On one of these early August days, I’m reminded that now is the midpoint for the “Summer half of the year” for the ancient Celts, that time between May and November in their (and our) calendar wheel.

For the Winter midpoint of the year the Celts have the festival of Imbolc, or what we in the States call “Groundhogs Day.” It’s a feminine festival, with Imbolc meaning “still in the womb” (and, coincidentally they looked to burrowed animals in those ancient Celtic religions as nature’s alarm clock to wake from winter). For the summer, and specifically August 1st and the days just after, the Celts had “Lughnasadh (loo-nuh-suh)” in honor of Lugh, an ancient deity akin to Rome’s Mercury. I’m not sure their’s a modern American equivalent, except for maybe our flexible notion of “summer vacation.” The idea is similar.

Lugh, the ancient deity, was known as a “jack of all trades, master of none,” and the time is seen as more of a masculine festival in Celtic tradition. He was called a physician, a mystic, a smith, a trickster, and a bard. He did a bit of everything, and so the festival gives a bit of a nod to everything. Just as Imbolc marked the time when the world was emerging from the womb and celebrated was around the hearth, Lugh is an outdoor celebration that marks the days of “last hurrah” and a descent into the harvest, the colder times, the “beginning of the end” as we might say.

To honor the festival they’d reap the first ears of wheat, oats, and barley, and dig the first potatoes. They’d wean the young lambs so that the mothers would mate in order to continue the cycle in the expectant spring. First plump fruits would be picked from the gardens, and it was understood in all of this that the Earth was keeping its harvest promise.

They’d settle bets and business deals, race horses, and everyone would compete in team games for the “glory of today,” because the hard harvest work was about to begin in haste and the night was slowly taking over the sun’s brilliance.

This rhythm and pull between the womb of creation and the “last hurrah” before an ending is still our rhythm, both as humans in society, and as embodied beings.