Please use this thread to help educate other people on your important holidays. Also it may be used as a place to simply shout out festive greetings to other folk.
For a lot of neo pagans it is or just was Lammas/Lughnasa a harvest/grain festival.
Happy Harvest to ya!
For myself today is the Holy Day of Crom Dubh and Aine's Feast traditionally celebrated on the first Sunday in August as Domhnach Aine agus Choim Duibh. I've got a fresh loaf of oat/current/hazelnut bread cooling on the baking rack and quart of fresh goat milk (no farm direct cow's moo to be had sadly) ready to deploy. Then lot's of dancing.
Crom Dubh ('Crom Duv') is the Black Lord, He of the Bent Back, often depicted as a great black bull carrying the grain child-Goddess out of the ground (which is why he's black - all that time in the deep earth).
He is a God of Death and Sacrifice to nourish His people. Many of his cattle children were sacrificed every Samhain during the annual culls as evidenced by nearly 50,000 remains being dredged out of the sacred lake Lough Gur during the modern era. The ancient breed of cattle remains in the line of the Kerry Cattle Breed.
There is some speculation on Crom Dubh's links with the more commonly well known Irish Deities of the Dagda and Donn. Both Crom Dubh and the Dagda are associated with fertility (very few Irish Gods aren't though really) and the crooked staff. Both Crom Dubh and Donn are ascribed the gentle care of the Dead though Donn is usually located on one of the Western isles in the tradition of the dead going 'West'. There is a good possibility the title of Black Lord belongs to one God who in His youthful form is known as Donn and in his older form the Dagda. Open to interpretation as you will.
Crom Dubh is not to be confused with Crom Cruach the Red/Bloody Lord even though they are often collapsed by modern intrepretations. Confusion over the word 'Crom' not fully understanding it as the title of 'Lord' has lead to the modern reinterpretation of seperate Gods. A major clue in the distinction comes from the remains of ancient lore in which the Black Lord is always listed as a gentle protector associated with earth and the dead and the Red Lord as a more aggressive solar Deity associated with war and sport. (I suspect from examining the location of sacred places and remaining lore the two were titles of competing but reflective male Deities both 'involved' with the Goddess Aine.)
..and yeah research seems to bear out that this conflated 'Lord' is the deity Robert E. Howard's Conan's Crom is based on. Sigh.
Moving on... the Goddess Aine (An-ya/An-ye) is often referred to as Aine of Knock Fennel in modern pagan lore. She is an inclusive Goddess combining lunar/solar/earthly realms. She is the Patron of agriculture & livestock, magic, and the Munster Queen of the Faerie in modern lore. Again many modern folk interpret Her as a love Goddess resonate with Aphrodite but this is not born out by Her more ancient aspects as found in the remaining oral tradition which makes it fairly clear she had less interest in love than fecundity.
One very interesting connection within the issue of titles versus names is the relationship between Aine and the Morrigu (Great Queen). Some modern scholars suggest that the Morrigu is a manifestation of the lunar death aspect of Aine. The modern attempts of correlating or seperating out one Deity from another is a Gordian Knot and I find the best policy is to let Them tell you Their names and Titles firsthand.
In the recorded tales we find a Goddess of the Sidhe folk tracing back to an older neolithic Deity concerned primarily with the cycle of the seasons and the dead. In the physical place of the Great Lios the largest circle of standing stones in Ireland we have the remains of a cattle cult (lots and lots of charred remains) and the archaeological discovery underneath the layers of the circle itself revealed a large outline of a staff and a crescent moon (2500 B.C). The Lios, aka Rannach Crom Dubh, is said to belong to Crom Dubh and Aine as a shared place with the largest stone being Crom Dubh's physical manifestation. The circle has several confirmed calendar alignments and is currently inhabited by a herd of dairy cows. Moo! |
