1st August
Summer Cross Quarter Fire Festival

 

Lammas is the Saxon word for 'loaf mass'. Also known, in medieval Irish texts as Bron Trogain, or the first day of the Trogain month, or by the Welsh term Gwyl Awst, meaning 'the feast of August.

 

The great Lammas feasts, traditionally lasted for one month; 15 days before August 1st and 15 days after.
Great Lammas fairs were held, with games and celebrations.
Fermentations (cider and beer) were seen as the seesnce of germination, a kind of 'watery fire of life', and used as a ritual element at the feasts.
Cooking fires were honoured as the transformative power of fite and water, together.
The men returned from their long hunting trips and harvesting took place, with the waning moon. 

This is the celebration of the harvest mother.
Fires were lit on Lammas mounds, like Silbury Hill, at Avebury.
People gathered to feel the earth mother give bith to het harvest child, in conjunction with the moon and her waters.

This is the time when the goddess withdraws into the mounds and the earth; the forces hich began to rise out of the earth at Imbolc, return now, at Lammas.

Lugh, is the sun king, who does with the waning year.  he is the corn king, who dies when the grain is reaped.  John Barleycorn, who must die, to keep the balance between male and female.
The sacrifice of a king, was at one time, very real, as blood was offered back to the gods who had given the grain.  In more modern times, male energy was symbolically sacrificed back to the land, to stop it becoming too powerful.

 

The Underlying Energy

Lammas is a time of abundance and surplus of food. 
It is the seasonal peak of high summer. 
The cross quarter points, represent change in manifest energy.  And so, nature ripens, everything is peaking in its growth.  Green turns to gold.  Summer feels as if it will last forever.  But from here, is the first signs of death and we must bear in mind the future and hard times of winter.
It is a time to lay in store, the things we will need.

 

It is a time of ripening, collecting, harvesting, gathering in, making the most of the sunshine, being outside, gathering with friends.

 

Lammas Celebrations

Lammas is a feast and a celebration of the fruits and harvest of the life force.
It is also a fire festival.  Ceremonial lighting of a fire and honouring of the cooking process, and the transformative power of fire and water together.
Friends come together and bring food to share.

Make an altar, to the abundance of the Earth mother.  Flowers, sheaves of wheat and barley, or oats.  Loaves of bread, cakes, biscuits and fruits.
Make straw figures and dress, or decorate wells with prayers

Now winter is coming, ask yourself, what is it that you fear?  Let it go, toss it into the fire, rejoice in your release from it.

meditate with the abundance and fullness of the season.

 

Extract from the song by Brian Boothby
The Goddess and John Barleycorn

So stand in the circle
Weave the web of light
Dance in the moonlight
Bring fire to the night
Release the past that made us
Release the fire within
Revel in the mystery
And embrace your sacred kin

And the Goddess and John Barleycorn
Will put flesh upon the bones
Fly ribbons round the barrows
Plant footprints round the stones
The Goddess and John Barleycorn
Will keep the spirits strong
For those who remember
For those who sing the song