CARBONDALE - In his old age, the Irish sun God Lugh is still potent and capable. Even now as the days begin to shorten again in Southern Illinois, his fiery fingers are diligently tending the crops in our long growing season.

It seems a shame, then, to call attention to his autumn demise as area pagans will do Sunday in Giant City State Park.

"It's almost anti-intuitive," Tara Nelsen, founder of the Southern Illinois Pagan Alliance, said of acknowledging fall so early. "I'm really a summer girl, and I'm not ready to admit it. In September, ok, but not yet."

The reality, said Nelsen, is that it is time to turn toward the coming harvest.

Lughnasadh is said to commemorate both the wedding of Lugh (pronounced Loo) and the funeral the sun god puts on for his foster-mother Tailte.

Early Christians kept the holiday and renamed it Lammas, meaning loaf-mass. Newly baked loaves of bread are placed on an altar for the celebration - traditionally observed on the full moon nearest the midpoint between the summer solstice and autumnal equinox with religious rituals and contests of strength and skill.

For the celebration, followers tithe the first reapings of the harvest to Lugh to ensure future crops. Nelsen admits that the bread she will take to the Sunday festivity will be baked in a bread machine.

"I'm a modern witch, and I'll use my modern appliances," Nelsen said.

To officiate the ceremony, the Southern Illinois Pagan Alliance welcomes Prairie Moon Rising, a Centralia-based coven who will "cast a circle," the term used for creating a sacred space, at noon at Shelter 2.

"It's a feast," said Arthur Michels of Prairie Moon. "We will remind everybody of why we're together, and then we're all going to eat. It's very much like a Thanksgiving."

Practitioners are grateful for the earth's abundance. They are also mindful of the lessons nature brings with each of her turns.

"For pagans, who follow the cycles of the earth, it's important to understand that what's going on in the natural world reflects what's going on in our lives," Nelsen said.

"You look at what you put in the ground metaphorically and physically, what you are growing and what projects you have started. You see what's come up, what's manifested, and you look at things that are not working in your life: your job, your relationships, bad habits, focusing on what you should be cutting out."

In the following weeks, this mental pruning helps to keep one prioritized and productive as the last of the radiant male energy begins to burn out.

"Even though people are not as tied to the land as they once were," Michels noted, "in our religion, we try to reconnect."

marleen.shepherd@thesouthern.com

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