by Hagar Harpak
Summer is summering. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s a playful tug on a soul string. Maybe it’s a desire to soak up the afternoon sun and not do much. Maybe it’s the call of the ocean, or the mountains, or an outdoor concert under the stars. Or maybe it’s the feeling that you’re meant to be out playing, but you’re working too darn hard, indoors, and your skin wants some sunshine, and you’re feeling cranky.
How is the climax of this Summer moving through you?
This is the time when our travels around the sun begin to show a shift in light and color. Gold replaces green, the sun sets noticeably earlier, and while hot, the air has its ways of reminding us that from where we stand we can see Autumn.
How does your body receive this moment, as the season begins to transition?
I always get a little blue when August arrives. Watermelon flavor and sandy feet and all, the free spirit feeling of Summer is painted over with a September that seems too close for comfort, even as an adult. The sensation in the body that announces that Fall is around the corner has a beautiful, sad sentiment, filled with wanting to hold on to something so precious, and knowing that I can’t. Summer is sacred. It was when I was a kid. It still is now as a mama. I see them dramatically changed each Summer, and I know that when the next one arrives, the kids will be a year older, and I will be too. It adds an extra dose of sentimental sauce.
The season is reaching its peak, and with it the maturity of its character. She is bountiful and beautiful, nurturing and nourishing, generous and joyful, and with her motherly arms filled with food, ready to bestow her abundance upon anyone who is ready to receive, she gently announces a transition.
Harvest season in pre-Christian Europe officially began around the 1st of August, when the land turned gold and the grain was ready to be gathered. Rituals around bonfires were conducted, herbs collected along with wheat turned into amulets, the grain was partially stored away to become next Spring’s seeds, and partially milled to become bread.
Bread is a basic form of nourishment for humans, and yet it requires a process of refinement. It is a symbol of alchemy; turning food into something new, something more, something that is distinctly human. Bread is a magic spell of nature and culture weaving together to create sustenance. Using the four elements of nature, along with human hands – grain of the earth to make flour, water to turn it to dough, air kneaded in, and fire to bake – a new form is born.
On the Pagan Wheel Of The Year, the first harvest festival, which is a cross-quarter holiday, celebrated between Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox, is called Lughnasadh. Later on, Christianity arrives in the scene, and forms a holiday called Lammas, which means Loaf Of Bread, that colonizes this sacred moment of transition from growth to harvest, grain to bread, from light toward the dark.
Lugh, was a solar deity in the Celtic tradition; a master craftsman, a king, and a warrior, a god of justice, truth, and order, whose myth tells the archetypal story of a new generation rising to restructure the world, to deal with the wounds inflicted by grandfathers, to restore reciprocity with The Mother, with the earth. Lugh’s mother is the daughter of a tyrant king, destined to be destroyed by him. Locked in a tower, her children taken from her, she never even gets to breastfeed him. His foster mother, Talitiu, dies of exhaustion after clearing the land of Ireland for agriculture.
In celebration of his foster mother, and in devastation of her loss, and perhaps in dedication to his birth mother who lost him to the tyranny of patriarchy, Lugh lights a bonfire and initiates a festival, a funeral, a feast in gratitude and grief for the life and the death of his beloved mother.
This festival also celebrates the Grain Goddess, goddess of the earth. She gives birth to her children, the grain, and grieves the dwindling life of her lover, or son, the sun. While the Sun is still powerful, he begins his preparation for death. The Mother stands in her fullness, steeped in generosity, and while the land is rich and filled with gifts, gratitude is deep because we know that Summer isn’t here to stay, and Autumn is on its way.
This time of year calls for a deep honoring of life, which is never without death – a complex, ever breaking wholeness, filled with the inseparable forces of love and grief.
This moment in the season is a paradoxical play; the height of Summer, and a tipping point toward Fall. It is a joyful time of plenty. These are the restful days of Summer, of relaxation and delight in the fruit of hard work. AND tension is starting to build, knowing that this abundance is temporary. It’s almost time to start to gather food and to prepare for the colder days, as we transition toward the darker days of the year.
In the modern, western world, we might not need to worry about this transition. We can easily go to the supermarket in the middle of January and buy grapes that were grown on the other side of the planet. Modernity has its charms and perks, but we also know that it has severed our connection to the natural flow of life.
Capitalism is obsessed with growth, and has discarded the importance of decay. We can all feel the heavy weight of this distorted vision and this unhealthy way of living. The soil is paying the price. We’re all paying the price. Creation without dissolution isn’t sustainable.
Lughnasadh is a moment in the cycle of the earth around the sun that reminds us that life itself is cyclical. We stand in the peak of life’s power, about to shift into the process of dying. We receive nourishment and delight in Mother Earth’s generosity, and weep for her death. A doorway to the underworld opens up during this time. Persephone, the Maiden Of Spring, hears the first whispers calling her to go become queen again. Her mother, Demeter, Greek goddess of the earth and the grain, knows that her daughter will soon leave her again. She stands in her golden glory, and prepares to destroy the world yet again with her raging grief.
Right around this time of year the Jewish tradition laments the destruction of the first and second temples. Rituals of weeping, a day of fasting, and a festival of grief arrives on the ninth day in the Jewish month of Av. A few days later, on Tu b’Av, a celebration of love and eros invites the people to the fields, to flirt and dance under the full moon, and to participate in rituals of song and sex.
Life is death. Death gives life. The old is destroyed for the new to emerge. Creativity and dissolution are intertwined.
Lughnasadh is a bread baking and bread breaking holiday. It’s an invitation to gather and to feast. It is a celebration of nature’s abundance of nourishment, and culture’s cultivation of food.
I hear this moment as a call to create a deeper relationship between what happens naturally and what is intentionally cultivated. I feel it as a thread that weaves together the wildness that has been taken down by patriarchy, as well as the value of civilization.
Civilization is a loaded word. The word “uncivilized” has been used by White Supremacy to degrade, disregard, demonize, and dehumanize anyone who doesn’t fit into the cisgender, straight, white male category. Inferior. Savage. Undomesticated. The earth itself has been disrespected and destroyed by the so called civilized.
And it doesn’t take much more than a quick observation of our world today to see that some people and systems both have forgotten about being civilized, about working together as a collective, about supporting one another, and honoring each other’s choices, about reciprocity and interconnectedness, about decency.
There is both shadow and light and all the colors of the rainbow in that which is untamed, as well as in that which is well planned, thoughtfully refined, and carefully manicured.
The inner workings of our mind-heart spaces need freedom as well as tenacious training, structures as well as aimless wandering.
I often find that being a parent is walking that very tightrope. My children aren’t mine. But they are my responsibility. They are not mine to shape, but being their first guide on their journey of life is my job. They need a safe space to express, to rebel, to mess up, to melt down. And they
need to know that their behavior affects others. They need time to play, to be carefree, to roam in the wilderness of their imagination. And they need to pick up their toys and art supplies at the end of the day, and help to clear the table after a meal. They need to learn to listen to themselves, and they need to learn to listen to others too. It is such a delicate line to keep navigating.
The last thing the world needs is more uneducated, vulgar selfishness, lawless, self absorbed narcissism. And we need a splash of feral flavor, with a pinch of disobedience, and a willingness to disrupt the status quo.
We need to take care of ourselves. AND we need to take care of each other.
I often think of The Ant And The Cricket fable during this time of year. I think of the ant’s hard work and how society rewards it, how even in the Summer months the ant never stops. We’re given the message that work is more important than fun, that taking care of the future is more important than the present, that being a soldier in the workforce is a noble life purpose. Hello capitalism. Do you think when Winter comes and the hungry cricket knocks on her door she is resting, watching Netflix, eating popcorn, drinking tea, and cuddling under a blanket? I don’t think so. The ant is cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, washing dishes, answering emails, paying bills, and fixing the broken drawer, the leaking pipe, and the crack in the floor. Again.
I find it interesting that the cricket, who knows how to love life, how to write poetry, how to play music, how to sing about the season, and revel in sunsets, and dance with a heart full of inspiration, is criticized so relentlessly.
In some versions of the story, the ant keeps the cricket out and lets him starve to death. After all, he played music all Summer while she was working hard at gathering food. Maybe he had too much fun watching the sunsets and being inspired all the time. Maybe he even teased her about not knowing how to relax. Why should she help him now?
In other versions, the ant lets the cricket in and offers him some food. I like to think that she shares a meal with him, and it is nourishing and delicious. Later he teaches her how to play guitar. Maybe he rolls a little joint, or offers her the very first edible she’s ever tried. It’s a hybrid strain, and she can chill out a bit, but still get some things done, and she laughs, and is visited by muse. She might not be a singer songwriter like he is, but her heart opens up. After all, what would this world be without art?
Maybe she teaches him how to make amazing food, and finds a way into his artist soul through the art of cooking. Maybe he explains how music requires a lot of practice, hard work, deep listening, and willpower.
Harvest itself is hard work, and it is a result of contentious hard work. It is also an opportunity to enjoy, to delight in sunlight and yummy food, to receive life’s deliciousness, and to gather what we’ve grown and celebrate it. It invites us to share with others – each our own nature, our own talents, each our own gifts to offer. It is time to relish the moment, AND to take care of the future. It is a call into the importance of inspiration, and into the dedication that is required for
Muse to move into the canvas, the instrument, the page. It is an invitation to make how we live our lives into a form of art.
Happy days of harvest to you!
About the author:
Hagar Harpak is a mama of two, a kitchen witch, a storyteller, a ceremony facilitator, a yoga, meditation, and breath-work teacher, an explorer of the intersection of Mother Nature, mythology, philosophy, poetry, magic, seasons, and somatics. She’s been weaving myths into movement since 2004. Her website: https://www.mamamandala.com/
