Persephone, John Barleycorn, Lugh of the Shining Hand and Demeter.

I've been away for a long time. 

But here is a subject that has long perplexed me; the pairing of Damu with Geshtinanna, the balance and equality of the lost girl with the lost boy. 

I was perplexed because I heard their stories as if there was no connection, or I thought the connection was limited to metaphors about 'beer' and 'wine' agriculture in general, and perhaps it is!

Perhaps that is all there is?

At the moment I am preparing to write a ceremony for Lughnasa, a Druid ceremony for my Grove. When I preformed my ceremony alone, last year, it was to cut the ties between myself and my husband - for he had broken our marriage vows, lied to me and treated me with - an old fashioned word - dishonor.

Like Geshtinanna I was prepared to walk into the Underworld to gain his release from what ever 'demon' had taken him, and like Geshtinanna I'd make my home there and learn all I could...I hadn't really thought that when she is there, he is in the Upper world, and when she ascends, he descends - so they are never together again!

Anyway, as I performed my solitary ceremony, I felt certain that shining, golden Lugh was radiant Lucifer, the fallen angel, the first shining one, the brightest  Apollo...Apollo as plague God (Nergal / Erra)...Though as Nergal the other is Erra (brother). Nevertheless, Apollo's sister is Artemis...but this is leading me into the forests!

Back to the stars.

Lucifer is The Morning Star, Venus. The star descends to 'the Underworld' falling slowly 'into the sun' and down into the deepest darkness - an angel thrown down for the sin of arrogance, for refusing to bow down before God.

Is this simply a gender change?

Venus was once Inanna, who turned her ear to The Great Below...and 'took the road that leads but one way...' to celebrate the funeral rites for The Bull of Heaven...or to subvert law and order, or to gain wisdom (take your pick).

It seems that there is a whole set of mix ups about starry metaphors, and fallen kings that leads to the name Lucifer, and I guess the most obvious mix-up occurs in  The Book of Genesis,// Epic of Gilgamesh when Shamhat (employed to lure Enkidu away from the land and wildness) becomes Lucifer tempting Eve with the apple.

Lucifer deserves his own page.

Back to Lugh....

Things start to get complicated, quickly.

We have John Barleycorn and the  Crom Cruach/ Crom Dubh. We also have Lugh's step-mother, Tailltu - who gave agriculture to the people of Ireland - who seems very similar to Demeter who gave agriculture to humanity by sending the boy Triptolemus out over the lands, spreading wheat seeds, when Persephone returned...

How to untangle all this?

In modern Druidic ceremony, Lugh is the golden, solar energy and John Barleycorn is the child - spirit in matter, grown ripe to harvest. Lugh is the Spirit, the eternal consort of the Goddess, whilst John is wheat, bread and cider...our harvest.

We could just leave it at that...

In Irish myth, Lugh is the golden Bardic warrior, who defeats the Crom Cruach (or Crom Dubh) and the Crom is? Well sounds like he is a representative of the old religion, the Crom (bent and twisted) Cruach can mean wheat sheaf...but Dubh means black, as I think of the stone at Bryn Celli Dhu (Dhu, means darkness) a stone covered in spirals, and the Crom Cruach stone (all covered in spirals) which stood at the center of a stone circle in an area of County Cavan known as Magh Slecht, the Plain of Prostrations or the Plain of Slaughter.

Stepping back, out of the circles and fragments of Neolithic - Bronze Age -  belief systems isn't going to be easy - follow this link to know more ~LINK.

So for the masculine pairing, we have a warrior hero, and a sacrifice (the Crom or his substitute, the bull). 

In Akkadian myth the beautiful young man, Damuzi dies...and no one cared that Geshtinanna had returned!

And we have Lugh's step-mother giving wheat to the people and dying! 

 "As a favor to Lugh she cleared the Forest of Breg, making a plain for cultivation, and died of exhaustion for her trouble" ~Link

Back to the bull?

Inanna said that she was entering the Underworld 'to celebrate the funeral of the Bull of Heaven". No bulls in the Persephone myth, except Hades was up and about because an earthquake had split the earth, revealing glimpses of the Underworld... (The Bull of Heaven likewise created gaping holes in the earth...and Poseidon sent a bull from the sea, which caused all that trouble with the Minotaur, and earthquakes and labyrinths).

Mostly though, Lugh as a thunder god, the spear, the lighting...Tiwaz?

I could continue!

People usually say 'the death of the bull represents the spring equinox no longer occurring in Taurus. But that doesn't fits the time frame for the age of the Akkadian texts, the spring equinox sun is in Taurus in the time frame of The Descent of Inanna tablets being inscribed.

Could there be another meaning related to the equinoxes, or August?

Only my old friends 'The Seven / The Pleiades' travelling with the bull (Taurus) in August.

Is that significant? 

But I'm getting off track again.

It was the pairing that caused me to start writing this - Geshtinanna returns and Damu goes. Lugh mourns his mother at Lughnasa, and dies soon after at the Autumn equinox...But Demeter doesn't die, or leave? Demeter mourns the loss of Persephone who will also descend at the Autumn equinox, but the harvest has been gathered in before she goes.

Love and loss...

The question is, what was happening at Eleusis? 

Well of course we can't know! 

But I'm assuming that the pairing is between Persephone and Dionysos. For Dionysos is pretty much Geshtinanna - the spirit in the wine - and Eleusis a febrile, hallucinatory, ecstatic, confusing scrum of humanity, with Dionysos leading the living and the dead...

I can go no further for now.

...Ghosts! I want a lapis manalis as part of my ceremony!