Who Lit the Fire on the Hill?

It's Lùnastal, the first harvest, and for a very long time in this country that meant everybody climbing the local hill together with baskets to pick blaeberries and light a fire on the top. Nobody organised it. Everybody simply knew, because it had been handed down the line for so long that the names had come off it. So this week I want to ask who lit the fire on your hill. We go up for the gathering, and I tell you about the founding of this festival, which I knew nothing about for years and which stopped me in my tracks when I finally looked it up. Lughnasadh began as a funeral feast. Lugh held it for his foster-mother Tailtiu, who cleared the forests of Ireland so there could be fields, and died of the work, and never saw a single harvest. The first harvest festival in these islands is a thank-you to a woman who wore herself out so other people could eat. And she got thanked properly, for about two thousand years. Then I tell you about a piece of research I found. Kumar and Epley asked people to write to somebody who had changed their life, and to predict how it would land. Every time, the writers underestimated how happy it would make the person, underestimated how surprised they'd be, and badly overestimated how awkward it would feel. Which means the people who lit fires for you genuinely do not know they did it. And it means you have lit fires you know nothing about, which matters if you're somebody who has poured herself into others for years and never had much in the way of a receipt. There is also a section in this one for anyone whose family line is a difficult one, and it isn't an afterthought. The old Gaelic world reckoned foster-kin above blood, with a proverb to prove it, and Tailtiu herself was a foster-mother who was handed no field by anybody. If you are the first in your line to do something differently, this episode turns out to be more yours than anybody's. And we sit with the Six of Cups, where one child hands a flower to another while the person who planted the whole garden walks quietly off down the path without waiting to be thanked. The practice this week asks you to actually do something, which is rare for me. Name them, write down what you still use, and then tell one of them. Next week we go after a light that moves, out on the bog at night, and talk about which of your instincts are worth following. **Your free companion** *The Light Over the Hill* is a free six-card tarot spread that lays out along a path climbing the slope, to help you find your own hill, your own light, and your own next step. It's at sageinthesky.com, and it comes with the weekly *Light Over the Hill* letter: a piece of folklore, one card, a prompt, and something small to do.