#personal experiences

[hardboiledapples]

....and also the person you met online less than a month ago, who is calling you "fine shyt" and sending you pics of animals cuddling is NOT going to spend their rest of your life with you. i'm sorry.

[taisestarr]

Modern Paths of Lugh

How the Aspects of Lugh Samildánach Appear in Human Professions

Each aspect of Lugh reflects a different stage of human development and different ways of contributing to the world. The aspects do not cancel one another. They layer and mature, just as they do in the myth. Here is my interpretation of how Lugh's faces might appears in the human world (with links to Living Lugh series of posts).

Ildánach — The Explorer of Skills

This aspect is about curiosity, experimentation, and learning. A person here gathers tools, knowledge, and experience across many fields.

Typical paths include:

• artists, musicians, designers • researchers and students • craftspeople and makers • programmers and inventors • writers and storytellers • interdisciplinary thinkers • educators in the early stages of their craft

These are people who expand the field of possibilities. Their task is exploration and mastery.

Lonnbéimnech — The Strategist and Catalyst

This aspect transforms knowledge into action and impact. Here the person becomes someone who can read systems, plan ahead, and move at the decisive moment.

Typical paths include:

• strategists and analysts • entrepreneurs and innovators • project leaders • military officers and crisis managers • negotiators and diplomats • political thinkers • high-level athletes and performers

These are people who change situations. Their task is decisive action guided by insight.

Lámfada — The Steward of Systems

At this stage the focus shifts from victory to sustaining the whole system. Knowledge and strategy become tools of stewardship.

Typical paths include:

• leaders and statesmen • founders and long-term builders • teachers and mentors • coaches and facilitators • community organisers • cultural guardians and tradition keepers • systems thinkers and institutional architects

These people are not just solving problems. They are holding ecosystems of people, knowledge, and resources.

This is where many modern roles of coaching and mentorship resonate strongly with Lugh Lámfada: seeing potential, asking the right question, and helping another person step into their own strength.

Scál Find — The Hidden Guide

The final aspect belongs to the threshold between worlds. Here influence becomes quieter, deeper, and often less visible.

Typical paths include:

• philosophers and mythologists • spiritual teachers and guides • poets and cultural memory keepers • historians and archivists • storytellers and myth-makers • depth psychologists • people who shape the narrative of a culture

These are people who shape meaning rather than events. Their work often unfolds across generations.

A Simple Map on a Daily Basis

Lugh's path can be summarized like this:

Ildánach: discover your gifts →

Lonnbéimnech: use them with courage and discernment →

Lámfada: build systems that allow others to flourish →

Scál Find: reveal the patterns that help the world understand itself →

And after that, repeat the cycle on the new level with new understanding. Just like Lugh Scál Find is very similar to Manannán, who fostered and taught the young hero Ildánach. The cycle turns.

None of these paths is higher than another. They describe different expressions of the same living myth. Whatever our profession may be, the question remains the same:

Which aspect of Lugh asks to be lived more fully today?

[k4tl4n13l]

"Yeah so we named this stray cat Burger"

Okay so why didn't you eat it then???

[elleklee]

The Circle

It happened when I was eleven years old, during my fifth-grade year at Madrid Central Elementary School in Surigao del Sur.

Classes had just ended for the day. Around eight of us had been assigned to stay behind and clean the classroom before going home. The afternoon sun still streamed through the windows as we swept the floors and straightened the desks. It felt like any other ordinary school day.

Then one of my classmates, Issa, suggested something.

She had recently watched My Girl and asked if we wanted to try a séance.

To a group of eleven-year-olds, it sounded more amusing than frightening.

Five of us—including me—sat on the classroom floor in a circle while the other three continued sweeping. We held hands and closed our eyes. Issa led us through what we imagined a séance sounded like, chanting made-up words that none of us can remember today. It wasn't serious. We peeked at one another, laughed, and occasionally giggled in the middle of our nonsense.

Nothing happened.

Eventually, the three classmates who were still cleaning became annoyed that we weren't helping.

We grew bored.

The game was over.

We let go of each other's hands and started getting up.

Everyone stood.

Except Mara.

She had been sitting beside Issa. As Issa tried to stand, Mara slumped against her.

"Mara?"

At first, Issa laughed, thinking she was pretending.

She shook her shoulder.

"Mara..."

No response.

The laughter disappeared almost instantly.

Issa caught her before she could slump completely onto the floor. I remember seeing her place a finger beneath Mara's nose to make sure she was still breathing.

Her eyes were closed.

Her body was limp.

She wouldn't respond.

Within seconds, all of us had gathered around her.

We called her name again and again.

Someone shook her shoulders.

Someone lightly slapped her cheeks.

Nothing.

I started crying.

Everyone else did too.

I remember thinking we needed to find an adult, but none of us moved. We were frozen around our classmate, desperately trying to wake her.

The minutes felt endless.

Then I reached over and held her myself.

I can still remember the exact words I said.

"Mara, kun hain man kaw, please balik diri sa amo."

"Mara, wherever you are, please come back to us."

The moment I finished speaking...

Mara opened her eyes.

She looked around in confusion.

Then at all of us.

Every one of us was crying.

"What happened?"

We told her everything.

She listened quietly.

When we asked if she remembered anything, she simply shook her head.

"I don't remember."

Then she began to cry.

I still remember the look of panic on her face.

None of us knew what to do next.

There were no teachers in the classroom.

No adults.

It was then that I suggested we go to church.

The five of us who had been sitting in the circle left together. The other three classmates went home.

We walked to San Isidro Parish Church.

By then, the afternoon was beginning to fade into evening.

There was no Mass.

The church was almost empty.

We slipped into the back pew and sat together in silence.

No one led the prayers.

Each of us simply bowed our heads and prayed on our own.

Before leaving, we made one another a promise.

We would never do anything like that again.

And we would never speak of what had happened that afternoon.

None of us told our parents.

At eleven years old, we weren't thinking about explanations.

We were thinking about getting scolded.

My mother was deeply superstitious, and I already knew what her reaction would have been if she discovered we had been playing with something we didn't understand.

So we kept our promise.

Months passed.

Then one day, Mara quietly told me she had seen something she couldn't explain.

She said she had watched an elderly neighbor transform into what she believed was a manananggal through a crack in her bedroom wall.

As the years went by, she occasionally confided in me whenever something frightened her.

A white lady while hanging clothes outside.

An apparition of someone hanging.

What she believed was a sigbin.

She never spoke about these things to everyone.

Only to me.

I never laughed.

I never tried to explain them away.

I simply listened.

Years later, when we were already in high school, we were walking together after an after-school activity.

Before I even looked at her, something felt wrong.

The hallway suddenly felt heavy.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I turned toward Mara.

She was already staring toward the far end of the corridor, her face filled with fear.

She quietly told me she was seeing something there.

I never saw what she saw.

We walked away as quickly as we could.

We never spoke about our fifth-grade classroom again.

We never tried to connect that afternoon with the experiences that followed.

We never discussed why Mara had lost consciousness.

Or why she woke when she did.

After all these years, I still don't know.

I only know what I remember.

Five children sat together on the floor of an ordinary classroom after school.

One of them didn't wake up when everyone called her name.

And for reasons I still cannot explain, that afternoon became the first mystery I carried into adulthood.

───

Author's Note

This story is reconstructed from my own memory of an event that took place when I was eleven years old at Madrid Central Elementary School in Madrid, Surigao del Sur. The names of classmates have been changed to protect their privacy. While I have remained faithful to the sequence of events as I remember them, memory is imperfect, and some details have inevitably faded with time.

The experiences Mara later shared with me are presented as she described them to me over the years. I cannot verify or explain them, nor do I claim to understand why she lost consciousness that afternoon. I have deliberately separated what I personally witnessed from what I later learned through conversation.

As with every story in The Tide of the Unwritten, readers are free to interpret these events through childhood memory, coincidence, psychology, faith, folklore, or their own understanding. My purpose is not to provide answers, but to preserve a memory that has remained with me for many years.

[k4tl4n13l]

I genuinely fucking HATE optimists and pacifists now here's what I mean by that: people who always think positively and who think "oh murder is bad!!!" not necessarily pacifists who think war is bad because ofc war is bad (depending on the context). I had this talk with this sensitive fucking bitch who would genuinely cry her ass out about fictional characters suffering and who's also like "oh anyone can be rehabilitated we should rehabilitate everyone because murder is bad!" and then I go on this series of questions like "Would you rehabilitate <insert dictator and/or war criminal>?" AND EVERY TIME THIS BITCH WOULD BE LIKE "Yeah!". BITCH WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU WOULD TRY TO REHABILITATE OSKAR DIRLEWANGER, WHO IS ONE OF THE WORST WAR CRIMINALS IN HISTORY, WHO WAS SO BRUTAL THAT EVEN THE GERMAN WW2 ELITE WAS FREAKED OUT, WHILE BARELY READING SHIT ABOUT HIM LIKE I TOLD YOU TO? AND THEN WHEN I CALL YOU IGNORANT YOU GO LIKE "Oh it's empathy!" WELL FUCK YOUR EMPATHY. AND WHAT'S MORE? THIS BITCH IS:

1. A cult leader

2. An arsonist

3. 15

4. AND A TERATOPHILIAC.

You genuinely cannot go around preaching peace and prosperity for everyone while you are responsible for burning private property down and also making people believe "non-believers" get purified by fire when they die. I am sick and tired. This past week has been horrible. All I needed after dealing with an idiot was dealing with THIS IDIOT. For those of you interested in reading about Oskar Dirlewanger here are some Wikipedia links but again I'm gonna warn you that this was one of the most brutal war criminals like EVER.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Dirlewanger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirlewanger_Brigade

I genuinely never liked optimists and even before meeting this braindead fucking bitch my opinion of someone would lessen if I heard they were either optimistic or pessimistic. Fuck your idealistic ideas, and fuck your lack of hope if you're pessimistic. What you need is to be REALISTIC.

[adrianthenormalartist]

I seriously did not expect him to be in the World Cup finale (also I tested out the lasso drawing tool on ibis paint what do yall think)

[taisestarr]

Living Lugh in 7 Aspects 

Earlier I've analysed myths about Lugh in depth. But Lugh's story is not only a sequence of myths. To me, it also reveals a path of human development: a hero who consciously chooses and embraces each initiation rather than waiting for life to force it upon him.

This is why I divided Lugh into seven aspects. The division is not part of the myths themselves — it is simply the lens that helped me understand them. And once understood, they become a guide for living the myth.

1. Macnia — the human beginning

Macnia is Lugh reflected in human heroes. It is the place where every journey can begin.

The myths suggest that growth requires balance: not only knowledge, but prosperity; not only battle, but music; not only talent, but the willingness to enter new worlds. And, as the comparison between Lleu and Lugh suggests, it also asks for initiative. Lugh chooses his initiations.

2. Ildánach — discovering your gifts

Ildánach teaches us to cultivate our abilities, develop many skills, and allow ourselves to be seen.

The first initiation is recognition. Recognition follows mastery.

3. Lonnbéimnech — bringing your gifts into the world

Knowledge becomes meaningful only when it changes reality.

Lonnbéimnech acts with courage, strategy, and balance. He also strengthens others by recognising their unique abilities.

The second initiation is the right use of power. Power becomes responsibility.

4. Lámfada — serving something larger

Victory is no longer the goal.

Lámfada becomes High King because he can hold together people, land, and the living order itself. Leadership becomes stewardship.

The third initiation is release. Form gives way to continuity.

5. Scál Find — revealing the hidden pattern

Power becomes quieter.

Scál Find no longer governs directly. He reveals structures, guides from the Otherworld, and allows others to continue the work.

The cycle is completed.

6. Samildánach — the whole of Lugh

Samildánach is not another stage beyond the previous four. He is their integration.

All four aspects remain present at once, each becoming available when the moment calls for it.

7. Trefuilngid — beyond the myth

From this wholeness another possibility appears.

If Samildánach is the complete divine manifestation of Lugh within the Irish myths, Trefuilngid hints at something even more universal — a transcendent principle that reaches beyond a single tradition.

Dividing Lugh into seven aspects makes it easier to recognise which face is currently strongest within ourselves. There is no single starting point.

For example, I'm leaning towards Scál Find the most, and have consciously been cultivating Ildánach and Lámfada. To me, this is what Living Samildánach means — a balance.

Not following the same path as everyone else, but allowing the missing aspects to grow around your natural strengths until they begin to work together.

The myths offer remarkably practical guidance for each aspect.

Living Lugh Ildánach

Become someone who is always growing

Ildánach is the joy of learning, creating, and discovering what you are capable of. He invites us to remain curious, develop our skills, express our gifts openly, and never stop becoming more than we were yesterday.

Live as an apprentice.

Create more than you consume.

Let beauty nourish you.

Share your gifts without waiting for permission.

Living Lugh Lonnbéimnech

Turn your abilities into meaningful action

Knowledge becomes valuable only when it changes reality. Lonnbéimnech teaches discernment, courage, strategic thinking, and the ability to act at the right moment. He reminds us that true strength is purposeful rather than impulsive.

See the whole field before making a move.

Hold balance without avoiding conflict.

Keep your promises.

Act where your actions truly matter.

Living Lugh Lámfada

Become someone whose presence helps the whole system flourish

Lámfada no longer asks what you can achieve for yourself, but what can thrive through you. Leadership becomes stewardship: integrating people, respecting natural cycles, and creating conditions in which others can grow.

Think in systems rather than isolated events.

Support the talents of others.

Lead without controlling.

Build something that remains healthy beyond yourself.

Living Lugh Scál Find

Help the world understand itself

Scál Find works quietly. He reveals patterns, connects worlds, interprets symbols, and leaves behind structures that continue without him. His influence comes through insight rather than visibility.

Look beneath appearances.

Connect ideas that seem unrelated.

Translate wisdom into lived experience.

Leave understanding, not dependence.

These four aspects are cyclical, and the staring point might be any of them.

Personal experience

I came to understand Lugh (and myself as a bonus) much more deeply by dedicating a year and a day to this journey in another channel. Each aspect unfolded over three months, and each period became a different kind of initiation.

I began with Scál Find, immersing myself in the myths much as I have done throughout this blog. Without planning it, hidden structures began to emerge, new connections appeared, and the four aspects gradually revealed themselves. Looking back, this was clearly my dedication to Scál Find — the aspect that has always felt closest to me.

After that came Ildánach. I started sharing artwork of Lugh and other deities, initially as a rest from intensive research. Only later did I realise that this had become an offering to Lugh as patron of the arts. Around the same time I consciously began dedicating creative acts to him, something I describe in more detail here.

The next three months belonged to Lonnbéimnech. I decided to continue following Lugh's cycle, even though I had entered it from an unusual starting point. I explored unconventional thinking, the role of tricksters, and simple practices that help cultivate balance and decisive action.

The final stage was Lámfada, the aspect I understood least when I first encountered the myths. I focused on discovering one's own nature and shared practices that helped with that search. Interestingly, it was only while revisiting the myths for this blog — especially through the study of Lugh's chariot epithets — that Lámfada finally became clear to me.

My own goal is not to live in one aspect, but to keep them in balance. And the dedications can be simple — like the digital ones listed above or "how to cultivate it" part of my Living Lugh series.

I naturally sink into myth, research and transformation, yet my social life can easily be neglected. When that happens, I consciously cultivate the vitality of Lámfada or return to the joyful simplicity of Ildánach.

Sometimes the deepest balance is found not in becoming more complex, but in remembering simplicity. I will reveal it a bit in the following posts.