We are at the height of summer, the hottest time of year in my region, which is also the beginning of harvest time! Time to harvest wheat and other cereals. Other harvests will be harvested later on.
Lughnasadh is the festival of the god Lugh of fire and light. 'Lughnasadh' means 'the commemoration of Lugh'. In Celtic, pagan Europe, Lugh was one of the major gods. He is the son of Cian, of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and Ethlin, of the Formorians and daughter of Balor, thus being the child of the two races which battle for the world, the race of the light and the race of the dark.
Lughnasadh is in fact a celebration for Lugh's foster mother, Tailtiu (pronounced TAL-TU) who was the goddess of harvest and who died of exhaustion. She asked that no grief and only happiness be shown at her funeral. Lugh held a harvest feast in her honor and so it was.
Let's now see what the prevailing energies will be for this whole season.
1) NINE OF SWORDS
A little bit too much thinking it seems! Time to take a break and have fun, go for a walk in nature, breathe and enjoy life! There is nothing to worry about. We may have overdone the previous reading, at Litha, which heralded a new way of thinking, a new clarity. The Tarot had granted us with an Ace of Swords. The Beltane reading had granted us with the Three of Swords, pointing toward a significant healing and going all the way back to the Yule reading when we got the Queen of Swords, suggesting mental clarity, clear-sightedness and self-governance to avoid drama. Time out now! We gave ourselves a nice makeover in the way we perceive ourselves and the world, we enjoy a lot more clarity but this clarity and this new perception should not drag us into anguish, anxiety and overthinking about the future. We are at the start of the Lion's Gate Portal which started on July 26th and the energy is being set for the whole upcoming year, preparing the ground for 2025 so let's bring with us our new intelligence, our new wisdom without flipping over what will happen as we write our future as we go.
If there is sorrow, and there might be precisely because the new clarity brought foggy or dark areas into the light and that may cause grief, let's embrace that grief. Grieving was celebrated in the ancient feminine spirituality so we may need to shed salty tears. That's okay. The feeling of solitude and isolation is temporary. What is brought to the light and leaving us was never met for us. We can let it go and celebrate the newfound freedom even if it takes weeks and even months.
Let's make sure we don't indulge in mental cruelty fashioning worst case scenarios in our heads that will never materialize and come into being. We are done with suffering. That was the gift given to us by the Ace of Swords at Litha. Let's not push it too far. Balance is called for. Think light at the end of the tunnel, springtime at the end of wintertime, sun rising at the end of the dark night of the soul.
Because the next card is bringing a beautiful, uplifting, hopeful message.
2) THE MOON REVERSED
You are healed. You know your darkness. The Moon is the major arcana of self-exploration, self-examination, journeying through the subconscious, our fears and demons in order to transmute the darkness into light. That was a long journey but it's over. You have revealed your own ways of deluding yourself and you are no longer fooled by lies, fantasies, and fake relationships that were dragging you down and gnawing at your life force energy. Illusions are behind thanks to the gifts of the suit of Swords granted to us the last few months, especially since the beginning of 2024.
So we may be going back and forth between the Nine of Swords and the Moon reversed knowing we are healed and have never been in such good shape mentally, emotionally and spiritually and yet are still being tempted to reverse back into self-abuse or lack of self-belief but again, the message is: no more! That is over!
Let the liars be liars; let the gaslighters be gaslighters; let the manipulators be manipulators and go your own bright way. Do not let them confuse you, including telepathically. The difficulties are theirs, not yours. You have done the work, they haven't. Period. Use the sword from the last reading and cut through the depression if you feel like you're drawn to indulge in feeling depressed because it is not yours.
3) SUMMARY
It's bright outside, it's warm, it's hot, let's drop into the heart and enjoy the daisies and the simple life of summer and nature.
The Goddess (or whatever deity you believe in) is watching. The release is enormous precisely because we don't need to force, try, push, handle, battle anymore. It's time to enjoy the good life of resolution, of clairvoyance, of self-love and self-appreciation with no agenda. Not so easy when fighting was a survival mechanism! As we allow ourselves to do that, we also pull the world in this direction, towards a bright (third time I'm using this word!) future.
I don't know why but there is this quote by Rumi that is coming to my consciousness now:
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
The Moon reversed is telling you that you have done that.
4) SALMON
Interestingly, Salmon had already leaped at us in the Mabon 2023 reading. I don't know for you reader but for me, the issue at hand with this present reading goes back to the Mabon reading. It did not evolve at all as I had anticipated then, much to my disappointment, I have to admit...but often, when we do not get what we want, we gain a huge pearl of wisdom and indeed, the clarity I have gained during this ten month period is quite shokingly spectacular. A prayer to the Goddess that I know and say almost daily, reads:
I surrender all my plans, my ideas, my dreams, and my desires to the Goddess
As I do so, I come to see that the Goddess is not punishing me
When things don’t go according to my own plans
She is actually sparing me when this happens
I Surrender My Life to the Goddess by Sophie Bashford
As a quick reminder, the keywords for Salmon are wisdom, inspiration and rejuvation. There was a potential for things to evolve in the opposite direction (floating downstream, the easy way) at Mabon but it all fell through instead because the true face of other people involved was revealed and we were spared despite the initial excitement.
Finding Salmon's wisdom is the goal of the Druid. If things did not quite turn out as we had wished, it is because we did not have full control over the situation and somebody else's free will interfered with the higher outcome. We were spared because they were not as ready for it as we first may have thought they were but the prayer also reads:
I surrender my life to the Goddess
I let what needs to be taken away from me to go
In grace and humility
For I know that whenever something leaves me
The Goddess is preparing me for better
And that is the real wisdom we have gained: we have discovered we can let go, we have discovered we can hold onto our life force energy with excellent boundaries, we have discovered we are much stronger than we were aware of back in September (Mabon, who is incidentally a young god still full of innocence) and now we are ready for 'better.' This is Salmon's real wisdom that the Druid aspires to. We have been initiated into becoming the Salmon of Knowledge, the oldest animal in Druidic yore.
Don't you think that is what the Moon reversed meant?
Like Salmon, we may have had to swim upstream instead of downstream to our own source through our feelings. It may have felt unbearably hard but we have arrived with enhanced clarity, maturity and mastery.
When we trust life and have faith, time becomes an ally.
5) NETTLE
The keywords for Nettle are irritation, hidden gifts and transmutation. Nettle is teaching us that first impressions can be wrong. The situation we are going through has hidden gifts to reveal as that was mentioned above bountifully. Despite the superficial 'sting', let's keep an eye open for all that it has in store for us. The allusion to transmutation shows us that what first seems unpleasant can transform into something valuable.
6) HAPPY LUGHNASADH!
What an incredibly rich reading! With so much to meditate on, let's now take some rest and time off and let things be and let the Goddess guide us down our path.
Healing Crystals
Orange calcite, sunstone, smoky quartz, carnelian, citrine, Herkimer diamond
Oracle Cards
The Druid Animal Oracle - Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm
The Druid Plant Oracle - Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm
☆☆☆★☆☆☆
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For good karma...
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