A Meditation on Lammas

Turning Seed-ward

The summer garden grounded just before the December solstice and has been mulched, watered, and tended every day since. I have poured the greatest of me in this year as a green flow of love that awakened the botanist’s daughter who, it seems, had been sleeping. Strong green stalks of spinach mingle among bright tomatoes, while the thick white roots of daikon spiral down. Lettuce grows sweet and upstanding, while the squash vines and beans meander, shading the mulch on days when the sun burns or the rain falls in sheets.

I threw away the notion of seedlings from Bunnings, rows, or the ordered ways of my old methods, and instead cast seeds as nature might, letting them choose life for themselves if they so desired. As this small crop of many creeds gains pace, confidence, and its first truly bountiful harvest, it will also sing in Lughnasadh

Lughnasadh, often known by its more common name Lammas, is the halcyon mid-point between the summer solstice and autumn equinox.

Here, everything we have tended begins an important seasonal shift, its upward reach slowing and coming to a stop as it aligns with the closing cycle of FIRE. There is a bright flaring here just before the drawing back of light. The plant world, having bloomed its heart wide for all to admire, now recognises the signature of seedwardness, turning its gaze from the sun.

The solar forces that awoke in the winter solstice have reached their full outward stream. The growing cycle recognises the signs, and so the phase of closing out begins. We sundry tomatoes, barrel the grapes, and churn basil into pesto, while clearing the dark corners of the larder for the root crops soon to come. In kind, we begin to shift from the adventures of far-off horizons to the work of tending the inner one. From the fruits and flowers of our love for others comes the receptivity needed to nourish ourselves in turn. No Bone Mother about it, this is spiritual work.

As the EARTH completes the wave of abundant giving that is summer, it begins to inhale. Slowly at first. Everything we have tended, studied, loved, stirred, mended, and devoted ourselves to is ready to come forward for harvest. The grain that once poured its gold outward now prepares to draw it in, not to sleep or dream just yet, but to awaken and to clarify.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the deep, the seed of us opens one sleepy eye.

The high summer is unapologetically Leoinine - majestic and ruled by the sun, it stands in stark contrast to the inward, downward deeds of days that will shorten toward equinox. At this turning point, we will have our first brush with self-accountability, as a prelude to both the physical and spiritual harvest ahead. And that will require a balanced eye and a sharp scythe.

How well did you tend the garden of your dreams this cycle? Were you steady on the tools of your becoming, or drunk on sake and scrolling through a field of distractions? Lughnasadh arrives dressed in gold to reward you where you turned up — and soberingly, to show you where you didn’t.

The spiritual signature of Lughnasadh is that of late summer and the EARTH element, where seasonally, personally and collectively, we begin preparations for the end of the light. Here, the threshold Goddesses wait at winter’s gate, cleaving the sword through all that was, before raising the lanterns that will shepherd us on into the dark.

In this way, Lammas represents the spiritual sowing of everything in us that will mature by the March Equinox, when we will be called to stand in strength, courage, and inner clarity, and then to allow METAL to strip and empty us.

“As the wheat ripens and is gathered, so too must the human soul prepare to gather spiritual substance — offered not by nature alone, but through inner activity.”
- Steiner

These are days that want us to self-reflect from a place of fullness, as we prepare let the summer go. This is a mature FIRE that holds truth, accountability, and the kind of discernment that knows what to tend — and what to release.

The loaves of Lughnasadh are baked from the first grain of its harvest, carrying the spiritual symbolism of an evolution done in conscious participation with the living world.

The transformation of the EARTH’s substance — her grains — into bread is the most domestic, pure, and potent image of nourishment on all levels. The sun himself has worked the grains into matter, and now, through the baking and breaking of the loaf (preferably with sour cream and jam — just saying), the bread becomes a vessel for the Spirit of the sun and heaven on Earth.

Despite the best attempts of modernity to quell the mystical process beneath things, the act of first loaf remains alchemic, Eucharistic, and revered. Streaming light codes become earthly substance as Spirit enters matter to transform it from the inside out. The first loaf at Lammas is therefore a spiritual fractal of the Last Supper and a meal of offering, evolution, and respect.

What in you has ripened this cycle that you may now offer up in return?

The FIRE of Summer must begin its descent, just as the embers in a hearth must eventually cool. It is natural now for our energy to turn inward, as the phase of digestion begins — not only of what has grown outwardly, but of all that was experienced, tasted, felt and discovered along the way. There is nourishment here, yes, but also ripening and a necessary reflection as preparation for the inevitable descent into the crisp structure of Autumn’s METAL element.

Lughnasadh is, in modern terms, a hidden festival, subtle on the surface, but a critical observance in the greater seasonal rhythm we move within. The outer brightness will begin to deliver its spiritual yield as we shift daily towards the inner garden. Here, our awareness of ourselves and the world we have created refines and matures. There is a critical reset of our goals and priorities as we come to better understand value, worth, and destiny as the elements integrate and the Song of the Spheres turns again.

Yolande x


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