This solitary Lammas ritual celebrates the waning of the light and a return to the longer nights of the coming autumn season.
Bask in the warmth, beauty, and abundance of this festival with this simple, easy ritual of solitude and joy.
Bonus? It’s a great way to make use of your leftover Lammas bread.
What is Lammas?
Lammas (also known as Lughnasadh) is a harvest festival celebrated on August 1. This holiday is celebrated in a variety of cultures in the Northern hemisphere.
Many modern witches consider Lammas a staple holiday to mark the transition from high summer to the harvest season.
There are lots of ways to celebrate Lammas.
The following is a solitary lammas ritual intended for solo practitioners but may be adapted to suit covens or partners.
Things You Will Need
-Mead, beer, or spring water
-Matches or lighter and a charcoal disk
–Cauldron or fire-safe bowl
-Dried roses
-A piece of very dry bread (preferably hand baked for Lammas)!
Giving thanks.
This holiday is all about rejoicing in abundance—abundance of the garden, abundance of light, and abundance of spirit.
Begin your ritual by grabbing a basket with your ritual supplies and finding a sunny spot outside.
Take a moment to close your eyes and feel the warmth of the sun on your face. Imagine it pouring through you and coursing through your veins like liquid gold. Hold this visualization until you feel lit from within.
Ponder all the things you feel grateful for right now.
Libation.
Pour a small amount (maybe an ounce or two) of mead, beer, or spring water into your chalice.
Allow your hands to hover a few inches over the chalice with your palms facing downwards. Feel that liquid golden light pouring out of your hands and into the chalice. Don’t imagine you’re being “drained” of this light, but rather that this light is infinite, abundant and moving through you from a sacred, eternal source.
Pour the mead, water or beer onto the bare ground, watching it soak into the earth.
Know that this small sacrifice will be returned to you in later seasons. Recognize this as a symbol of returning what has been given to us, and receiving back from the universe what we have offered to it. Staying connected to, and flowing with this continuous cycle keeps us balanced and in tune with the rhythms of life.
Offering
Light the charcoal disk with matches or a lighter, taking care not to burn yourself.
Place it in the cauldron, and blow gently on it until you have a good burn going.
Drop a few dried rose petals on the charcoal disk. As the smoke rises, take a moment to consider what you have offered the world and the people in your life over the last year.
Are you satisfied with how you spent your last year’s share of abundance, or do you wish you’d done more with it? Either answer is fine. It is only important to contemplate the question honestly.
Either way, allow the smoke to carry your hopes for the next cycle of retreat, hibernation, emergence and finally, a return anew to abundance.
What do you hope to do with each of these coming seasons?
Lammas Bread
Finally, while the disk still burns, place a tiny piece of bread on it.
Allow it to smoke a little as an offering for the guidance and wisdom to shepherd your gifts with noble intentions.
Don’t worry if the bread doesn’t burn down completely. Simply carry the cauldron home, wait for the ashes to cool completely, and then scatter them around your house as a home blessing.
Happy Lammas!
