Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon
Lughnasa celebrates the beginning of the harvest. Already underway by August 1st, at least here, and continuing through early to mid-October the harvest is concerto after concerto, first the beet and carrot concerto, then the onion, then the garlic. Soon the green beans and the sugar snap peas chime in and the collard greens play their deep green notes and the chard lights up the hall with its rainbow of colors. The opposite of chamber music garden music counts on ancient melodies like the sound of the rain, the wind and thunder of storms, the subtle bass notes of fertile soil.
(alma-tademas-harvest-festival)
We have already passed the allegro first movement and now enter the adagio, the time when various crops come slowly to maturity in late summer and early fall. Around Mabon, the autumnal equinox, the grain crops and corn and beans will begin to peak, the sound of combines and corn pickers, the brilliant blue notes of the September sky, grain falling into golden piles on the wagons, yellow corn piling up. And finally, as October sees the first frosts and the last of the crops come in, the final movement, begun in a frenzy of gathering will trail off, cold and bleak, senescence browning the once vibrant greens.
At the end, summer’s end, is Samain. It marks the end of the growing season and thins the veil between the worlds. As the vegetable world dies again and the fallow season begins, Samain is a time between rich, fruitful life and the darkness and chill of death. It’s an appropriate time for the barrier between the living world and the world of those who have died in it to become permeable, for the dead to come to the living and the living to the dead.
We are now in the harvest season punctuated by Lughnasa, Mabon and Samain, beginning, middle and end. Dance to its music. The music of life renewed and come bountiful.
