Mabon, the Second Harvest Festival, is one of the names given to the time when the pagan Wheel of the Year spins round to the Autumn Equinox. The stories about the Wheel depend on the tradition that produces the stories. I have posted several articles about the eight power points of the Wheel, mainly from my own Celtic viewpoint, though I have gone back as far as Sumeria for some of the links to the present day traditions and rituals. The one most cogent to this one is Lughnassah, 1st Harvest (7/24/2008) since both are to do with Lugh, the God of Light in the Irish, Llew in the Welsh.

It’s one week now before August 1st and I checked the 148 article titles in the archives and realized that I hadn’t yet put on a posting about the Sabbat called Lughnassah, by those who can get their eyes around the spelling of the Irish, and Lammas by those who can’t.

All the other Sabbats have had some kind of treatment. But it turns out that everything I have written about Lughnassah was in notes for students and not for the blog readers. So here goes a little summary. Mea culpa!

June brides were a pop song cliché when I was young. But it wasn’t just because June rhymed with Moon. It is a very ancient custom. People tended to get married in June for centuries because in the old days when Beltane was celebrated as the beginning of summer in May, that month was the month in which the god and goddess were wed and conceived the divine child to be born at Yule, nine months later. (See my posting Hooray! Hooray! The first of May…Beltane 4/27/2007).

Every pagan knows about that connection. People then didn’t want to compete with the deities, and marry in May, bad luck at least and great misfortune at worst. So they waited until June to follow the marriage example. And June 21, the Summer Solstice was treated by them as Midsummer, not the beginning of summer.