The gate of the year

Lughnasa Feast (August 1)

View of Croagh Patrick, sacred mountain located in Western Ireland, a site particularly evocative, rising on the mainly flat landscape at a short distance from the seashore.
The feast celebrated on August 1, Lughnasa, closed the festive cycle of the Celtic calendar. The feast took its name from the god Lugh, and, on the continent, was the time when the great Council of the Gauls was held. Mainly a celebration of the harvest and a propitiation for the wellbeing and fecundity of cattle, Lughnasa was also a ritual having the purpose of protecting the crops against the dangers which could come from several awesome invisible powers. It was also the appropriate time for establishing contracts and agreements, under the protection of Lugh, god of commerce and oaths. Among them were the betrothal or marriage contracts.
In Ireland, in County Mayo, at this time is still customary to practice a pilgrimage to the top of Croagh Patrick (the “reek” or mountain), a pyramidal hill that rises near the coast. Here is now a chapel dedicated to St. Patrick, the patron of Ireland, but ruins of Neolithic structures nearby testify that there has been a continuity of cult practices which lasted for thousands of years (Monaghan 2004).
It seems that anciently the feast included the ritual cutting of the first grain, which was offered to a divinity on a high place, a communal meal cooked with the new harvest, the sacrifice of a sacred bull and various ritual performances (MacNeill 1962, p. 426). In Medieval Britain, this feast was called Lammas (from Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mass, “loaves mass”), and was celebrated with the cooking of bread made with the flour of the new harvest, blessed in the church and subsequently put at the corners of the barn, to protect the crop in the fields (Homans 1941, p. 354, 363). In Scotland, at the time of the festival, is still baked a special bread, called struan, containing carrots. These vegetables, with an evident phallic symbolism, were exchanged as tokens of both good wish and auspice of plenty.

[Image: http://nicholecoudayre.blogspot.it/2013/07/a-catholic-pilgrimage-to-mt-croagh.html]




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Lughnasa Feast (August 1) View of Croagh Patrick, sacred mountain located in Western Ireland, a site particularly evocative, rising on the mainly flat landscape at a short distance from the seashore. The feast celebrated on August 1, Lughnasa, closed the festive cycle of the Celtic calendar. The feast took its name from the god Lugh, and, on the continent, was the time when the great Council of the Gauls was held. Mainly a celebration of the harvest and a propitiation for the wellbeing and fecundity of cattle, Lughnasa was also a ritual having the purpose of protecting the crops against the dangers which could come from several awesome invisible powers. It was also the appropriate time for establishing contracts and agreements, under the protection of Lugh, god of commerce and oaths. Among them were the betrothal or marriage contracts. In Ireland, in County Mayo, at this time is still customary to practice a pilgrimage to the top of Croagh Patrick (the “reek” or mountain), a pyramidal hill that rises near the coast. Here is now a chapel dedicated to St. Patrick, the patron of Ireland, but ruins of Neolithic structures nearby testify that there has been a continuity of cult practices which lasted for thousands of years (Monaghan 2004). It seems that anciently the feast included the ritual cutting of the first grain, which was offered to a divinity on a high place, a communal meal cooked with the new harvest, the sacrifice of a sacred bull and various ritual performances (MacNeill 1962, p. 426). In Medieval Britain, this feast was called Lammas (from Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mass, “loaves mass”), and was celebrated with the cooking of bread made with the flour of the new harvest, blessed in the church and subsequently put at the corners of the barn, to protect the crop in the fields (Homans 1941, p. 354, 363). In Scotland, at the time of the festival, is still baked a special bread, called struan, containing carrots. These vegetables, with an evident phallic symbolism, were exchanged as tokens of both good wish and auspice of plenty. [Image: http://nicholecoudayre.blogspot.it/2013/07/a-catholic-pilgrimage-to-mt-croagh.html]