On August 1st, the Celtic god Lugh is celebrated in Ireland, a fiery sun god of masculine energy. At the ancient celebrations of his feast on the Hill of Tara, it was said that none “without an art” should come. For Lugh inspires creativity in our lives.

Lugh the fiery creative Celtic god

I offer you a poem so that you might reflect on your own creative Lugh energy. What crops are coming to harvest in your life? How must you care for them?

CARE OF THE GROWING CROP : A POEM FOR LUGHNASADH by Miriam Dyak

Since corn needs all the light it can get
you are growing yourself remember
you will want to avoid planting other tall plants nearby
you deserve your day in the sun
and you will want to make sure each plant
you deserve your own ripeness
has every opportunity to make good use of the rich soil you have provided
so that at last these dreams you’ve been holding will fill out
in precious clusters of milky pearls and silky yellow moons

Sweet corn is at its sweet juicy tender best for only a few days
and you have labored a whole season for this perfection

Trouble shooting: we hope none of the following problems will be yours
Insect infestations like a swarm of worries
take measures in your own soul before there is a full-scale invasion
The corn earworm lays about 1,000 eggs in her twelve days of life
We know how these hatch into hesitation, fear, doubt, self-deprecation, inertia how they eat tunnels into the mind
Cut them out and give them back to the earth for compost
You have grown too far to give up now

‘Diseases – wilt and smut and blight out there in the world
Don’t let these attack your own small patch
Develop a resistant strain go against the grain of expectations
be an original a treasure

Give yourself a new name:
Golden woman
Moon Maiden
She Who Stands Tall And Proud

Thieves – raccoons, woodchucks and deer are probably the worst four-footed
sweet corn thieves
they are the distractions that come just when you’re getting somewhere
when you almost have success in the pot
and steal you away from your own life

They have an uncanny way of knowing just when the ears
have reached their prime
They are other people’s needs you always put before your own
They are love affairs that want you to be somebody you aren’t
They are larger bigger better purposes/harvests than yours

You can try to spook them with rock music
You can plant pumpkins in their path
You can even cover your ears with paper bags…

But I am here to tell you
this night on the festival of Lughnasadh the time of ensuring the harvest
your personal harvest the village harvest
and the safety of the good we are all growing in the world
I am here to tell you what the ancients know
that if you give up your crop along the way out of carelessness or nobility
it doesn’t matter
your spirit will be a hollow husk and no one not you not others
will be fed

But if you tend your own patch to completion
(no matter how insignificant it seems)
if you let yourself swell with joy with the rich nourishing milk of fulfillment
you will have raised a miracle
Your small garden of life, of art, of love, of work, of mothering and building and
being a wise woman
whatever you have planted and tended and grown
will feed yourself your village
there will be corn for feasting for flour for popping over winter fires
and enough to plant next year

There will be seeds that open spontaneously in the hearts of other women
and wild possibilities will appear in dreams on the other side of the world