Wood Sisters Lughnasadh, August 2011
Wood Sisters Lughnasadh
Here in Dartington, the first fruits of the grain harvest were just being gathered in as the Wood Sisters met to celebrate this least known of the eight celtic festivals. The name ‘Lughnasadh’ comes from the Irish and in Irish mythology this festival is said to have been begun by the god Lugh, as a funeral feast and games commemorating his foster mother Tailtiu, who died of exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agriculture. The festival’s Christian name is ‘Lammas’ (from loaf mass) as at this time it was customary to bring to church a loaf made from the new crop.
It’s strange and a little sad to reflect on how disconnected most of us now are our from the significance of the grain harvest, even though bread still forms such a staple in most people’s lives in this country. With this disconnection in mind, it seems particularly significant to remember and celebrate this festival. So for our Wood Sisters Day we set out to reconnect to the significance of this high summer season through re-visiting ancient myths and stories and deepening into meditation, through walking our local landscape with its ripening crops and through actually grinding grain, baking and sharing our own loaf mass.
This was a particularly special day for me personally as a Christian priest, because for the first time in our circle for this year, we consciously brought together some of humankind’s most ancient myths and motifs with the Jewish and Christian stories they informed. We made this healing journey through the image of the Red Tent. Sue will be writing more about this in the next post, so for now it seems enough to say that, for this Wood Sisters Day, the Red Tent became our image of spiritual sanctuary and inspiration.
Within this imagined gathering place of our female ancestors, we listened to ancient Sumerian and Canaanite stories, including that of the Goddess Uttu who taught our earliest sisters to spin and weave, along with many other creative crafts. We travelled back in time through meditation to meet with the Biblical Matriarchs such as Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, who may well have told such tales in their own tents. Many of us were deeply moved to feel ourselves, as Jews and Christians and Pagans, welcomed into the circle of our ancestors in a time before the male and female aspects of divinity were split apart. In our imaginations we touched or even climbed the great trees of Mamre and entered the depths of the Cave of Machpelah to receive our own visions of the Goddess.
Coming firmly back into the present and back down to earth with our ever splendid ‘bring and share’ feast at lunch time, the Wood Sisters then moved enthusiastically into the more dynamic stage of the day. Two pounds of fresh barley were ground by hand into flour and we all got a very real sense of just what hard work it must have been when a woman was responsible for hand grinding flour for the daily bread. While some of us turned the quern stones, others were walking out into field and orchard to collect ripe heads of barley and juicy purple plums. Soon we had warm barley and plum muffins to add to last year’s sloe gin for our own loaf mass.
So the day concluded with a simple ritual evoking the essential elements of ‘gathering, engaging, sharing and blessing’ that lie at the heart of every communion ceremony. We gathered through singing together (John Barleycorn) and engaged with a rich selection of poetry. We shared our feast of ‘bread and wine’, blessing it together and passing our blessings from hand to hand and heart to heart. Until at the end we were ready to return renewed and inspired back into our families, communities and everyday lives after another wonder filled day with our Wood Sisters.