Celebrating Lughnasadh | 23

In this episode of the Money & Magic podcast, host Chey, the witchy bookkeeper, delves into the pagan holiday of Lughnasadh, also known as Lammas. Celebrated on August 1st, Lughnasadh marks the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, and is a time to express gratitude for the bountiful harvest.
Chey explains the origins of the holiday, its connection to the Celtic god Lugh, and how it was later adapted by early Christians into the festival of Lammas. She offers simple ways to celebrate Lughnasadh, such as harvesting from your garden, baking bread, or creating a gratitude bouquet.
In the latter part of the episode, Chey shares a personal anecdote about a Facebook post she made regarding the opening ceremony of the Olympics, which went viral. She discusses the lessons she learned from this experience, including the prevalence of uncultured and narrow-minded individuals on social media, and the importance of thorough research when sharing information online.
This episode provides a blend of informative content on the pagan holiday of Lughnasadh and an entertaining personal story, showcasing Chey's witty and insightful perspective on both topics.

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Transcript

0:03

Welcome to money and magic, the podcast that combines the mystical with the practical to help you navigate money in the Muggle world. I'm your host, shy remote bookkeeper and judgment free money coach. I hope this podcast helps you create a harmonious relationship with your finances that empowers you to lead your truly magical life. Let's get started. Hey magical human. Welcome back to money and magic. Today we are covering another pagan holiday called Lunassa. I also want you to stick around until the end because I have a very interesting story about some current events that are happening right now. So let's go ahead and jump into this episode all about Lunassa. Lunassa is the first of the harvest festivals and it normally happens on August 1. This is the halfway point between the summer solstice Lytha and the autumn equinox mabin, and this is a time where we start to show our gratitude for the harvest that is all around us. Back in the old days, it was really, really focused on grain because that was what would help sustain them through the entire winter. Now in modern times, I like to look at this as any harvest. I personally start to see my tomatoes are ripening. I have a lot of produce that is starting to be ready to pick. It is no longer considered the early season of my garden. I have a huge abundance bounty of produce right now and that is what Lunasta is all about, is saying thank you for that harvest. It got its name from the irish Gaelic for commemoration of Louvere and Lu. NASA is pretty much just saying we're celebrating Lou and Lou is a celtic God. Lu was known to be the God that was associated with light and sun and justice and oaths. And it is also known that the sun is what helped bring that harvest in. This is the time of year where we really start to feel, feel that winter is closer than it is farther away. And so we are seeing less sun each day and we are supposed to give gratitude and gratefulness for the sun that we do have that is allowing us to have all of this bountiful produce. Now, a lot of times you will also hear Lunassa called llamas. I personally choose to use Lunassa because the name lamas comes from the old english phrase which translates to loaf mass. And this was actually that the early Christians and the Catholics took over Lunassa and turned it into loth Mass. So festivals date back to those christian times where they would celebrate a feast of first fruits. Really, all it was was the exact same thing that the pagans were doing for Lunassa, but the Christians couldn't call it that. So they changed it and they call it lamas. I don't know a lot of Christians or Catholics that still celebrate this, at least in America, but it is still celebrated in different parts of the world. So you might refer to it as lamas instead of Lunassa. One thing I found very interesting when I was doing my research is there are records that show that the early Christians would actually bring their first loaves of bread from the harvest to the church, and those loaves would be blessed by the priest. Then those loaves were sometimes cut into, like, fourths, and they would place them at the corners of the barn to protect the grain that was in there. And to me, if that is not the definition of witchcraft, I don't know what is. But to each their own, I guess. So now that you have a little bit of understanding of what exactly this sabbath is, you might be saying, well, how do I celebrate it? And it's one of the easiest sabbaths to celebrate because literally go harvest something in your garden or bake a loaf of bread. Can some veggies enjoy the fresh foods that around you? I personally love on August 1, to walk around my garden and make a Lunassa bouquet. I pick any flowers that I can find, I put them all in the bouquet, and as I'm doing that, I name something that I'm grateful for, for each flower that goes in the vase. And that is kind of a way for me to connect to the earth as well as show my gratitude. This is a great time to make some corn dollies, different crafts. I do have a Lunasa guide available for you to download for free, just like I do every other Sabbath. So if you're looking for ways to celebrate and rituals to do, check out that guide, because it gives you all sorts of information when it comes to celebrating the Sabbath. It is truly something that you can just go outside and express your gratitude. You don't have to do anything big and extravagant for this holiday. It's literally just thank you for the abundance that we have around us. I personally, as I walk through my garden right now, I have cucumbers and tomatoes and peppers and sunflowers, and all of these things are starting to go crazy, crazy. And so that's where I stop for a second and I say thank you. Thank you to the gods that helped the earth to give me this food, whatever it is that you may believe. It's that attitude of gratitude, if you will. And that is one of the easiest and biggest ways to celebrate Lunassa. Now, I know I didn't give you a ton of information on that, but really, that's the gist of it. So I wanted to share a very interesting little anecdote about a post that I made on Facebook recently that went viral. And so if you just listen to this episode to get the Lunasa information, you can go ahead and skip this if you want and download that guide and get going. If you want to hear a fun little story about my personal life, then go ahead and stay tuned because this is gonna be what I learned from one of my Facebook posts going viral. So it was on Saturday afternoon, and I saw all kinds of people posting about how the opening to the Olympics was making fun of the Last Supper and that offended a bunch of christians. I went, I did a bunch of research and I made a post. And a few things that I found out was that a lot of people didn't understand that it was not the Last Supper, it was Dionysus and greek mythology. But I made a post pretty much talking about how I believe that the media is the real problem because a lot of people in the US didn't even see the full ceremony. Things were edited out somehow. And that post absolutely went nuts. At this point in time, we are about two and a half days out from me posting this. And at this point it has had 2.8 thousand reactions. It has had 2.6 thousand comments and almost 20,000 shares. And so here are some things I learned about this post going viral. The first thing that become very apparent to me on this post was that the amount of cis white men, or heterosexual white men that love to look at other people's genital area is astounding. So many of them did not read the post. They did not care about the post. They just pointed out that some actors balls were hanging out and they, in fact, were wrong because it was a rip in the tights. But that was the first thing. The second thing I learned is that Americans are vastly uncultured and they have no concept of how other countries operate and their religions, their art, nothing. The fact that this was Paris fell on deaf ears for so many of these Americans. And the third thing that I learned very quickly is that some people will literally talk themselves into their own hole and they'll just go in circles. They don't care about your information. They just want to rant and ramble, and they'll do it with anybody that wants to talk with them. The point of the entire post is that I personally believe the media is one of the biggest adversaries in our country right now. And people went wild. You have the christians on there telling me that only Jesus will save me, I'm going to hell, judgment day, yada, yada, yada, which doesn't work on me because I don't believe in your God, I don't believe in the devil, and I don't believe in hell. So you telling me, that's like telling me, oh, you're gonna end up in Narnia hell? Yeah, like, let's go to Narnia. And then the people that shared articles, this is fake. They said that it was the last Supper because they read an article title on Newsmax that says, apologies for last Supper. What so many of these people don't understand is that you need to actually read the article. They put that attention grabbing headline so you will click. But if you're not gonna read the article to get the information, it kind of defeats the purpose. And anybody who's gonna share a Newsmax article, well, I'm not even gonna pay attention to you, but this was a very interesting couple few days. I never know what people are going to take off with in the wild. Every time I put a podcast episode out or I post something on social media, I make sure that I research and research and I want to make sure that I'm giving correct information. I do not mind being called out if people can show me facts where I was wrong, but I never know what's going to go into the masses. And this is a perfect case. If I wouldn't have researched this and I wouldn't have felt as confident in my information as I do, then some of these people might have got under my skin. But the fact that I knew the research was good, I had confidence in myself, and I really don't even know these people, so I don't care what they have to say helped me just kind of sit back and watch what the heck was happening. It's been a wild ride. If you want to find me on Facebook and check that out, it's Cheyenne Reid. It's not that difficult if you can't find that find abundance alchemy on Facebook, and you'll find me from there. But it's been an interesting couple few days and so I just thought I would share that with all of you so you could get a little bit of a chuckle, too. I hope this episode was fun and maybe you learned something new. You are excited to celebrate Lunasa. That's coming up in just a couple days. And as always, there is a free guidebook that does go with this episode, so feel free to download that. The link will be in the show notes and if you have any ideas of any topics, any money topics, any witchy topics, anything that you'd like to hear, definitely reach out and let me know because I'm looking to plan my content for the next few months and honestly, I'm getting a little low so I would love to hear from you. And as always, I will see you in the next episode where we are going to talk about credit scores and that's a wrap. I will see you another spellbinding episode of Money and Magic. I hope you learned something that can help you navigate money in the Muggle world. If you have any questions, topics, or even your own money in magic story that you'd like to share, reach out to me on social media. I'd love to hear from you. And if you have found the show insightful, I'd truly appreciate it. If you could take a moment to subscribe, leave me a review and share money and magic with your friends and family. Think of it like casting a spell to help others on their financial journeys. As always, stand tall, shine bright, and stay grounded. I'll see you next time.