It's Maddness Time Baeby!

JSTOR Articles on the History of Witchcraft, Witch Trials, and Folk Magic Beliefs

This is a partial of of articles on these subjects that can be found in the JSTOR archives. This is not exhaustive - this is just the portion I've saved for my own studies (I've read and referenced about a third of them so far) and I encourage readers and researchers to do their own digging. I recommend the articles by Ronald Hutton, Owen Davies, Mary Beth Norton, Malcolm Gaskill, Michael D. Bailey, and Willem de Blecourt as a place to start.

If you don't have personal access to JSTOR, you may be able to access the archive through your local library, university, museum, or historical society.

Full text list of titles below the cut:

Today is Lughnasadh, the harvest festival named after the Irish god Lugh for the funerary games he established in the name of his foster mother, Tailtiu, after her death. Lugh is described like a streak of light in some tales, racing across the country, a powerful horseman and warrior.

"Then Breas, the son of Balar, arose and said : 'I wonder that the sun is rising in the west to-day, and in the east every other day.'

'It were better that it were so,' said the Druids.

'What else is it?' (but the sun), said he.

'It is the radiance of the face of Lugh Lamhfhada,' they said.

Then the loldhanach came up to them, and greeted them.

-Oide Cloinne Tuireann

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What is Lughnasadh?

Lughnasadh, or Lammas, is the first of the three harvest festivals of the Wheel of the Year. In the Northern Hemisphere, Lammas is celebrated on August 1st, and in the Southern Hemisphere, on February 1st, representing a time to honour the first harvest, whether that means crops from your garden or the first results of your intentions finally coming to life. Lughnasadh marks the beginning of the season where the earth starts to give back. The days are still warm, the fields turn golden, and the air carries the scent of ripening grain. Even though the sun still shines brightly and summer feels strong, this sabbat reminds us that autumn is slowly approaching. That’s why it’s important to enjoy the warmth, the gifts of nature, and to begin preparing our homes and spirits for the colder months ahead. Also, Lammas celebrates the first fruits of the land, which is a moment of joy, gratitude, and celebration. More harvests will come later, but now is the time to notice that what you’ve planted, literally or metaphorically, is beginning to grow. Lughnasadh is about trusting that what’s to come will be abundant, and taking a moment to appreciate how far you've come.

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Origins of Lammas

Lughnasadh gets its name from the Celtic god Lugh, a solar deity associated with skill, harvest, and craftsmanship. The alternative name, Lammas, comes from the Old English hlaf-mæss, meaning “loaf-mass” or “feast of bread.” Traditionally, this was a time when communities gave thanks for the first grain harvest by baking loaves of bread and offering them in gratitude, both to deities and as part of the communal celebration. Harvesting grain, gathering fruit and vegetables, and honoring solar gods were all important parts of this sabbat.

August 1st was only the peak of a much longer celebration. The three days leading up to Lughnasadh were considered especially sacred and focused on purification rituals. These days were dedicated to Ana, an ancient Irish solar goddess, older and more primordial than Lugh himself. Some believe that the entire festival may have originally belonged to her, before being associated with Lugh later on.

The ancient Romans associated this time with the rising of the Dog Star, Sirius, calling it the dies caniculares, which is where the modern phrase “Dog Days” comes from. These days were seen as the most intense and unbearable of the summer.

In early Ireland, it was considered unlucky to harvest grain before Lughnasadh. Doing so meant that last year’s supplies had run out too early, before the next harvest was ready. Waiting until Lughnasadh symbolized proper abundance and care.

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God Lugh x Lammas

Lughnasadh takes its name from the Celtic deity Lugh, sometimes spelled Lug. In Irish tradition, he is Lugh, while in Wales he is known as Lleu Llaw Gyffes, the “Bright One of the Skillful Hand.” Across continental Europe, he was called Lugos, meaning “raven,” and held an important role in Gaul as well.

Today, Lugh is often seen as a solar god and a bringer of harvest, but in ancient times, he was much more: he was a god of skill, crafts, kingship, and heroic strength. He was a brilliant warrior and wise leader, ruling over the Tuatha Dé Danann, the divine people of the goddess Danu. Danu, a great mother goddess linked to earth, water, fertility, and victory, was the ancestral force behind this divine race. With Lugh's power, her people triumphed over the Fir Bolg and the Fomoiri, former divine rulers depicted in Irish myths as wild and monstrous beings. Lugh was also revered for his mastery in many arts, and over time, he came to be associated with the Roman god Mercury, both being patrons of intelligence, travel, skill, and strategy.

During Lammas, we celebrate his energy of mastery, fulfillment, and transformation. The sun is still warm, but its strength begins to fade. Lugh, as the radiant god, now pours the last of his energy into the land, bringing forth the first harvest. He has not disappeared yet, but his cycle is shifting. The goddess, too, has changed; she is now the Grain. Her role is to dry the fields, to release the seeds that will fall into the earth and sleep through winter, waiting to rise again at Imbolc. Some sources say that four weeks are especially sacred to Lugh, the last two weeks of July and the first two weeks of August, roughly the time when the sun passes through the sign of Leo, and reaches its symbolic height at 15 degrees.

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Lughnasadh Myths

One of the older names for this sabbat is Lughnasa, often translated as “the marriage of Lugh.” And there’s a deep sense of sacred romance woven into this time. Some traditions say that during the full moon of August, Lugh, the bright sun god, and the Earth Mother renew their vows, blessing the land through their union.it represents a celebration of love, abundance, and the harmony between earth and sky.

Long before Lugh became the central figure, this time of year may have belonged to the Corn Mother and her dying son or lover. In older myths, she offers him to the land as a sacrifice so life may continue. Her grief transforms her into the Mater Dolorosa, the Sorrowful Mother, while the grain falls and returns to the soil, waiting to rise again.

But the most well-known story linked to Lughnasadh isn’t about a wedding, it’s about remembrance. Many versions of the myth speak of the funeral games that Lugh held in honor of his foster mother, Tailtiu. Tailtiu had once been queen of the Fir Bolg, and after they were overthrown, she married into the Tuatha Dé Danann. According to legend, she died from exhaustion after clearing the lands of Ireland for farming. To honor her sacrifice, Lugh established the Fair of Tailtean, a great gathering filled with feasts, contests, and community rituals. This wasn’t considered just a legend. The fair was real, held each year on August 1st in what is now County Meath, near the place believed to be Tailtiu’s grave. It was one of the most important festivals in ancient Ireland.

The word Lughnasa itself can be interpreted as “the games or assembly of Lugh.” Across the Celtic world, from Ireland to Gaul and Britain, early August was marked by great gatherings in his name. These festivals included tribal meetings, athletic games, horseracing, and ceremonies to ensure a good harvest and to open the hunting and fishing seasons. At Telltown, the Tailtiu Games included events like spear-throwing (gaelbolga), stone-throwing, high jumping, triple jumping (geal-ruith), and even a ritual wheel toss (roth-deas). These competitions likely came from much older harvest rites, later merged with Lugh’s myth as his worship spread. The final recorded Tailtiu Games took place on August 1st, 1169, during the reign of Ruraigh Ó Conchobar, the last High King of Ireland. Though the games have ended, their spirit lingers in every festival fire, every loaf of harvest bread, and every quiet moment of thanks offered to the land.

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Lammas and Corn Dollies

There was once a deep belief that the spirit of the corn must be kept safe from one harvest to the next, to ensure the fields would thrive again. The very last sheaf cut held the heart of the corn’s life force, hidden away in that final bundle. Harvesters approached it with care and respect, often calling it “The Neck” or “The Mare”, and with a steady hand and a solemn cry, “I have the neck”, they freed it from the stalks.

That last sheaf was carefully woven into a corn dolly, a little figure meant to hold the spirit safe through the winter months. This small creation was honored and protected, waiting until spring. At Imbolc, bits of corn would be taken from the dolly and planted back into the earth, breathing new life into the soil.

This tradition is ancient, stretching back thousands of years, even the Egyptians made corn dollies as symbols of life and renewal. For the Celts, these woven figures were sometimes called “holy brides of the corn”, a living symbol of the earth’s blessing.

Each region developed its own style and patterns, from shapes like chandeliers and horns to horseshoes and stars. The ribbons that tied them held their own meanings too, yellow for the sun’s warmth, red for sacrifice, blue for love, green for wisdom, and white for strength. For modern Pagans, creating a corn dolly is a sacred act of honoring the harvest.

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Life and Death of Lughnasadh

Even though August still holds the warmth of summer, Lughnasadh quietly marks the turning of the wheel, since Midsummer, the days have slowly begun to shorten. This sabbat reminds us that we are moving toward the end of the season, step by step. Lughnasadh is the first of three harvest festivals, it opens the path toward Mabon, the great gathering of abundance, and finally to Samhain, when the last of the harvest is taken in. For now, the world is still full of green leaves, tall grain, and the life of young animals, but underneath all this, there’s the first whisper of change. This is also the time when we begin to think about death, not in fear, but as part of the cycle. In one of the old myths, Lugh must travel to the Underworld to defeat Bres, the god of death, his victory brings life back to the land, just like how the grain must fall in order to feed us. The harvest is a gift, but it is also a letting go, what was once alive must now be cut, gathered, and transformed. That’s the quiet truth at the heart of Lughnasadh, life and death walk together through the golden fields. Some say that Lugh becomes the lord of the waning year, and that his steps through the tall, whispering grain are a quiet dance of death. If that's true, then it's not something to fear, it’s a reminder that all things move in circles, and that endings are always part of something beautiful.

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The August Herbs

In parts of Northern Europe, the night before Lughnasadh was seen as the perfect time to create a special charm known as the August Herbs, if gathered in the right way, this bundle of summer plants was said to bring blessings that lasted through the year, protection against storms and dark magic, support during transitions, help in love, and even comfort in birth or in letting go at the end of life.

To gather the herbs with their full power, tradition said to pick them just before sunrise, in silence, some even believed the ritual should be done bare, in full openness to the earth, though over time, many simply went barefoot and uncovered their head, letting the morning air and dew touch their skin.

What mattered most was intention, moving gently through the fields or garden, listening to the quiet, and allowing the plants to speak, the bundle would later be hung in the home, placed on the altar, or kept close as a charm, holding the light and energy of that sacred morning, long after summer has faded.

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Magic Correspondences

Planets: Sun, Mercury

Season: Midpoint between Summer and Autumn

Element: Earth, Fire

Time Of The Day: Evening

Tarot Cards: Strength, The Sun, Seven of Pentacles, Ten of Pentacles, Four of Wands, Justice, Wheel of Fortune

Colors: Gold, Yellow, Green, Brown, Red, Royal Purple, Heather Purple, Bronze

Herbs: Blackberry, Bilberry, Allspice, Basil, Fennel, Rosemary, Garlic, Bay, Wheat

Fruits: Pears, plums, peaches, grapes, apples, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries

Vegetables: Corn, Root Vegetables, Squash, Potatoes, Cucumber, Tomatoes, Onion, Beans

Crystals: Tiger’s eye, Amber, Rutilated quartz, Citrine, Clear quartz, Golden topaz, Carnelian, Onyx, Aventurine, Cat’s eye

Runes: Jera, Sowilo, Wunjo

Trees: Apple, Hazel, Oak, Holly

Goddesses: Cailleach Bheur, Ana, Arianrhod, Artemis, Ceres, Corn Maiden, Cybele, Danu, Demeter, Diana, Inanna, Isis, Morrigan, Ops, Pomona, Persephone, Proserpina, Rhiannon, Tailtiu, Cerridwen, Brigid

Gods: Adonis, Gofannon, Hades, Hephaestus, Lugh, Mithras, Ninurta, Odin, Osiris, Set, Helios, Thor, Vulcan, Loki, Dionysus, Vertumnus, Apollo, Xiuhtecuhtli

Dragons: Fafnir

Flowers: Honeysuckle, Marigold, Sunflower, Gladiola, Poppy, Rose, Aster, Cornflower, Vervain, Lavender, Heather

Animals: Swan, Lion, Boar, Cat, Raven, Goat, Dog, Owl, Bear, Fox, Salmon, Horse, Cow, Eagle, Rooster, Ram, Snake, Stag, Hare, Bull, Wolf, Robin, Crane, Sow, Sheep, Otter

Magical Powers: Harvest, Gratitude, Abundance, Protection, Personal Transformation, Honoring Ancestors, Making Offerings, Reflection, Introspection, Discernment, Prosperity, Communication with the Dead, Renewal, Sacrifice, Death

Symbols: Corn dolly, Rowan cross, Cornucopia, Pentacle, Staff, Stang, Sickle, Flail, Wheel, Sun, Bread.

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Activities to do:

🌽 Make a Lammas loaf or other special bread. Before putting the loaf in the oven, dip a brush in milk and write on the crust what you desire most. You can also bake pastries, pies, or braided bread with solar or witchy symbols, and enjoy them while still warm.

🌾 Eat seasonal food made with ingredients like grains, fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Corn with butter is a perfect choice for this time :D

🌽 Cook something traditional and share a meal with loved ones using what you’ve grown in your garden.

🌾 Decorate your altar with seasonal fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

🌽 Practice sun magick.

🌾 Make a sun catcher to bring solar energy into your life.

🌽 Make sunflower crowns

🌾 Collect or buy some sunflowers. Dry the petals to use in spells for prosperity, luck and happiness.

🌽 Visit a farmer’s market and support local harvests.

🌾 Spend time in nature. Wake up early and take a peaceful walk, maybe you’ll hear roosters if you live in a rural area.

🌽 Tend your garden by trimming dry grass, collecting it for hay, and preparing the soil.

🌾 Harvest your first fruits or vegetables, and preserve anything you want to keep for winter.

🌽 Make a Lammas wreath using herbs, flowers, or grains.

🌾 Collect August herbs, seeds, and wild plants or berries. Let the herbs dry to use later in the year.

🌽 Face paint with bright colors, Celtic symbols, or Lughnasadh designs, or like a Celtic warrior :D

🌾 DIY a theatre mask for fun or ritual use.

🌽 Have a bonfire in the evening, and maybe dance around it.

🌾 Have a feast with your loved ones.

🌽 Make offerings to gods and ancestors

🌾 Play Lughnasadh games to honor strength and the harvest, like slap hands, horseshoes, archery, or arm wrestling. For a cozy option, play card games or board games.

🌽 Take time to connect with the dead.

🌾 Celebrate your successes so far this year, and reflect on what you’ve learned and achieved.

🌽 Do a gratitude journaling session to focus on the good things in your life.

🌾 Meditate and ground in the sun

🌽 Connect with the crystals associated with Lammas

🌾 Wear the colors of the sabbat.

🌽 Make a Lughnasadh magick jar with seasonal symbols.

🌾 Perform abundance and success spells.

🌽 Honor solar deities, especially the god Lugh.

🌾 Leave water outside for animals, and don’t forget to stay hydrated yourself.

🌽 Gather seasonal grains such as wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley, or onion to honor the harvest’s abundance.

🌾 Create a corn mother or a corn dolly using corn husks, reeds, or wheat from the first harvest.

🌽 Light a golden, orange, or yellow candle to welcome the light of the sabbat.

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Food and Drinks:

Fresh bread, soda bread, bannock, oat meal, potatoes, root vegetables, corn on the cob, sweetcorn, popcorn, wheat, rye, oats, fresh berries, apples in all forms, such as apple cider, apple cake, apple compote, apple pie, apple charlotte, mashed apples, baked apples, preserves, applesauce, fresh apples, grapes, vine leaves, fruity berry wines, fresh fruit, home-grown vegetables, soups, salads, salmon, oysters, basil, borage, fennel, summer pudding, nut pies, fruit pies, berry jams, preserves, potluck dishes, outdoor feast, peaches and apricots jams, fruit tarts, honey, tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, pears, roasted meat, venison, fried meats, corn fritters, butter, pizza, barley cakes, wheat, squash, corn bread muffins, blackberries, blackberry cake, chia seeds, what beer, fruit and veggie salads, sour dough

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꥟ midsummer procession ꥟

Lúnasa (pronounced LOO-nuh-suh) is the Irish harvest festival that is now celebrated on August 1, and was considered the first day of autumn in the ancient Irish year.1 It opens the grain harvest, the point where the hungry weeks of late summer give way to the first food from the new crop.1 The name comes from the god Lugh; the older spelling is Lughnasadh. It's one of the four festivals of the Irish year, with Samhain, Imbolc, and Bealtaine.2 You'll also see it in the folk record as Garland Sunday, Reek Sunday and Crom Dubh's Sunday.

This article is meant to give an overview of the festival. Each part below has a fuller article behind it: the festival's pre-Christian origins, the dark harvest figure Crom Dubh, and the folk customs that lasted into living memory.

Lammas vs Lughnasadh

You will sometimes see Lughnasadh and Lammas used interchangeably, however they are two different traditions. Lammas comes from the Old English hlāfmæsse, "loaf-mass": it is an Anglo-Saxon Christian rite in which a loaf baked from the first ripe grain was carried to church and blessed.3

Lammas was a church observance built around that blessed loaf; Lughnasadh was a public assembly with horse-racing and trade.45 What they share is the first-fruits moment, the same turn in the harvest year, which is why English speakers in Ireland sometimes used "Lammas" as a label for the native festival and the two ran together.

Modern Wicca adds a third sense, treating "Lammas" and "Lughnasadh" as interchangeable names for a single August 1 sabbat in a Wheel of the Year assembled in the 1950s.6

This guide follows the older Irish festival.

What Lughnasadh meant

Lúnasa was the threshold of plenty. The weeks before it were often the hungriest time of the year, when last year's stores ran low and there was little paid work until the cutting began.1 The festival opened the harvest; cutting corn or digging potatoes before it was considered improper, a mark of bad husbandry.1 The first food from the new harvest went into a festive meal, and people climbed the hills to pick the first ripe bilberries.1 The day marked the turn from scarcity to plenty.

The god Lugh and the assembly at Tailtiu

The festival is named for Lugh, one of the major Irish gods, who was also known across the Continental and British Celtic world as Lugus.27 The medieval tradition makes Lúnasa the funeral games that Lugh founded for his foster-mother Tailtiu, who died clearing a forest into farmland,8 and it places the great assembly at Tailtiu (Teltown, Co. Meath).5

How much of that reaches back to real pagan practice is uncertain. It's unclear how old the origin story is, and by the time we can see the festival clearly it was a Christian-era institution, with a church on the assembly ground.5 The roots are pagan; most of the visible history is Christian. The origins article spends some time going over the major theories and evidence.

Crom Dubh's Sunday

Across much of Irish-speaking Ireland the day carries a different name: Crom Dubh's. The name pairs crom, "bent or crooked," with dubh, "dark" or "black."9 In the folk legends, Crom Dubh is a pagan chieftain whose fierce bull submits tamely to St. Patrick before the chieftain himself converts.10 Recent scholarship traces this figure back through the written record to a medieval idol, Cenn Cruaich, rather than an ancient god of the harvest.9 The full story is in the Crom Dubh article.

How Lughnasadh was celebrated

The folk customs are the most durable part of the festival, recorded across Ireland into the twentieth century.1 People dug the first potatoes and ate them in a first-fruits meal, climbed hills to pick bilberries on "Garland Sunday," did rounds at holy wells, and swam their cattle and horses for protection.1 The biggest surviving tradition is the Croagh Patrick pilgrimage on Reek Sunday, the last Sunday of July.1 The folk traditions of Lúnasa covers the customs and how to mark the day now.

The Year in Ireland by Kevin Danaher ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

The Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland by Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, ↩︎ ↩︎

Lammas ↩︎

Lammas ↩︎

Ireland's Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth by Mark Williams ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

Wheel of the Year ↩︎

Early Irish Myths and Sagas by Jeffrey Gantz ↩︎

Celtic Gods and Heroes by Marie-Louise Sjoestedt ↩︎

"On the Origins and Development of Crom Dubh" by Claire Collins ↩︎ ↩︎

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You win this round :)

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why?

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May your demons slumber and your wine glass be full

The holiday stag is back!!

I did this design two years ago and every year it’s gone viral without crediting me. There’s another Tumblr account here that has 300000 notes on it and the original poster didn’t credit me meaning I’ve lost out in a ton of potential sales. Pleeeease, if you retweet or repost an artists work, credit them! It helps them so much! Every penny I make comes from my artwork!

Thank you darlings <3

How do you balance lore rekindled with your own story with your ocs? ? (Asking because I have an original project idea and au project idea)!

ouu do you mean just like, time and project management? (if that's not what you meant then apologies in advance, I hope my answer is helpful anyways and if I'm off the mark then feel free to clarify in the comments / inbox!)

I wish I could share some super amazing secret about this, but honestly, the "balance" is more like "a series of compromises". The thing is, my current ongoing original comic, Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH], was entering an extended hiatus period by the time I started LR. I was deep in the midst of burnout from a combination of overworking (I was seriously overdoing my update length and frequency for that series) and from starting at a new tattoo shop (the same one I just left back in April actually haha) which had thrown off my usual routine and schedule (which is especially detrimental for someone with a neurodivergent brain, changes to routine are both scary and extremely draining).

Time Gate still hasn't made a full comeback since then, as I've both been recovering from burnout, fixing a lot of stuff with the story on the back end (including starting up a remade version of Reaper which may never see the light of day but who knows lol), and of course, pouring a lot of my current time and efforts into LR.

That said, I'm also currently trying to get back into making Time Gate. It's slow going though, I definitely can't release at the speed and quantity I did back then, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm just better at pacing myself now, and taking longer with new episodes means I can put more effort into the art, which was definitely suffering a bit by the time I went on hiatus on account of that update frequency that was forcing me to rush.

I'm also not doing the full-color thing for it anymore, because I've realized for a comic like Time Gate, as much as it benefits from color in some ways, it's also just not the way I want to draw it. LR is a comic that's mean to be in color and is fun to create in color, Time Gate on the other hand feels more satisfying to do as a black and grey comic so I've been transitioning back into that. At the end of the day, the only way I'll enjoy making Time Gate again is if I enjoy making it, and that means making changes to my workflow that accommodate the joy more so than the obligation. Working on LR gave me enough time away from Time Gate to realize what I really enjoyed doing and why my past habits had caught up to me. Plus I picked up some stylistic quirks that I think are gonna be beneficial to the comic overall ;3

There are also compromises on the LR side of things. The art style that we've been leaning more towards now is definitely a bit simpler and allows for faster production (though there are def still times we crunch a little haha). I keep the episode lengths reasonable so that at least 1-2 plot beats can be achieved per release, which keeps the story going enough for readers to be satisfied without overworking us with too many panels. And we use all sorts of efficiency tricks, from copy+pasting panels (where possible) to reusing background assets to using 3D models for certain props.

It's about shaving off production time where you can without sacrificing the final presentation. It also massively helps to have an assistant like Banshriek, I absolutely would not be able to produce Rekindled to the extent that we do without them. Like, the comic would still be ongoing if they hadn't joined on, it just wouldn't have so much extra good stuff going for it LOL (esp with the backgrounds and post-rendering). Time Gate's a project that I've always mostly done alone so it requires different workflows and expectations.

All that said, I have no clue if Time Gate will ever be on a consistent weekly / bi-weekly schedule again. Maybe in the future when LR is over. I still have a lot of plans for it but I have to be steady with them, because every time I get ahead of myself and put myself through the wringer for it, I wind up getting burned 😅

I'm also currently working on other original projects that are on the way but they're still very much in pre-production and I don't have much to show of them yet. Once I do though, you bet I'll be showing them off 🥰 (one of them is about a fairy who paints birthmarks on babies, the other is about a guy trapped in a death loop ;3 very different vibes but both very fun LOL)

I find it's less about having a "perfect balance" and more so just about putting your focus on your biggest priorities. Time Gate is like a delicate souffle that I can't take out of the oven too soon, those other aforementioned original projects are still just ingredients in the grocery aisle, and LR is a boiling pot that I have to keep stirring and adding to. They're all different in the attention they require and so sometimes it means putting my focus more on one over the other.

Like, I'm a freelance artist who largely makes their living through tattooing. And that living is often at odds with the economy which, right now, is in shambles. So I'm also doing whatever I can to pull in extra income when tattooing is slow - working seasonal part-time gigs, selling prints and merch, doing commissions, etc.

That said, as hard as it is to get by at times, I still have a lot of freedom to control my own schedule. This gives me the freedom and wiggle room to prioritize projects like LR. If I was still working full-time in a retail job, how LR is developed would probably look very different. That's not to say I wouldn't be working on it at all, but it probably wouldn't look like consistent updates with fully rendered art every time; it might have to be scaled back to shorter episodes or simpler art to accommodate my heavier work schedule. Hell, I've already had to do that with reducing episode frequency to once every 2 weeks instead of once a week; it was a hard decision to make, but it was ultimately necessary to help maintain the comic's quality without burning out.

I'm also just someone who's been creating comics for literally years, like over a decade. I've created multiple different series in different genres, used many different platforms and software and hardware, and have altogether built up many skills over the years that allow me to produce comics faster than a beginner or someone who's just never created a long-form comic before. And now I have an assistant to help me out to boot. I've had literally half my life up until this point to figure out what works for me, but many people who follow my work here and are interested in writing and/or drawing stories themselves are still just starting out and haven't walked that path yet.

So with that all in mind, adjust your own priorities relative to your situation. If you're someone who's working 40-60 hours a week to make ends meet, it would be completely unreasonable to hold yourself to the expectation of delivering entirely rendered episodes every 1-2 weeks. You also need to be realistic with what you can handle relative to your skill level and experience creating comics. Don't burn yourself out to create at a pace you think you need to create at to succeed - I promise you there are comics and stories that only update once every month or so and still succeed with their audiences. I've legit got readers who have been following Time Gate for years and haven't budged even after waiting ages for new episodes LOL

❄️ Krampusnacht In The Village Saturday, December 6th 2025, 4pm-9pm Historic Hilton Village Warwick & Main Streets, Newport News VA (USA) Hosted by Styx & Stones Note: Bring a children or youth clothing donation for the Yule Cat!

❄️ CTWC Witches' Brew - Seasonal Spellcraft (FREE ONLINE EVENT!) Saturday, December 13th 2025 8 AM PST / 12 noon EST / 6 PM GMT / 5 AM AEDT (12/14) Click Here To Register! Hosted by the Critical Thinking Witch Collective

❄️ Cabinet of Wonders Market Sunday, December 14th 2025, 2pm-6pm Maker's Craft Brewery 735 E 23rd St, Norfolk VA (USA) Hosted by Coastal Crystals LLC and Maker's Craft Brewery

❄️ RCW Yule Witch Market Sunday, December 21st 2025, 12pm-5pm Diversity Richmond 1403 Sherwood Ave, Richmond VA (USA) Hosted by River City Witch Markets Note: River City Witch Markets will be holding events at a new location in 2026.