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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Lammas

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
A Full Moon on Lammas

 

There’s a whole lot going on in August, starting with the celebration of Lammas/Lughnassadh today, coinciding with the first of two supermoons this month. You can hear my take on tonight’s lovely Corn Moon/Full Sturgeon Moon on my minipod, courtesy of “Women Who Howl at the Moon.” Tonight should give you something to howl about for sure! While you’re at it, why not practicing some gratitude for any bounty you’ve enjoyed recently in your life? I certainly count friends, loved ones, and pets as riches you just can’t put a price tag on. Light an orange candle for enthusiasm and rekindling optimism and let them know you care—with a simple gesture, a quick note, or a lovingly prepared meal from scratch this evening. It’s something we could all stand to do a bit more of, myself included. And when it comes to yourself, be sure to practice some self-love, too.

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Lammas Day, August 2 – Harvesting Happiness

This major sabbat denotes the high point of the year; the crops are in their fullness, weather is warm and the countryside is bursting forth with the beauty of life. Pagans know we have the heavens above to thank for this and the gods of nature must be acknowledged for their generosity with a gathering of the tribe and a feast, ideally in the great outdoors. Ask invitees to bring harvest- themed offerings for the altar: gourds, pumpkins, bundles of wheat stalks and corn, or fresh pickings from their garden, and food to share in thanksgiving made from the same, like pies, tomato salads, cucumber pickles, green beans, corn pudding, watermelon, lemon cakes, berry cucumber, apple cider and beer brewed from wheat, hops and barley. This celebration of the reaping from summer season should reflect what you have grown with your own hands. Fill your cauldron or a big beautiful colored glass bowl half-full with freshly-drawn water. Get packets of tiny votive candles for floating in the water. At the feast table, make sure to have a place- setting for the godly guest Lugh who watched over the plantings to ensure this bounty. Place loaves of Lammas bread by his plate.

When all guests have arrived, everyone should add a food offering to the plate of the god and light a candle to float in the cauldron. Cut a slice of Lammas bread for Lugh and begin the ceremony with this prayer of thanks:

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Lammas

Feel the passing of summer; as light lessens, we deepen the rhythms of rebirth. The is the first harvest—a time of abundance, our opportunity to assume conscious collective responsibility for creating the future. In this time of grains ripening, as we can also feel the Great Loneliness that wraps our human world, keep asking: What is it we value? How can we align our lives with that vision?

How can we control our population, transition from fossil fuels, eliminate toxic waste, practice wisdom without the sacrifices of technology? How can we stop feeding the world to our machines?

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Lammas: Harvesting Your Soul Lessons

Lammas marks the end of the current cycle of your journey of soul. The wheel of the year has turned from darkness and death, through light and life, and now shines out the last of this season’s light before a new cycle begins. So too you’ve come to the end of one turning of your journey; it’s time to harvest its bounty of life lessons and personal growth, and to seek out the seeds of your next cycle.

At Lammas, the summer sunshine has baked the land a golden yellow. Fruits, berries and grains bend branches and stalks with their plump ripeness, ready to offer up their bounty to the harvest. Yet the outer look of things can be deceiving. Day by day, the light wanes and the dark waxes; cold will soon replace heat, and the powers of death overtake those of life. The balance has shifted, and the abundance that is now so evident will soon be gone. 

Lammas is the pagan celebration of the early harvest, with grains, such as wheat and corn, playing a central role in the symbolism of this time of year. The golden fields of grain are ready for harvesting. What has been tended and brought to full fruition must now be cut down to feed hungry bellies. Some living things are sacrificed to nourish other living things, and to ensure the continuity and wellness of the whole. With death comes the miracle of rebirth, held within the seeds and their promise of a new harvest.

This theme of self-chosen sacrificial death in support of life and rebirth infuses the mythic roots of Lammas. The Corn King, John Barleycorn and the Harvest King are some of the names given to the sacrificial God who gathers His energy into the crops that are cut down at Lammas to feed the living and to ensure a new harvest in Spring. In Celtic mythology, the Goddess Tailtiu cleared the land for cultivation as a gift to the people, and died from Her tremendous efforts. Lammas is also called Lughnasadh, in reference to the Celtic God Lugh. Tailtiu is Lugh’s foster mother, and legend has it that Lugh instituted a Lughnasadh harvest festival and games in Her honor.

Your journey of soul calls you to this same theme of self-chosen sacrifice in service of your personal healing and transformation. You must be willing to harvest your soul lessons and cut away those things that are now complete or that block your future growth. Some things must die in your life for something new to be reborn. 

It is Lugh — the Shining One, the many-skilled God, bearing His Sword of Light — that illuminates your Lammas harvest pathwork.  Lugh meets you on a hilltop, offering you a wide-ranging viewscape that can help you see deep into the heart of your life story, and deep into the heart of the struggles of the Mother Earth, as one cycle of your journey of soul and one turning of our collective humanity end, and a new cycle and turning begin. In these profound mysteries of life, death and rebirth, Lugh is your luminescent, loving guide as you embrace the incisive, demanding, and often painful tasks that Lammas asks of you. 

At its core, Lammas is a season of hope and the miracle of new beginnings. In the golden field that is your life story, you can find everything you need to heal your soul, transform your life and mend our world. Within you are the lessons, endings and seeds of a powerful new beginning that can lead you ever closer home to your Deep Self and authentic humanity.

Artwork by Qistina Khalidah

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Let's Talk About Corn, Lugh, and Lammas

I always think of Lammas as a time of outdoor dining, reflection on the year thus far, and most of all—corn! Enjoying a small picnic with your immediate household in the backyard or on a back porch is a perfect way to celebrate Lugh and this start to the harvest season this year. Grains and bread should definitely be on the menu, and there are some fun options to choose from. You could even create an intimate bread baking party with your family, creating a combination of sweet and savory choices.

Grilling local corn in the husks gives it such an amazing added flavor, and the mouth-watering scent it gives off is aromatherapy in itself. Make it the main dish and create a healthy vegetarian meal with side salads tossed with produce from a neighborhood Farmer’s Market. These happen to be some of the better ones in Wisconsin, if you’re in the area.

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Harvesting My Memories When Everything Was New!

I've been out of commission and very quiet on the writing front for a while now.  I had my second hip replacement surgery in February (the first having been in July of 2019) and a delay in return to work in March with COVID-19 shutdowns. The fear and loss of life has weighed heavily on me, as with everyone and the continued uncertainty of just about everything in the world as we know it looms large. These and some personal changes have given me pause to reflect on everything and the usual forward momentum that I feel has been slowed by the accompanying heaviness with this introspection and I will admit that motivation has been in short supply (something I rarely have had issue with).

It's funny how when faced with stretches of time that are unstructured your mind goes down these paths of exploration that normally go unnoticed in the busy-ness of routine. One of the things that came up for me was the chance to take a look at my spiritual practice and path and how the past 30+ years have molded my current work. I also realized that I have been missing the unmistakable feeling when everything is new, undiscovered and exciting. So, I decided to take a walk down memory lane and take the time to re-member those things that filled me with the power of newness as a tonic, if you will, of much needed joy and inspiration.......

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A Lammas Teaching: The Seasons and Cycles of Breath

Our journey of soul is like breath.

On the in-breath, we enter deep inside of ourselves, to the well-spring of our soul and the mysteries of the sacred dark, seeking guidance and inspiration for our pathwork of healing and transformation, and the seeds of our beauty and wounding that are ready to return to the light of our waking-world consciousness.

On our out-breath, we turn our focus outward, embracing the enervating powers of light and life and letting the seeds of our pathwork express and reveal themselves in the machinations of our everyday existence. Life is our teacher, bringing us the insights, energies and experiences we need to heal, grow and blossom in the sunlit world.

On our return in-breath, we gather up and take back inside everything that we have learned and experienced. We harvest our healing work and life story, and ingest their transformative lessons, letting them nourish and change us. And in this process, we become a newer, more profound and brighter version of our Deep Self.

The turning of the seasons is like breath.

On the in-breath, the natural realm turns inward as the balance shifts from light and life to darkness and death. Nature sinks into stillness and repose, while the land rejuvenates and the seeds of the new gestate in the belly of the dark.

On the out-breath, the returning light and warmth awaken the sleeping seeds of life within the land. Roots dig deep and green tendrils reach upward to kiss the sun. Everywhere in Nature, creation expands outward in a rampant, stunning display of the beauty and abundance of new and blossoming growth.

On the return in-breath, the living world offers up the fruits of its labors for the harvest. The death and sacrifice of some threads of life ensure the nurturance and continuance of others. Yet nothing is truly lost, for contained within death are the seeds of a new season and a future harvest.

And then the cycle begins anew, always turning, never-ending, one breath, one season, one chapter on our journey of soul is followed by the next. In these ways, life sustains and creates more life, and the light of our soul shines ever brighter.

Our busy modern world is not like breath. If anything, we are fixated on a perpetual out-breath, with its expansive, external focus. We are always doing and striving, charting our passage through life by the material markers of achievements and possessions. More is better. Growth is everything.

Yet we can never escape the natural order of things. We can’t breathe out, without breathing in. The outer arises from the inner, and that which grows and expands, in the end, returns to the still, fertile center of things to feed and give rise to the next cycle of life.

Individually and collectively we have reached the end of our extended out-breath. It is time to turn our focus to the return in-breath of harvesting and ingesting what we have learned from the fruits of our efforts, and of winnowing out what needs to die and be sacrificed in service of the balance and wellness of the whole.

This is the work of Lammas, where profound, consciously chosen endings gift us with the seeds of profound, life-serving beginnings, and from these seeds our lives and our world are renewed and reborn.

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