Lugh Lamfhada

Lugh the Long Handed, skilled in many arts, the friece striker, the boy hero, son of Ethnenn.

Thus are the many names of Lugh, High King of Tara after the mighty Nuada.

As Lughnasadh approaches it seems fitting to contemplate the nature of one such as he.

He has become more of a regular in my circle of deities, especially in recent years when I find myself plagued with thoughts of branching out my hobbies, and the constant thought of "I can make that!"

Being one of the more documented, and thus popular god of the Tuatha De Danann, I will direct you to the stories he can be found (instead of reiterating them):

Stories of Lugh

And will instead speak totally from UPG (Unverified personal gnosis ) with him.

He is a very bright presence. And that is not quantified to only mean a shiny yellow light of sun, as is the general theory of him as a "sun god". It is just brightness in all it's forms, that sort of glare and shiny that is to such an extreme it has no color.

Which confused me at first, as the majority of books had him pegged as a "sun god", and while I will admit he does love gold and shiny, that doesn't quite equal sun god to me. Further research unfolded a new theory and debate with Lugh's name/meaning/association that is best simplified in the Wikipedia of all places:

Lugh's name was formerly interpreted as deriving from the Proto-Indo-European root *leuk-, "flashing light", and he is often surrounded by solar imagery, so from Victorian times he has often been considered a sun god, similar to the Greco-Roman Apollo. He appears in folklore as a trickster, and in County Mayo thunderstorms were referred to as battles between Lug and Balor, so he is sometimes considered a storm god: Alexei Kondratiev notes his epithet lonnbeimnech ("fierce striker") and concludes that "if his name has any relation to 'light' it more properly means 'lightning-flash' (as in Breton luc'h and Cornish lughes)".^[14] However, Breton and Cornish are Brythonic languages in which Proto-Celtic *k did undergo systematic sound changes into -gh- and -ch-. This change did not occur in Irish, so it is unlikely that Lugh derives from the root *leuk-, nor is it related to any other Proto-Indo-European root connoting luminosity.

And despite the on-going archaeological and entomology debate, "flashing light" makes more sense to me, personally.

It seems to me that Lugh is behind my needing to do or make something when the thought of it takes on that sort of brightness.

I may have lost some people with that so let me try and explain. I am a very visual person, and so most of my thought process is a combination of storyline, emotion and pictures. Some ideas are dull and get thought of once and then thrown to the circular filing cabinet of my mind. Other's, the ones I associate with Lugh, won't go away. In fact I can't think of anything else because it's so bright, burning every detail into my head.

It was like that with the painting, that is currently hanging over my mantle. I HAD to get it out. There was no way I couldn't paint it because there would be no other image in my head till it was on paper.

And that painting happens to be one I'm most proud of. It seems a culmination of skill I didn't know I had at the time and am unsure that I still have often now lol.

I will admit that I haven't spoken to him often, or really directly. Just more of a feeling of his presence occasionally when I make him offerings ( usually to facilitate creativity and my career )

Like all the Tuatha he has a heavy joking side, I'm happy to say that my brief interactions with him have been of a congenial light hearted nature. Almost an older brother prodding you to do better, to do this or that. Actually that's an excellent description of my interactions with him, a jovial prodding. lol

I would like to work more closely with the God of All Skills, as it seems to be my lot in life to constantly dabbling in various skills and crafts of my own. Whether he wishes to work more closes with me is yet to be seen, he is High King who defeated the Fomirans afterall and as such I imagine would call out to those who truly were impressive people.

It would be interesting to me to talk to some folk that deal more closely with him. I plan to do a ritual for and to him, for help/guidance/blessings in the upcoming CAYA Laughnasadh/Lammas ritual and will no doubt blog further if anything of import occurs.

I know that in general the CR community is pretty hush hush about personal experiences with deity, very afraid to state anything UPG. But I'm encouraging it lol, in fact it is one of the goals of this blog to encourage it.

If you've had some experience I want to hear it, no judgment as everyone experiences and sees differently.

Oh and if anyone was wondering so far my offerings for Lugh have been whiskey (my standard fare for any un-introduced Tuatha) and oddly enough butter cookies. For some reason he really likes butter cookies.

Slán go fóill

Branwen