Lughnasadh Story
by Blayze

I would tell you of the grain, of growth and harvest... the soil rich and dark , the rains sweet and clean, gentle breezes and the warmth of the sun. It is midday and a woman stands at the stone boundary of a large field rippling with ripened grain. Beside her is a man stripped to the waist and painted with symbols of grain and mystery. The remains of last years harvest is woven into his hair and binds his wrists. The woman carries a shining sickle which glints in the overhead sun.Gently she kisses the man on his feet, knees, groin, breast and mouth and then he in turn kneels before her, facing the ripened fields. With her sickle she cuts his throat and he falls to the ground. His blood soaks into the earth and the woman lets cry with a mighty keen. At her cry the grains bends as before a wind... and the spirit of the sacrifice moves through the field, gifting each stalk with its power and mystery.The woman enters the field and begins to harvest the grain... the sickle moving in a blur as she moves from row to row following the path of the rippling grain.. As she works the sun moves across the sky.As the last light of the sun shines upon the stubbled field.. she arrives at the farthest corner. The wheat here is still dancing in the breeze... touched with the blood red glow of the setting sun. The woman takes up her sickle and cuts a lock of her hair. She uses the strands to bind the grain in the furthest corner into the last sheaf. She kneels before the sheaf and echoing the earlier rite with the man, she kisses the sheaf at the five points. Again her sickle glints in the light of the sun... but like the grain bound before her, the sickle is now as red as the dying sun. Quickly she cuts down the last sheaf where the spirit of the sacrifice has come to rest.She takes up the last sheaf and walks the boundary of the field, tracing the path of the sun from east to north to west and then to the south in darkness.