Hi, my loves and welcome to WiccaNow. Recently I’ve been sharing some of my favourite magickal herbs and plants with you, like this post about the magickal properties of yarrow and another post about patchouli. I want to diverge from this path today and talk about one of the 8 Sabbats of the year, namely Lammas.
I’ve written previously about some of the other Sabbats including this post about Ostara, another about Samhain and also one about Imbolc. Amythest has also previously written about the wheel of the year so check that out for an overview of all 8 Sabbats.
The Harvest Festival of Lammas
Lammas, also known as Lughnasadh, is the first harvest festival of the season and is one of the 4 “greater Sabbats” in the Wiccan Wheel of the Year. It is a fire festival which takes place on or around the 1st of August in the Northern Hemisphere and around the 1st of February in the Southern Hemisphere. For those who worship him, it is the festival of the god Lugh, and for those who don’t, it’s a celebration of the coming of Autumn and a way to give thanks for the bounties of the earth.
Date: 1st August (Northern Hemisphere) or 1st February (Southern Hemisphere)
Significance: Beginning of the Harvest Season and the end of Summer
Celebrations: Athletic festivals and games, Handfastings, Lammas Feasts, Fairs and Fetes, offerings of grains and fruits.
Lammas often takes place during the hottest part of the year. The nights are still long but are starting to noticeably shorten on their march towards Autumn and Winter. Summer is reaching a peak and signs of autumn are just starting to appear. The first grains are ripe for harvest and many fruit trees are overloaded with ripe produce.
Lammas is also a Christian festival where the first grain harvest is used to bake bread which is then taken to a church and laid onto the altar so that it can be blessed. I find it so interesting that Christianity has a lot of celebrations that aren’t that dissimilar to celebrations within Wicca and Neopaganism. I think a lot of these cross-overs occurred when the church was trying to convert people and realised that instead of taking all the traditions that people enjoyed away from them, they should essentially just “re-brand” those same holidays to make them Christian celebrations.
Lammas is a time to give thanks for the abundance that the year has brought and to take note of the way that our intentions have manifested so far throughout the year. Many people choose to perform handfasting ceremonies at this festival (as well as during Beltane) as it’s thought that this will secure an abundance of love in the union and a happy life together.
Folklore around Lammas
There are a few legends associated with Lammas. Most of them concern gods and goddesses and their relationships with each other and the natural world. Grain and produce was such an important part of life that it was inherently linked with life and death. Many of these legends and folk tales include grief or death and reference the fact that a lack of love will ultimately lead to the loss of crops as everything withers and dies due to neglect only to be reborn when love is restored.
One tales tells the story of the Sumerian god Tammus and his lover Ishtar. Tammuz was murdered and Ishtars grief for him caused all plants on the earth to stop growing. Ishtar went to the underworld to retrieve Tammuz and on their arrival back on the earth, all the plants started producing again in celebration. This myth closely mimics the story of Demeter, Persephone and Hades.
In another Greek legend, Adonis is credited with being the God of Grain. Aphrodite and Persephone both want his love and so so prevent any fighting between the Goddesses Zeus tells Adonis to spend 6 months in the Underworld with Persephone and 6 months on the Earth with Aphrodite. This causes the grain to stop growing for 6 months of the year while Adonis is in the Underworld with Persephone and to start growing again when he spends his 6 months with Aphrodite. This cycle of life, death and rebirth is a common theme within Wicca, as shown by the Horned God and the Triple Goddess.
Irish folklore tells us that it’s a sign of bad luck to have to harvest your grain before Lammas. If you were forced to harvest it earlier, it meant that your supply from the year before had been exhausted and was seen as a huge failure in your crop production and planning.
Another myth has involved Sif, the wife of the Thunder god Thor. She has the most beautiful golden hair, however Loki decided to prank her and cut it off. Thor was extremely upset and wanted to kill Loki, but the…
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