Hello August!

August 1st and 2nd is
The Festival Sabbat of Lammas (Lughnassadh)
the celebration of the cross-quarterly aspect of the Pagan Wheel.
FIRE and the bounty of the summer harvest
The first of the Harvest festivals, Lammas is an acknowledgment that summer is beginning to wane.

Lammas is a time to give thanks for all we have – the fruits of the earth, our health and wellbeing, our strength and vitality and for the love and protection of the Divine.

It is now high summer and the union of Sun and Earth, of God and Goddess, has produced the First Harvest.
Lammas is the celebration of this first, Grain Harvest, a time for gathering in and giving thanks for abundance.
We work with the cycle that the Autumn Equinox – Mabon, is the Second Harvest of Fruit, and Samhain is the third and Final Harvest of Nuts and Berries.

The word ‘Lammas’ is derived from ‘loaf mass’ and is indicative of how important the first grains are,
and with them, the first loaf of the harvesting cycle.

Lugh
It is also the great festival of Lugh, or Lug, the great Celtic Sun King and God of Light.
August is His sacred month when He initiated great festivities in honour of His mother, Tailtiu. Feasting, market fairs, games and bonfire celebrations were the order of the day.
Circle dancing, reflecting the movement of the sun in sympathetic magic, was popular, as were all community gatherings.
August was considered an auspicious month for handfastings and weddings.

But underlying this is the knowledge that the bounty and energy of Lugh, of the Sun, is now beginning to wane.
It is a time of change and shift. Active growth is slowing down and the darker days of winter and reflection are beckoning…

Lammas Day means “loaf-mass” and on August 1st, (or roundabout) bread made from the season’s first grains were taken to the church to be blessed.
Afterwards, it was also used in a little old world food magic to ensure a prosperous harvest.
A book of Anglo-Saxon Charms advises the Lammas bread should be broken into four bits placed at the four corners of the barn, to protect the grain.

But Lammas Day served another forgotten function, it marked the occasion when “Lamas Rights” were granted.
This allowed “commoners” the right to hunt, pasture and forage on crown land, church or other lands they did not have legal rights to.
This tradition of Common land or Common Ground granted the public the use of the “commons”
-woods, ponds, fields, grazing grounds…
to feed themselves.

HERBS & PLANTS of LAMMAS

All GRAINS

• wheat, barley, oats, rye, all representing both fulfillment and potential.

MEADOWSWEET

• also known as Queen-Of-The-Meadow, Bridewort and Bride of the Meadow. One of the most sacred herbs of the Druids, this was often worn as a garland for Lammas celebrations and was a traditional herb for wedding circlets and bouquets at this time of year. Also used for love spells and can be strewn to promote peace, and its heady scent cheers the heart.

MINT

• another of the three most revered herbs of the Druids
  (vervain being the third, according to Grieve).
  Its magical properties are both protection and healing, and at this stage in the year, its properties of drawing abundance and prosperity, are most appropriate.

? SUNFLOWERS ?

• By this stage in the year the flower heads are full and heavy with that wonderful spiral of seeds and they spend the whole day gently turning their heads to gaze at the sun. In the Aztec temples of the sun, priestesses carried sunflowers and wore them as crowns. They symbolize the fertility of the Solar Logos.

CALENDULA

• highky medicinal…
  calming, soothing “little suns”

COLORS of Lammas

• Still green, with every shade of sun and harvest, from gold and yellow to deepest orange.

Lammas ALTAR

• Wheat and all grains, corn dolly, bread, sunflowers and calendulas (pot marigolds).

☀️ Lammas and the Nature of Sacrifice
{From “The Magical Path”}

All around us we can see the ripening bounty, not just for the wheat harvest at this time of year but for the coming season as we watch the apples ripen and the berries on the fruit bushes slowly begin to swell and blush. Its a time of making corn dollies to honour the Spirit of the Fields and for getting together with like minded community to celebrate the abundance that Gaia is yielding so we may continue to grow in abundance also.

However, there is a deeper meaning to Lammas.
This is the nature of sacrifice.
What is sacrifice and what does it mean to those who are Pagan? At this time of year many Pagans choose to make specific Lammas sacrifices. We make many sacrifices throughout our lives but at Lammas many choose to make a special effort to do something specifically for the gods. Often I hear the question, “What is an appropriate sacrifice to the gods, especially on Lammas?” When one understands the root meaning of the word sacrifice then the answer to that question becomes more clear.

The first part of the word, sacri, comes from the Latin root word sacrare meaning, “to make sacred or holy”. The second part of the word, fice, means “to make” or “to offer”. Sacred means“consecrated” or “set apart for a special purpose”, especially those things made more acceptable to a deity or for religious purpose. When we make our Lammas sacrifice it is an act of self-sacrifice. So when we understand the meaning of the word sacrifice we can see that one way we could word our intended goal is:
“To set ourselves apart for the special purpose of becoming more acceptable to the gods”.

Whatever we choose to give up, to do, to make, to complete, to avoid…
it should be with this intent in mind: “By virtue of this sacrifice,
this time next year I will have become a better person,
more useful to the gods, and therefore more helpful to and useful in all capacities and to all my fellow creatures”.

Sacrifice is something we resist.
It is a difficult, unpopular theme to come to terms with in our modern mindset.
We are encouraged in this world of capitalism to think that we can have everything all at once.
Even though we know deep down that this is not true. Older, more mature and magical cultures than ours, actually understood this. Sometimes, in order to have something that you love, you have to give up something else that you love.
When you read about the sacrifices of ancient people, whether those sacrifices be bull calf or bundle of grain, they always gave their best:
a calf free of blemish to have its life ended, a sheaf of full ears with no grains missing, to be immolated in the field.
Ancient people offered sacrifices in faith that next year, the harvest or hunt would be better.
They restricted the gratification and comfort in their present selves in service of their future selves, and also of the people that would come after them.
They didn’t hedge their sacrifices. Sacrifice was an absolute leap of faith, giving up the apparent and valuable, for something yet to arrive.

Many pagan traditions celebrate Lammas with a dramatized rite of the grain god being cut down for the winter by the Goddess’s harvest scythe.
The Goddess takes the body of the slain god into her lap and mourns him but Paganism being cyclic, the ancient cycle then says that the god will be restored, and reborn again with the Winter Solstice sun.
So the god is sacrificed, like John Barlycorn, but will rise again with the next years harvest.

However, the true nature of personal sacrifice is a little different.
It is losing something beloved and known in a gamble with the unknown.
It is giving something up to a cause larger than yourself, without being quite sure what, if anything, you will get back in return.
In sacrifice there are no guarantees. There is no real sacrifice if you know the resolution.

So, when thinking about the nature of your personal sacrifice you can make it as simple as possible, as long as it is heartfelt.

You may choose to give up smoking, even for a short while, you may choose to give up some free time to help others, giving up a portion of your Lammas meal as a libation, donating a couple of quid to a charity…
Whatever you choose to “sacrifice” is up to you. Be it great or small makes no difference but it must be done with absolute heartfelt love and thanks and you must feel the loss to a certain extent to make it worthwhile.
The gods (Deity) give us so much as the Great Wheel turns and the seasons slip on by, each giving us a greater sense of self, a deeper meaning of our connection to the gods and to the planet, guiding us and teaching us, even though the lessons may be hard.

Lammas is a time to reap what we have sown, give thanks for not only the grain harvests but for our own personal harvests
-all that we have and are,
and it is a time to give up something of ourselves so we may become yet better people, not only in the eyes of the gods, but in our own eyes too.
☀️

Lammas Blessings
~ Jill ???

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