Lammas + Rituals For You To Do
Lammas, also known as Lughnasadh, is a festival that marks the start of the harvest season. Celebrated traditionally on the 1st of August, Lammas is a time of transition, transformation, and reflection, the first of three autumn harvest festivals. It embodies not only the literal harvest of crops but also the metaphorical harvest of personal growth and development. In the sphere of personal transformation, the metaphor of Lammas symbolizes the time to reap what we’ve sown and nurtured throughout the year, symbolically and literally.
This is the time in the solar year where we begin to slow it down just slightly, or perhaps consider the slowing down as Fall is coming sooner rather than later.
Significance Of Lammas In A Witch’s Life
The word ‘Lammas’ originates from the Old English term for ‘loaf mass’, pointing to a time of gathering and celebrating the first fruits of the harvest. This first harvest is a moment of gratitude for the sustenance provided by the Earth. Metaphorically, it reflects the culmination of our personal efforts and the harvesting of the fruits of our labor, both materially and spiritually.
The spiritual metaphor embedded within Lammas encourages us to view our lives as a cycle of sowing, nurturing, harvesting, and letting go. In the context of personal growth, the ‘sowing’ represents our intentions and actions, ‘nurturing’ pertains to the attention, effort, and resilience we invest in our personal growth, ‘harvesting’ points to the realization and celebration of our achievements, and ‘letting go’ symbolizes the release of what no longer serves us. This all, of course, includes the culmination of the spells we have cast out into the world for this year.
Lammas provides a profound opportunity for self-reflection, evaluation, and introspection. It invites us to take stock of our personal development, acknowledge our accomplishments, and identify areas where more growth is required. Furthermore, it encourages us to recognize and let go of beliefs, habits, and relationships that no longer contribute positively to our development.
It’s important to note that Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom has give us three thresholds of harvesting to go through before we enter Winter, which is the point of rest and retreat of the year.
Lammas is the first harvest, but then comes Fall, or Mabon, and then finally we have Hallows. Three stations of harvesting, of introspection and evaluation. All of them deeply tied into thanksgiving and gratitude.
Intuitively, I’ve always felt that this is deep code for what makes magic and manifestation powerful. We not only have this holy day to look at what we are harvesting with gratitude, but we have two more. Before we enter into Winter we have steeped ourselves in gratitude, likely the most potent and magnetic ingredient for manifestation there is.
Lammas Rituals
Rituals celebrating this day are varied. You can start simple and move onto large group celebrations as you feel called. But no matter what you end up doing, below are some simply suggestions to mark this holy day and anchor it into your ever evolving path as a Witch.
- Create a Lammas Altar: Create a sacred space in your home by setting up a Lammas altar. You could incorporate symbols of the harvest, like corn, wheat, barley, and sunflowers, along with crystals like citrine and peridot, which represent abundance and personal growth. Add personal items that represent your achievements and the things you wish to release.
- Reflection and Release: Sit comfortably in front of your Lammas altar, take a few moments to center yourself, and reflect on the past months. Identify the fruits of your efforts and the areas you need to focus on more. Write down what you’re grateful for and what you wish to let go of.
- Offering Gratitude and Letting Go: Read aloud the things you’re grateful for, celebrating each achievement no matter how small. Then, acknowledge the things you wish to release. You could write these on a piece of paper and safely burn it as a symbolic gesture of release.
- Setting Intentions: Finally, set your intentions for the coming months. What do you want to nurture and grow? Write these down and place them on your altar.
