Blessed Lughnasadh to all my friends and readers! May your harvest be bountiful !  I will be posting on all eight Sabbats as they occur. Recognizing and celebrating the wheel of the year is all but forgotten in increasingly urban societies, but continues to be both relevant and profound in significance.

Dancing Bacchante at Harvest Time – Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

The Sun is rising with Procyon, but we are entering the “dog days” named after the apparent heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. The days are hotter but shorter. It’s the time of first harvest in the Northern Hemisphere and the focus is on grain, which can sustain us throughout the winter months. In that sense, Lughnasadh is a recognition of the waning Solar force and the need to preserve some of what it has helped produce.

Grain has held a very important place in civilization for millennia.  Grain has been associated with the cycle of death and rebirth. Tammuz,  The Sumerian Sun god was slain and his beloved Ishtar mourned so deeply that nature stopped producing. Ishtar followed the Sun god to the Underworld to bring him back,. The story of Demeter and Persephone shares the same theme.

I’ve added the chart for Noon 30 August 2013 for general purposes, set for Pacific Time. Note that Regulus is parallel the Part of Fortune.

Original music by Thorrin Jonsson