Today I am thankful for the perspective of my teacher Lar Dooley, on the topic of Lughnasadh. I honor this cross quarter on 7 August, though yesterday I was feeling that the energy is already changing. The first harvest is upon us.

This is the time that Lugh honored his step mother, Tailtiu, keeper of barley, with a festival, Aonach Tateann, the ‘Fair of Tailtiu.’ Barley was a staple product to Ancestors who were forced northward from the Mediterranean and were challenged to grow food in a harsher, cold environment. This is why solstices mattered–identifiable timing no matter where you were located. From those the rest of cross quarter seasonality could be predicted, thus how to tend crops in foreign, new spaces became approachable.

Lughnasadh is about the plants, how they give, how we are in relationship
with them, and specifically how our Irish Ancestors had to adapt their
relationship to plants to survive. They did it, consciously in relationship
with the plant spirits.