The Journal

Lughnasadh arrives on August 1, and most of what gets written about it calls it a thanksgiving. The first loaf on the table, the corn dolly braided from this year’s straw, and thanks given for the grain. I kept the festival that way for years, but sometimes that framing feels too small for the weight of the day. . The name remembers an older layer. Lughnasadh means the assembly of Lugh, and the first assembly was a funeral: Lugh founded the games for Tailtiu, his foster-moth

Somewhere in your life, you are the one in charge. Maybe it has a title attached — manager, owner, chair, director. Maybe it doesn't: the parent everyone calls first, the one who runs the household, the friend who holds the group together, the person at work who isn't the boss but is somehow responsible anyway. If people look to you and things depend on you, you are wearing a crown, whether or not anyone calls it that. Midsummer is the season that tests people in exactly that

The Sun is usually read as the best card in the deck. Pure good news, the all-clear, joy without a footnote. When it lands on the table, readers relax, and clients hear a promise: the hard part is over, the good thing will last. Pamela Colman Smith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons That reading is half right, and the half it misses is the half that matters. What the sun does Start with the sun itself, because the card borrows its whole meaning from it. The sun at its heig