LUGHNASSADH
1 August
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On the eve of the first harvest of the year, ancient peoples
celebrated. They honored the earth for its fertility and
congratulated themselves for a job well-begun. The crops on which
these people fed were very important to them. A bad harvest meant a
lean year and perhaps starvation during the winter. A good harvest
meant plenty for all, and an easier winter. It is easy to see that
this holiday was a pivotal celebration each year.
This celebration and the day on which it was held has been called
Lammas, Lughnassad, August Eve, and many other names. The sense of
the holiday is generally the same from one culture to another. The
festivities served two main purposes. The first was obviously to
celebrate the efforts the people had put toward the harvest: the
clearing of the land, the planting of the crop, the husbandry of
animals, the tending of the fields, and the herding of cattle. The
second purpose was to call forth from divinity the fortune that
would grant them good weather and luck for the remainder of the
harvest and the winter. These two goals are the blend which make up
the mystery of Lammas.
Lammas also has great significance in the solar cycle that makes up
the modern pagar year, the Wheel. If the year is visualized a
Wheel, then the eight holidays, or Sabbats, make up the spokes.
Mythically, the God is born on Yule, is a young boy at Imbolc, and
a teen during Oestara. Beltane marks the God's emergence into
manhood, and Litha is the time of his climactic power. When Lammas
arrives the people are bringing in the first harvest of the summer.
As the God watches over the land and sees the crops being brought
in, he faces his mortality. Mabon will see him readying for his
death, and at Samhain he will leave this world, only to be reborn
again on Yule. Thus is the cycle of the Wheel.
At the time of planting, in the spring, the God is coming into
existence as a physical being. As the crops grow and mature, the
God mirrors this developement. Litha marks the high point of the
sun's power. As the God wanes in power, his strength is exchanged
into the bounty of the fields. The harvest of the crops allows the
people to take the God's strength, his sacrifice, and use it to
power their own growth and lives.
The harvest has great power, as it is the culmination of the hopes
and desires of the past season. This is the time of anticipation
and planning. All too soon winter will be here. This preparation
for the dark seasons to come takes many forms. The people begin to
put away seeds for the planting that is to occur next year. They
put away dreams and desires in the hopes that these, too, will
flourish and grow, like the crops in the fields. They bask in the
waning strength of the sun, taking in his strength to sustain them
in the trials to come.
Modern pagans celebrate Lammas as anticipation: of the reaping of
our efforts, of the end of the year, and of the year to come. With
all of the fears, hopes, and dreams of what is to come, we see all
sorts of possibilities. We work towards our goals, and the harvest
is a culmination of our efforts during the past year. During the
holiday we allow ourselves to voice our fears and ask that they be
taken away from us. Once free of our fears we are able to look
objectively at the harvest and see the rewards of our efforts. The
harvest not only feeds us both literally and figuratively, through
the satisfaction of seeing our work come to fruit, but it also
provides us with the seeds for the coming year. These seeds, seeds
of thoughts, ideas, and plans, are given to us to contemplate upon
during the dark winter, so that come spring, we are ready to plant
those seeds deep within ourselves and the Mother Earth, to prosper
and grow and be harvested in the fall. This continuous cycle is
just a part of the spiraling dance of nature.
- Sef Uther MacEoghainn, 1997