Lughnasadh Dawning
On Storytelling, Celebration, and Awakening
Lughnasadh, one of the four big Celtic festivals, and a celebration of Storytelling and Survival. What better festival to set something in motion?
When brushing up my knowledge for today’s blog I was surprised at just how varied my options were for Lughnasadh. The harvest festival was said to have begun as funeral games for Lugh’s mother or foster mother (she appears as both in different stories) Tailtiu. The great goddess had cleared the lands for agriculture in Ireland, giving her life to exhaustion in the process.
It served as a kind of Celtic Olympic games, celebrating both athletic and artistic achievement.
In Ancient Ireland a truce was called for the duration of the festival, and all clans were invited to Tailtin, an area now in County Meath, to participate.
Over the years the celebration took on new meanings, becoming a commemoration of a battle between Lugh and a great god Crom Dubh, over the treasure of the harvest. Sometimes depicted as a fight against a blight, other times a fight over the beautiful Eithne, goddess of the grain, this battle shades the festival in its mirroring of the time of year. Always held on the 1st of August, this was a period of time when the old harvest was running low and the next was not yet ready. The arrival of a blight on the current crop or the rotting of the remaining stockpile would have left the people starving and unable to properly prepare for the harvest ahead.
As such a celebration of Lughnasadh was a way of keeping their spirits high, of opening trade between clans and ensuring a continuation of bloodlines.
It was also a festival of music and of storytelling. A gathering of the Bards to share their travels, their music, their poetry, and their tales. A coming together of artists and athletes to celebrate their greatest achievements. It is with this in mind that I have chosen Lughnasadh as my root for something new. Over the next month I will be making use of this space and my other social media, to explore the theme of Awakening.
Over the past several months, I have been setting things in motion. Through extensive work on my website, my networking, and my social media, I feel I am now finally ready to reawaken this blog into a space for storytelling, musing, and more. I am going to be sharing information and advice connected with my time as a professional Game Master for Tabletop Roleplaying. I will be introducing myself, what I do and why I do it. And most importantly, I will be awakening Clockwork Writings into the business I have been working so hard to lay the groundwork for.
Welcome, take a seat by the fire and relax.
There is so much more to come and I am bursting with the excitement of getting started. Come and celebrate, share, comment, and interact. I look forward to getting to know each and every one of you, and I can’t wait for you to get to know me.
Until the clock ticks its time again…