THE SACRIFICIAL GOD

AUGUST 1 : LUGHNASADH;

SEPTEMBER 23: AUTUMN EQUINOX

I sometimes think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.

(The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam,

Translated Edward Fitzgerald, 1859)

Lammas, on August 1 (or August 12 in the Old Style calendar), is a pagan festival that commemorates the start of the harvest, ill particular the corn harvest. The gathering of other fruits of the Earth may not start until September, and in cold northern regions, the whole harvest may not be in until the end of October. Lammas tide, however, specifically honors the seasonal death of the Corn King, the spirit of the golden fields. The meaning of the festival is reflected in its name, for Lammas comes from the Anglo-Saxon Hla. lqnas, or loaf-mass, in honor of the first bread made from the newly cut corn.

The festival belongs not to the solar calendar but to the lunar-oriented Celtic cycle, in which it is known as Lughnasadh, after the Irish god Lugh. It partners Imbolc on February 1 in that both divide the mirror halves of the year--Samhain to Beltane, Beltane to Samhain (Halloween to May Day, and vice versa)--into two, according to the Celtic liking for opposing pairs such as light and dark, Summer and winter.

Along with the rites and customs directly associated with the harvest, Laminas was also a popular time for visiting sacred wells, accompanied by the usual customs as at Imbolc or Beltane; it also provided a good opportunity for divination.

THE  HARVEST LOAF

I went sunwise round my dwelling

In the name of Mother Mary

Who promised to preserve me

Who did protect me

Who will preserve me

In peace, in flocks, in righteousness of heart.

(CARMLX'A GADELICA, COMPILED AND TRANSLATED

BY ALEXANDER CARM1CHAEL)

The day on which tile Virgin Mary was received into Heaven is celebrated on August 15, and is known as The Feast of the Assumption. Christian and pagan traditions came together in a Scottish custom on this day which involved a special harvest loaf, known as Moilean Moire, or Marys Bannock (bannock is a type of bun)--and a wealth of magical detail. Anyone wishing to make this loaf should follow these instructions:

To make the flour for the bannock, pick new corn, dry it in the sun, husk it by hand, and grind it with stones.

Kindle a fire with magical rowan-wood, and while this is warming up, make 5'our dough from the flour.

Knead the dough on a sheepskin, shape it into a loaf, and cook it over the fire. When the Moilean Moire is cooked, each member of the family, in order of age, should eat a piece, and then all walk deiseil, sunwise, around the fire.  Finally, place the embers of the fire in a pot, and circle with it deiseil around the fields to bless them.

GIVING THANKS

Although it is not celebrated until late in November in the United States and in October in Canada, the great feast of Thanksgiving is not a Winter festival but belongs to the round of Harvest Home celebrations of the previous season, Autumn. Its specific origins lie not in religious observance but in history for it commemorates an historical event, namely the first harvest of the Pilgrim settlers in Massachusetts in 1621. Threatened by starvation, the settlers had been saved by Native Americans who had shown them how to grow the alien food crops of this unfamiliar land. In a beautiful spirit of true community, newcomers and native people came together to celebrate their first harvest. As Edward Winslow, one of the Mayflower travelers, observed "Our harvest being gotten in our governor sent tour men on fowling, so that we might, after a special manner, rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors." The occasion was not nationally observed, however, until after the American Civil War.

HARVEST CHEER

In harvest time, harvest folk, servants and all

Should make all together, good cheer in thy hall

Once ended thy harvest, let none be beguiled

Please such as did help thee, man, woman and child.

(FlVE HUNDRED POINTS OF GOOD HUSBANDRY,

Thomas Tusser

Nuts of all kinds are the product of the late harvest, traditionally beginning in September and sometimes continuing until as late as Halloween.

IH MEMORIAM

Ill Irish tradition, the festival of"first fruits" on August ] is significant for more than one reason. Lughnasadh is said to have been named after the god Lugh because his foster-mother, Tailtin, died at the beginning of August, and he ordered that the first day of that month should ever after be held sacred in her memory. Accordingly, the Assembly of Tailtiu was convened by the king of Tara, the religious and political center of old Ireland, on 1 August, an important gathering which "all of Ireland" was expected to attend if the well-being of the community was to be assured. Going even further into the mists of mythic Irish history,, August 1 was also the day on which the Fir Bolg, a warrior aristocracy, were said to have arrived in Ireland; Tailtiu belonged to the Fir Bolg, conferring on the date a double significance.

In Scots Gaelic, Lughnasadh was known as Lunasdal or Lunasduinn, while in Manx, spoken on the Isle of Man, it was called Laa Luanys. The festival was obviously an important one throughout the Celtic world, for it was also celebrated across the water among continental Celts. Under Roman rule, the population of Gaul--now modern France--gathered together at the beginning of August to honor the god Lugus in the city named after him--Lugudunum, the Latin for Lug's town, or Lyons as it is now known. Under Roman influence, this Gallic festival was later dedicated to Augustus, the deified Roman emperor, and in Britain it was similarly transformed, being dubbed Goel-aoust, Gul-austus, or Gu,'yl Awst.

MASTER OF ARTS

Lugh, god of Lughnasadh, was a relative newcomer to the inner circle of divine beings of the Irish pantheon. In an attempt to forge an alliance with the demonic, giant race of Ireland, the Fomoire, the Tuatha D0 Danann, the Irish gods, had agreed to a marriage between Cian, one of their company, to Ethniu, daughter of Balor, Fomoire King of the Isles. The ehild of this union was Lugh, who in his turn fathered--or was reborn as--the Irish hero Cu Chulainn.

One day, when Nuadu, King of the Tuatha De, was entertaining guests at a feast at Tara, a young and handsome warrior approached the gates, gave his name as Lugh, and offered his services as a craftsman. The gatekeeper replied that the Tuatha De already had such a person. Lugh then went to list all his other skills--he was a smith, a champion, a harper, a warrior, a poet, a sorceror, a healer, a cupbearer, a metal worker--but each time he was denied entry because, as before, others already filled these posts. Finally, Lugh demanded whether there was any one person within the walls of Tara who should claim mastery of all these arts together. There was none such, of course, and tile gates opened to him. He was named Samildinach, "the man of each and every art," was welcomed by Nuadu, and helped the Tuatha De to defeat the Fomoire, in the process fulfilling the prophecy that he would kill his own grandfather, Balor.

Balor possessed a terrifying weapon--a single, enormous eye that was never opened except on the field of war, when the lid had to be lifted by the strength of four men. Such was the evil of this eye that it rendered powerless any army that looked at it. At the decisive battle of Mag Tuireadh which Balor attended, Lugh appeared, singing a chant and moving across the ground on one foot with only one eye open. Thus the pair of one-eyed adversaries came face to face. Hearing Lugh's voiee, Balor commanded that his eye be opened so that he might gaze upon the puny "babbler." This was done and--like David confronting Goliath--Lugh deftly raised his sling and shot a stone into his enemy's giant eye with such force that the eye was pushed right through Balor's head, redirecting its destructive power at the Fomoire themselves.

The single eyes of Balor and of Lugh suggest that they may have been solar deities, the Sun being the Eye of Heaven, and the defeat of one by the other hints at the replacement of one kind of solar worship by another. Lugh's other name was Ldmfhada, which means "of the long arm," and he has been likened to the British god Llew Llaw G vffes, Llew of the Sure Hand, whose title Llew also means light. Like Lugh, Llew had a spear and his sling was the rainbow.

Lugh's mastery of so many different skills makes him the ideal Celtic hero. His chosen weapons require much more deft handling than the clumsy, giant club of the other Irish warrior god, the Dagda, and this pair stand in similar relationship to each other as do the Norse gods Odin---one-eyed magician, poet, and war leader with a spear that never missed its mark--and crude Thor flailing about with his battle-hammer. Since gods are so often made in the image of man, these two pairs are perhaps a reflection of a change in human society from that of rude, warring tribes to more aristocratic, settled communities.

BURIED TREASURE

Lugh's presiding over a harvest festival may have something to do with his possible role as solar god--the Sun that has brought the corn to ripeness. However, Lughnasadh is not a solar feast but is held in honor of the fruits of the Earth, and was, it will be remembered, inaugurated in memory of the god's foster mother, Tialtiu, rather than the god himself, which supports the idea that the feast now called Lughnasadh replaced an earlier fertility festival. As a mother, Tialtiu would have represented the Mother Goddess, Mother Earth, the source of all fertility. Chronologically Lngh, being her "son," would appear after his "mother," and he also had a late entry to the ranks of the original Tuatha De Danann. These mythic clues suggest that his festival, like the god himself, was a comparative latecomer, a newer version of an older feast once held in honor of an earth goddess from the pre-Celtic period.

Tailtiu's death on this day is, in itself, very significant, for in the seasonal cycle the beginning of the harvest is the time when the Earth ceases to bring forth life, and when her "progeny"-the corn or another crop--is cut down. Right across the old pagan world, this dying of the Earth and the "killing" of vegetation was conveyed in mythic picture language as the seasonal death of a fertility figure or vegetation spirit, who might be either female or male depending on the culture and period of origin of the legend. In classical Greek myth, for example, the spirit was the maiden Kore, daughter of the fertile Mother Goddess, Demeter (whose other name, Ceres, has given us our word cereal), snatched while out picking flowers by the God of the Underworld, Hades; in Sumeria, it was Dumuzi, lover of the goddess Inanna. In British folk tradition, the spirit of the corn (and of malt liquor) was known as John Barleycorn, while in France, Germany, and Slavonic countries, the spirit might take the form of an animal--the Corn Wolf, whose invisible presence could be detected in the rippling of the corn.

Of course, the deaths of these figures was an occasion for some sadness, but there was hope, too, that the corn or vegetation spirit who died in Autumn would be reborn in Spring, as has always happened since time immemorial in the eternal cycle of departure and return. The ceremonial "killings" of the vegetation spirit, the Sacrificial God, were magical rituals to ensure this return. His death was not just something that happened, but something that had to be made to occur, if life was to go on. The Sacrificial God had to be slain in order to be reborn.

The idea that death is a precondition for life is a concept that every gardener will understand. The plant that has flourished throughout summer ceases, in Autumn, to grow. Where once new greenery burgeoned and flowers blossomed only old leaves and seed‑heads are left. As the seed heads ripen, they burst, scattering their contents into the soil. Finally, all apparent signs of life disappear. When Spring comes around, new shoots miraculously appear, growing from the seeds of last year's plant and nourished by its remains, the decayed vegetation that has enriched the soil.

This pattern of death giving birth to life is one that recurs every year, but the question is: is the plant that grows in Spring the child of the parent plant, or the parent reborn? It is effectively both, and here we find the mystery that underlies the great myth of many ancient pagan religions, that of the Goddess and her son-lover who dies and is reborn. The Goddess is the Source from which life emanates, the fundamental Earth, the Mother, the Whole that encompasses both beginning and ending. Counter-balancing to her Whole, there is the Part--her son-lover. The Goddess gives birth to a son (the Earth brings forth the Plant); he becomes her lover and later dies (the Plant withers, having dropped its seed into the Earth); she then gives birth to her lover's son (the Earth brings forth a new Plant from the seed of the old). So, like a plant that is both new and reborn old, the dead and risen God is simultaneously the Goddess's lover and her son.

Some examples of this divine pair are Greek Aphrodite and her lover Adonis; Babylonian Ishtar and Tammuz; and Egyptian Isis and Osiris. The death of the Sacrificial God is always violent, and is bewailed by his mistress. Her grief later turns to joy, however, when her life-bringing lover returns, as he always does.

BLOOD AND BONES

The symbolic spilling of the God's blood (or the actual spilling if the sacrifice involved a real-life surrogate) is part of the fertilizing process--an idea that does not seem so strange when one thinks of the dried blood and bones gardeners use to enrich the soil. In one legend, flowers sprang up where Adonis bled and, in both myth and wonder tale, bones have brought forth new life. In the Greek Flood story, for example, Deucalion and Pyrrha, who had floated in an ark for nine nights and nine days and were the only humans to survive the Deluge, wished to repeople the world. They prayed to the Goddess Themis who told them to throw the bones of their "first ancestor" behind them. Puzzled at first, the couple at last understood the divine command: their first ancestor was, of course, the goddess Gala, their Mother the Earth herself and her "bones" were the rocks and stones. The stones that Deucalion threw over his shoulder became men, those that Pyrrha threw became women, and in this way the world was repopulated.

MOTHER AND CHILD

Ill European folk tradition, as the harvest neared its end the attention of the reapers became focused on the last portion of the crop still standing, for tiffs was redolent with magic: it was where the Corn Spirit had taken refuge. Thus tile last sheaf to be cut was often shaped into the form of a human figure, dressed in clothes and adorned with ribbons.

Depending on the view of the particular community, the Spirit-in-the-Sheaf might be seen as old or young, if "old," it was in the sense of "ripe" and "mature," anti then the figure made from the last sheaf might be called the Corn Mother, Harvest Mother, Great Mother, Grandmother, Cailleach (Gaelic for old wife), Wrach (hag in Welsh), Baba or Bobs (old woman in Slavonic languages), or even the Old Mare If"young," the corn figure was seen as the child that has been delivered from its mother when the sickles cut its cornstalk "umbilical cord." In this case, the figure might be called the Maiden, the Corn-maiden, the Maidhdean}main (shorn maiden in Gaelic), or the Kirn-baby or Kit'n-dolI, after kirn which means corn ir~ Scots and northern English dialect. In Germany the birth of the eom baby was even enacted with fake labor cries, new-born wailing, and all. The part of the mother was played by the woman who had bound the last sheaf, while her "baby" was a boy inside a figure made from the sheaf. This folk custom recalls the rite of the Greek god Dionysus in his role as Corn God, the infant Dionysus Liknites symbolically carried in procession in a winnowing basket, for the

adoration of the worshipping crowd. In the Corn Mother and the Corn Maiden, we also glimpse the images of Demeter and Kore.

Tile figure formed from the last sheaf played a central part in the joyful processions, dances and suppers of Harvest Home, and was closely associated with the person who had cut, bound, or threshed the corn from which it was made. This person was sometimes given the same name as the figure--for example, the "Old Woman"--and it was often necessary.' for there to be a link {n age, too: when the sheaf was called the Mother, it was the oldest married woman who had to shape it into human form when called the Maiden, the sheaf had to be cut by the youngest girl. Thus, like the corn figure the person most intimately involved with it was also seen as a representative of the Corn Spirit.

The last sheaf and tile "corn dolly"--as this traditional effigy is now best known--had a magical, fertilizing influence that was put to use in various ways, Some of the grain from the sheaf might, for example, be mixed with the seed corn, or scattered among the young corn in the following spring. The doll itself might be kept in the farmhouse and then broken up and shared among the cattle at Yule to make them thrive in the year to come, or given to the first mare in foal. A Mother sheaf, shaped like a pregnant woman, might even be presented to tile farmer's wife to make her fertile and give her a child the following year.

BROTHER SUN, SISTER MOON

Dry August and warm

Doth harvest no harm.

(FIVE HUNDRED POINTS OF GOOD HUSBANDRY)

THOMAS TUSSER, 16TH CENTURY)

With the beginning of the harvest comes a realization that Summer, the season of the Full Moon, is giving way to Autumn, the season of the Waning Moon; all life, both plant and. animal, is slowing drifting towards the sleep time of Winter, the Dark Moon. The Waning Moon rules the harvest in two ways: not only does it govern Autumn, when harvesting is done, but it also determines the time of the month when the reaping begins. Traditionally, crops were cut in the waning phase of the Moon for at that point--unlike the "swelling" influence of her earlier, waxing phase' she was thought to have a

"drying" effect on plant life, an essential quality for a successful harvest. The face of the Moon that governs this period of decline, when the crops can grow no more, is personified as the withering Crone Goddess, who withdraws the life energy that she originally conferred.

Later on in the harvest season comes a similar turning point for the Sun when he, too, like the Moon, is overtaken by darkness. The Autmnn Equinox, which falls on about September 23, is a moment of balance when day' and night are of equal length, as at the Spring Equinox earlier in the year. However, at the Autumn Equinox the Sun is weakening, not increasing as in the Spring, and on this day, the solar god is finally overcome as the hours of darkness begin to outnumber the hours of light. Symbolically, at Lughnasadh and the Autumn Equinox the God goes to the Underworld, whether as the dying Sun taken into the Darkness, or as the Corn King who has been cut down and absorbed, as seed, into the womb of the Earth.

In various telling of the Cinderella story (other than the well-known French version, a literary confection pieced together for aristocratic palates in 1697 by the author Charles Perrault), there is the poignant image of a tree or perhaps a flower growing from the grave that contains the body or bones of Cinderella's mother or some other helper figure. The tree often appears after the hapless girl has watered the grave with her tears, and in its branches a bird, or pair of birds, may sit. This life-from-death motif arises from the same fundamental concept that underlies the myth of the slain and risen God: the tears represent the healing Water of Life, the tree is an archetypal symbol of renewal the Tree of Life--while the bird, winged creature of the airy heavens, is an emblem of the soaring spirit of life itself. In the Grimm Brothers' tale Ashchevvuttel, the tree that grows on the mother's grave is a hazel. In The Juniper Tree from the same authors, it is the bones of the murdered boy hero that are laid beneath the tree, where his own mother lies buried. With a quivering of its branches and a puff of mist, the tree immediately brings the boy back to life in the form a firebird, whose song reveals the identity of his murderess, the stepmother. After he has avenged himself by killing her in turn, he resumes his former human shape, and he, his father and stepsister "live happily ever after" precisely the image of resurrection and salvation hoped for in the cutting down of the God-in-the-Corn.