(I am pronouncing Wuruma as WUH-ruh-muh.)
Wuruma Lughnasadh falls around the 21st of February. It is a festival of the Wuruma Wheel of the Year. The Wuruma Wheel applies to the seasons occurring on the NSW Central Coast (just above Sydney). It is not the same as the Southern Wheel. (For the Wuruma & Southern Wheels click label at end of article.)
I have named some of the Wuruma Wheel festivals after their British/European counterparts. This merely for convenience.
In 2010, I celebrated my second Wuruma Lughnasadh.
When I began to celebrate the Wuruma Wheel in 2008, I had very little knowledge of what exactly I was celebrating. I was using the familiar festivals of the European-based Southern Wheel of the Year, similar to the Wiccan Wheel, as my jumping off place. Essentially, I just jumped off into the unknown and went where the wind took me.
I am no expert now but have have gained some idea of the markers of the local natural seasons.
There are two very obvious signs of the Wuruma Lughnasadh in my area: the rainbow lorikeets and the storms.
The rainbow lorikeets feed on the gum trees that are flowering at this time of year. They are very noisy. They come in flocks at dawn and chatter and squabble over the little pale yellow flowers. During the day there are always a few in every tree, still squabbling and chattering to each other. At dusk they all come back again for more feasting.
The flowering gums are the Wuruma Lughnasadh harvest for the lorikeets. I don't yet know what local bush tucker (wild foods) harvest for humans comes at Wuruma Lughnasadh.
The electrical storms last roughly from Lughnasadh on the Southern Wheel (end of January/start of February) to Wuruma Lughnasadh. I don't yet know the local lore on storms and storm gods. The storm god I know is the archetypal European warrior/striker/inseminator god who comes at Lughnasadh to strike the ground and ensure it is fertile for the next planting season and who returns at Beltane to inseminate the Goddess.
There are no grain fields to strike in my area. It is all hills and houses. He strikes at Wuruma Lughnasadh as he does at Lughnasadh on the Southern Wheel. I sit at night with the lights off and the curtains open and watch and listen.
Since I started on the Wuruma Wheel, I have come to see him both as the European thunder god and as the local thunder god or spirit. I don't have a human image of the local thunder god. I see the lightning as his sign and he seems strongly connected to the rainbow lorikeets at Lughnasadh.
(There is a workshop on in Sydney next weekend which would help me a lot. It's on "looking at the Australian wheel of the year". But I'm too sick to make it and will just have to be satisfied with asking everyone what happened.)
Rainbow Lorikeet
Flowering gum tree (similar to mine)
The next festival on the Wuruma Wheel of the Year is Autumnal Equinox, falling on the 21st of March in 2010.
The next festival on the Southern Wheel is Autumnal Equinox, falling on the 21st of March in 2010.
Autumnal Equinox falls on both the Wuruma Wheel and the Southern Wheel.
Wuruma Wheel of the Year
Southern Wheel of the Year
