Celebrating Lammas

 

Lammas, one of my favourite sabbats (along with Samhain) is coming up. It's this Wednesday 1st August (although some may celebrate it on 31st July, or start their celebrations from sunset on the 31st). Last year I did a post about Lammas celebration ideas which you can read here: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2017/07/lammas-celebration-ideas.html

This year I'll write some more about preparing for and celebrating Lammas. :)

Note: If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, Imbolg/Imbolc is coming up and you might like this post: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2018/01/imbolg-celebration-ideas.html


Update 1/8/23: Some of the links below are gone or not currently loading. I'll update this with some new ones when I can. :)

Lammas (also known as Lughnasadh) is harvest time, the first of the 3 harvest festivals (the others are Madron/Mabon and Samhain). The God will be sacrificed for the land and then later reborn. The Goddess has now become the Mother and is pregnant with the new God, who she will give birth to at Yule aka the Winter Solstice. You can read more here: https://whisperingworlds.com/wiccan/lammas.php

Here are a couple more links about Lammas:

https://www.theseasonalsoul.com/lammas-meaning/

https://joannahennon.com/how-to-celebrate-lammas/

Preparing 

A suggestion for something to do before Lammas is learn about the Celtic God Lugh and the Goddesses Demeter and Ceres who are grain goddess. I wrote a bit about this in last year's post.

Demi from Rockstar Priestess wrote an article last year about connecting with the Goddess in your everyday life: http://themotherhouseofthegoddess.com/2017/05/13/five-simple-ways-to-honour-the-goddess-in-your-life-by-demi-fox/

This sabbat is about abundance, so another thing to do is think about the abundance in your life. Here's a good post from Boni of Live A Life You Love about increasing abundance in your life (from a Law of Attraction perspective): https://www.livealifeyoulove.com/7-ways-increase-abundance-life-today/

Also Witch of Lupine Hollow has an abundance and blessing spell for Lammas if you fancy trying it: https://witchoflupinehollow.com/2016/07/29/abundance-and-blessing-spell-for-lammas/

Here are some questions to journal about, relating to Lammas and the rest of the summer. I'm going to think about these: https://www.theseasonalsoul.com/mid-summer-journal-questions/

Celebrating


Baking/Food and Drink

I usually bake for Lammas. It's an ideal sabbat to bake bread because it's all about the harvest and grain. I don't make my own bread very often because it's quite a complicated process (I prefer simpler things!) but I have a couple of times. I baked some for Lammas last year and it came out quite nice. You can see a pic here: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2017/08/lammas-2017.html

I'm not planning to bake any from scratch this year but I may get a bread mix and have a go with that! The main thing I'll make is gingerbread, like I usually do. Also may make a Cornish pasty (or Cornish style pasty) for lunch.

Moody Moons has some good posts on baking for Lammas:

https://moodymoons.com/2015/07/31/baking-the-lammas-bread/

https://moodymoons.com/2018/07/22/lammas-artisan-mini-herbal-bread-rounds-recipe-lughnasadh-vegan/


For more baking ideas check out last year's post:  https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2017/07/lammas-celebration-ideas.html

Since grain fits the theme, you could always have some popcorn as suggested in the Lammas articles on Penniless Pagan and Moody Moons. In the book Pagan in the City by Cassandra Eason she mentions leaving out a container of cereal (I think as a decoration, or on your altar if you have one). I have some popcorn I haven't eaten yet, so I'll save that for Lammas!


Cider and beer are good drinks to have for this festival.  They're good for Madron aka the Autumn Equinox as well, especially cider since UK apple season for some varieties is September to October.  I've had cider some years, although last year I had shandy for a change. This Lammas I'm planning to have cider again.


Other ways to celebrate

As it's a festival of the Sun God, lighting a candle is another way of celebrating. The light that was strongest on Litha/the Summer Solstice is now waning, but the days are still quite long and we have a whole month of summer to go. I'm going to light an orange candle this year.

I'm also planning to go to my local nature reserve on Lammas and take some pictures of the sunset. I enjoy taking sunset pics and it's a nice way to celebrate the sabbats.  Since the weather is (hopefully) better and the days are longer, this is a good time to go on trips to the country, go for walks and have picnics.

Also check out this post from Witchy Words: http://www.witchywords.com/2018/07/august-eve-lammas-lughnasadh-ten-ideas.html (Now a private blog)

 

Hope that gave you some ideas. :) The weather has been really hot in the UK lately, although today it's colder, windy and rainy! Think it's supposed to warm up again later this upcoming week. If you love summer like I do, here are some more summer related posts:

(First part is about Litha but the second part is about summer in general): https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2018/06/celebrating-litha-summer.html

Summer photos: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2018/07/summer-photos.html

A good article about summer (would have been good to have discovered it earlier because it's about June- August, but there's still August to go!): http://themotherhouseofthegoddess.com/summer-in-the-goddess-year-june-july-august/

Cassanadra Eason currently has some information on her website for both Lammas/Lughnasadh (she spells it "Lughnassadh" with an extra S) and Imbolg/Imbolc: https://cassandraeason.com/

Update 1/8/23: Cassandra updated her site, so here are the links for Lammas/Lughnasadh and Imbolg/Imbolg:

https://cassandraeason.com/latest/to-my-friends-in-the-northern-hemisphere-happy-approaching-lughnassadh

https://cassandraeason.com/latest/happy-approaching-imbolc-in-the-southern-hemisphere

Happy Lammas! (Or Imbolg depending on your location). :)


P.S: You might like this post from Witch of Lupine Hollow which suggests ways of connecting with the Wheel of the Year in the 21st Century: https://witchoflupinehollow.com/2018/07/24/9-ways-to-connect-with-wheel-of-year-in-21st-century/


Photo: Brighton. Moonsparkle 2018.