and experience into wisdom. The opposite-land weather this weekend made the full moon time almost feel like a new moon instead. My own personal work turned into some deep transformative shadow work.

2019 was my year to focus on self-acceptance, affection for others, and listening to intuition. I started off 2020 with the intention to take the insight and wisdom I’ve been learning to hear and turn it into actual, real world, tangible action. Thankfully this began with letting go of the urge to make grand expanding plans and focus on manifesting the moment, since 2020 decided to disrupt every plan on the planet. I have managed to manifest some things from physical objects like my crane bag and a set of curtains and reorganizing a closet, to involvement in the Labyrinth Temple community, getting the Druid Grove set up for Zoom meetings, and this blog. The combined messages from the rituals and shadow work this weekend, however, revealed that my harvest for this year is in confidence.

Successfully completing tasks does come with a boost in self-confidence. But now I am ready to harvest a more lasting kind of confidence, the kind that can turn into arrogance when not tempered with love. Aphrodite’s appearance at the Labyrinth Temple apparently could not go without an answering appearance from Freyja in my life to balance out Odin and Loki. It is often the things we run hardest from that we need to dive into. Harvesting confidence born of love from within myself is my work for this harvest season. Knowing me, it will be a messy, muddy, sometimes bruising and exhausting labor. Heh. Better get to it so when Samhain comes I’ll be in a position to sit down and rest.