As most of you know Lughnasadh or Lammas is tomorrow August 1st. So below you can find a little info on Lammas and how to celebrate it. If you can and will be celebrating Lammas this year let us know how, it will be fun to hear stories! Due to a lack of time to prepare I will be celebrating Lammas very simple this year...just a candle lite meditation and prayer along with a offering to the Lord and Lady.
Lughnasadh (LOO-na-sah) is the first of the harvest festivals (Mabon and Samhain being the other two) and traditionally honors Lugh, the Celtic God of harvest, light, fire, and the sun, King of the Tuatha de Dannannn. The alternate name, Lammas, is a slight corruption of “hlaf-mas," an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “loaf mass" in obvious reference to the harvest of grain and the making of bread. The festival is primarily a harvest celebration, the time of birth and death, when the Goddess is honored as the Grain Mother, who gives birth to great bounty, and the God as the Father of Prosperity. Here the Goddess begins to age and her Consort, the spirit of the grain, is cut down so that he can be reborn in the spring. The Sun God is sacrificed on this day, and he will begin his decent into the underworld along with the plants and other wild things.
Cernunnos and Pan are also celebrated at this time of year. It is a time to make Corn Dollies or anything craft wise using corn.
Activities: Eating bread and throwing it in the fire, bonfires, singing, feasting, herb gathering, wheat woven into goddess/god symbols, the making of corn dollies, the time of reaping what you sow.
Rituals: Handfasting, weddings, women walking through gardens naked to ensure continued fertility, works for harvesting goals and ideas, meditation on the Sun God, honor the Mother’s fullness, richness and abundance, put garlands of St. John’s Wort over doors, windows and a sprig in the car for protection,
Magicks: Astrology, prosperity, generosity, continued success, good fortune, abundance, magical picnic, meditate and visualize yourself completing a project you've started
Animals/Mythical Beings: Griffins, Basilisks, Roosters, Calves, Centaurs, Phoenix,
Incense/Oil: Wood Aloes, Rose, Rose Hips, Sandalwood, Frankincense, Rosemary, Chamomile, Eucalyptus, Safflower, Corn, Passionflower
Tools: Athame
Stones/Gems: Carnelian, Citrine, Amber, Tourmaline, Aventurine, Peridot, Sardonyx,
Colors: Red, orange, golden yellow, gold, brown, bronze, green, light brown, gray.
Symbols & Decoration: Threshing tools, corn dollies, flowers, wheat stocks, the scythe, yellow candles, corn, sheaves of grain, feather/flower door wreath, love amulets, seashells, fire, circle of stones, sun dial, sun wheel, Witchs’ Ladder
Foods: Loaves of homemade wheat oat or corn bread, barley cakes, potatoes, summer squash, nuts, acorns, rice, pears, berry pies, all grains, elderberry wine, crab apples, mead, crab, blackberries, meadowsweet tea, grapes, beer, breads, cheeses, cider, fruits, vegetables, herbs, pies, corn, early apples, all wild berries, jellies, herbal “Sun" tea,
Deities: Lugh and Dana, Lleu the Sun God, Sovereignty, Rhiannon & Epona, Tailte, Tammuz, Demeter and Ceres, Persephone, Cerridwen, Faunas, Baal and Crom Dubh, other agricultural goddesses, the waxing goddess, the waning god.
Herbs/Flowers/Plants: Heather, Hollyhock, Grain, Acacia, Ginseng, Cyclamen, Fenugreek, Sunflower, Oak Leaf, Myrtle,