| In silence is the seed of wisdom gained |
| - unknown |
It is late summer of a year, like every year, that is running fast. The season turns soon to the Celtic autumn, on Lughnasadh, August 1. Seeds planted in spring will soon come to fruition - harvest - and the seed-corn that remains will lay in wait for another growing season.
The tradition of Lughanasah involves the labours of Tailtu, the last queen of the Fir Bolg, the mythic settlers of Connacht. Tailtu cleared the land, gave birth to fields of grain then died of her efforts. Historically, clearance of woodland always precedes the planting of crops and the settling of an area. Ongoing, but gradual, immigration of Neolithic settlers from the mainland displaced earlier Mesolithic inhabitants of Ireland. Tailtu, as an early indigenous goddess, may represent those early Irish inhabitants whose clearance of land allowed for easier cultivation by later settlers.
Wheat is a primary harvest crop. Emmer wheat is a domesticated form of wild wheat that was one of the first crops domesticated in the ancient Near East. Emmer wheat has strong husks called glumes that surround its grains of seed. Primitive emmer wheat has a curious ability to self-sow, utilizing the effect of humidity on its husks to push itself an inch or more into the ground once it has fallen from its stalk. The cultivation of emmer wheat and barley spread in the Neolithic era across Europe and into Ireland by about 4000 BC. Traces of emmer wheat and impressions of these cereal crops, such as barley, have been found on Irish Neolithic pottery.
Farming and the movement of wheat and other cereal seed across the Old World was a turning point in human societal development. There is evidence of farming of cereal grasses around 8000 BC and the development of reliable crops marked a period when people who previously hunted and gathered, settled into larger communities and self-sustaining societies. The importance of wheat was not lost on these ancient people and the bequest of wheat upon humanity figures in many a mythological tale.
In Greece, in approximately 1700 BC, a mystery cult rose that we today call the "Eleusinian Mysteries" and which flourished for over two thousand years. Evidence points to earlier cults that commemorated grain goddesses, including those of Isis, in Egypt, but the best known of these today was located in Eleusis, in ancient Greece. The Mysteries are believed to have been dedicated to Demeter, the Greek goddess of grain, fertility and the harvest. Her Roman counterpart, Ceres, gave her name to our word "cereal."
Like Lughnasadh, the greater ceremonies of the Eleusinian Mysteries took place at harvest, around mid-September. Little is concretely known of this tradition. Although initiates were sworn, on pain of death, to secrecy, its members from all levels of society maintained an unusual level of faith to their vow of silence. The mythic bestowal of wheat and the art of agriculture by Demeter on the young prince Triptolemus are thought to have figured in the ritual and some believe one of the sacred objects presented was a sheaf of wheat, accompanied by the words or message "within silence, the seed of wisdom is gained."
In Ireland at harvest it is the pre-Celtic god Crom Dubh that equals Triptolemus. Crom Dubh's timeless task of ferrying the harvest from the womb of Aine was taken over by the bright god Lugh, whose golden spear reflects the pointed shafts of the sheaf of wheat. It is not Demeter in Ireland, but Tailtu who cleared the path for agriculture and Eithne, the Otherworldly mistress of "golden corn" who joins Crom Dubh in the underworld from Samhain to Imbolg. Lughnasadh, the harvest, bears the name of "Lugh," but it is the bestowal of shining, life-giving wheat that is celebrated.
Any pattern, word or character that is complete within itself bears a second look - it is of the distant past and the future. Of parthenogenetic goddesses who bestow their gifts, of primitive wheat that develops to become the bread-wheat upon which we depend, what comes around shall continue to go around, in silence the seeds of our ideas, our desires will be planted and come, someday, to fruition. What was sown in the past nurtures the present and holds the promise of the future. Soon will be harvest, soon again will come planting.