Lunasa Newsletter

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Blessings of Lúnasa to you all! We hope you're coping as well as you can while the world awaits a vaccine for the Corona Virus, and as always our thoughts and prayers go out especially to those who have lost loved ones during this time.

We’d like to announce a new "Goddess" category in our Lúnasa update. It's a wonderful exploration of Goddess Archetypes with Celtic and other Goddesses sampled from many of the Worlds cultures. We hope you enjoy it. We've also released a selection of our wonderful Celtic icons as a free Sticker pack.

Lúnasa Festival: Lúnasa also known as Lugnasad or Lughnasadh, is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and has pagan origins. It translates as the ‘Assembly of Lugh’ and is a Gaelic festival which signifies the beginning of the harvest season. It is also the word for August in the Irish language. Along with Samhain, Imbolc and Bealtaine, Lúnasa is one of the four ‘Cross-Quarter’ days that mark seasonal changes in accordance with the cycle of the sun. In Modern Irish it is called Lúnasa, in Scottish Gaelic: Lùnastal, and in Manx: Luanistyn. It corresponds to other European harvest festivals such as the Welsh Gŵyl Awst and the English Lammas. The essence of Lúnasa is the joy of life under the knowledge that darker times are moving in.

Goddess: Our collection of Goddess Meditations will help you explore and balance the different aspects of the divine feminine through the mythology of Goddesses from pantheons from every corner of the earth. We’ll journey into meditation as we explore the gifts and powers of each Goddess, and how each Goddess can inspire and guide attributes within us.

Celtic Stickers: Welcome to the Celtic Whispers Free Sticker Pack, a collection of beautifully crafted Celtic Icons which feature prominantly in Celtic Whispers. Currently available as a free download on Apple's iMessage Sticker Store. If you'd like to purchase real stickers or Celtic sticker packs please visit our "Celtic Whispers" shop on Redbubble.

In Irish mythology, the Lughnasadh festival is said to have been begun by the god Lugh (Lú) as a funeral feast and athletic competition in commemoration of his mother (or foster-mother) Tailtiu. She was said to have died of exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agriculture. Tailtiu may have been an earth goddess who represented the dying vegetation that fed mankind. The funeral games in her honour were called the Óenach Tailten or Áenach Tailten and were held at Tailtin in what is now Co Meath. The Óenach Tailten was similar to the Ancient Olympic Games and included ritual athletic and sporting contests. The event also involved trading, the drawing-up of contracts, and matchmaking. At Tailtin, trial marriages were conducted, whereby young couples joined hands through a hole in a wooden door. The trial marriage lasted a year and a day, at which time the marriage could be made permanent or broken without consequences. After the 9th century the Óenach Tailten was celebrated irregularly and it gradually died out. It was revived for a period in the 20th century as the Tailteann Games.

Reflection Seeds

✤Sunset 31st July to sunset 2nd August
✤Cross quarter day
✤The time of the first harvest
✤Plan to reap what you have sown
✤Offer some of your abundance back to the land
✤Give thanks for the people around you
✤Share your first fruits

✤Be ready for the time of harvest

A Message from the God Lúgh:

Consider those who come after us. Will your plastic bottles still be in their landfill? Will their forests and wild animals be thriving and bountiful? Will their rivers run clean? What you do right now can make a big difference.

Lúnasa Meditation:

Today marks the next festival on the "Wheel of the Year". It is now high summer and Lúnasa is the celebration of this first Grain Harvest, a time for gathering in and giving thanks for abundance. Our Goddess here is Áine, who presides over the moon, crops, farms and cattle. Aine is revered among Irish herbalists and healers and is said to be responsible for the body's life force.

Lúnasa Inspiration:

Make or Buy an Insect Hotel: Encourage beneficial insects and bees to visit your backyard with an insect Hotel. An insect hotel, also known as a bug hotel or insect house, is a manmade structure created to provide shelter for insects. They can come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the specific purpose or specific insect it is catered to. They also attract and provide shelter for ladybirds and lacewings too.

Recommended App:

Ecosia is the tech company that puts the ability to do good into the hands of internet users. When you use Ecosia to browse the web, your searches are helping to plant trees and reverse the effects of climate change. Like other search engines, Ecosia makes money from search ads. The big difference is, Ecosia uses its profits to plant trees, where nature and people need them most. The more people that use Ecosia, the more trees we can plant, it’s that easy! So what are you waiting for?

Recommended Book:

A Circle of Stones, by Erynn Rowan Lauríe, originally published in 1995, offers a unique approach to meditation and Otherworld journeying in a Celtic Pagan context through the use of prayer beads as a focus for understanding early Gaelic cosmology and ways to journey through its three realms of land, sea, and sky. With chapters on ritual, altars, journeying, and communicating with deities, this short book has provided seekers with tools for their spiritual work for nearly twenty years.

Recommended Movie:

The 11'th Hour: In this 2007 documentary film on the state of the natural environment created, produced, co-written and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, we look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. It was directed by Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners and financed by Adam Lewis and Pierre André Senizergues, and distributed by Warner Independent Pictures.

Team Profile:

Sarah Robinson. Sarah is a yoga and meditation teacher based in Bath, UK. Her background is in science; she holds an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience and has studied at Bath, Exeter and Harvard Universities. Weaving in her love of all things myth, magic and goddess, Sarah is passionate about creating magic to inspire and transform. Through yoga, meditation and ritual she aims to help everyone connect to their own special magic and inner power.

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Celtic Living for the 21st Century:

We recommend Kathryn Kelloggs: "101 Ways to Go Zero Waste". This is a handbook for beginners on how to reduce waste in your household. Kellogg’s main focus in this book is to illustrate waste-free, cost-effective ways of replacing products in order to save space and money. In addition, she gives you several different DIY instructions for home and beauty products and straightforward advice on how to be a responsible shopper.

Celtic Whispers Shop:

If you like the artwork and style of Celtic Whisper’s we also offer our designs on physical products as well. We invite you to visit our shop and see if any of our Celtic Designs would look good on a t-shirt, mug or sticker.

Beannacht :

The main harvest time is still to come, but perhaps you can see the signs of abundance and are feeling proud of your work done so far this year. Whatever the season of Lúnasa holds; be Calm and Mindful of your duty as a Celt to protect your family and your tribe, to honour the Elders and our home the Earth. We hope as modern Celts to play our part in fulfilling the Prophecy of the Rainbow, for to be a Celt is to be a Warrior of the Rainbow. Slán agus Beannacht!

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