The Festival of Lammas
This festival of Lammas (also known as Lughnasad) is celebrated at the beginning of August when we see the colours of ripening crops and fruit. Everything’s getting ready for harvest. Flowers are abundant, nature is blossoming and our hedges are so full of wildlife. The passion and joy is just what this agricultural festival is all about!
It’s known as the festival of Lammas in Anglo-Saxon as it relates to the first loaf made from the first crops.
It is also known as Lughnasad after the Celtic Feast of the sun god Lu. Lu was the god of the sun and his spirit was said to be held in the corn.
What is the Wheel of the Year?
It has always made so much sense to me to be in touch with the ever changing way that our Earth, Gaia, interacts with the Universe. By observing the stars and the planets we learn so much. And the Sun, as we observe it through each zodiac sign, brings a rhythm and a cycle 
to our days, months and years.
By watching this rhythm unfold we find ourselves in tune with the natural cycles, the agricultural year and the turning points within the year celebrated by our ancestors. Ancestral memories are buried deep inside every one of us and, by raising them up into our awareness, so we are connected to the whole in a very real way. We see time moving on, but not in minutes and hours and days necessarily, more in the cycle of life and death and rebirth.
Life, a spiral of life.
What can we do for the festival of Lammas?
A tradition, at this time, is to make a corn dolly from the first corn that’s harvested. 
The dolly is kept in the home as the seed for next year’s sowing. So there we have the cycle again and an attunement with nature.
We give thanks as we watch the crops ripen and begin the harvest. It’s probably a time to keep tidy or clear so that we can see what’s there.
It’s all around seeing what is coming to fruition at this time of the year. Bread being baked. Berries and juices. Celebrating all of that is nature’s bounty. And your own of course!
And the wonder, because there’s a mystical side as well. There’s a symbolic side to every single Festival, and we will light fires in the evening to celebrate, to enjoy, to extend our day. It’s also a time, August when we tend to see crop circles appear.
What can you vision?
What’s come to fruition for you this year?
What will you truly be taking forward to Harvest Festival in September in acknowledgement of your gifts?
Would you make your own corn dolly or perhaps paint a stone?
In some small way find something to take this energy, this amazing abundant sun filled passionate, joyful energy, forwards.
As always, with love from Alison.
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xx
