Ways to Celebrate Lammas
Lammas was originally a celebration of the harvest and bread, and both things offer a lot to build a ritual around. Many Witches I know make corn dollies for Lammas. Corn dollies are generally seen as being representative of the Goddess in her role as the Earth Mother. One of my favorite Lammas rituals ever wasn’t really a ritual, it was just a bunch of us in the middle of a friend’s family cornfield making corn dollies as the sun set.
In my personal practice today, I often honor the harvest that’s going on around me instead of grain harvest hundreds and thousands of miles away. In California, early August is the end of blueberry season and the start of Apple season, and I like to decorate my altars with both fruits (and eat them of course). It’s also a time for fresh green beans and tomatoes, and sometimes the first ears of sweet corn (though that gets better later in the season). Nearly every area has something that’s harvested in early August, and no matter what it is, it’s worth celebrating.
Metaphorical harvests are another idea to build rituals around. Perhaps the work put in at Ostara and Beltane is ready to be reaped and gathered up at Lammas. Dried wheat (available at most craft stores) can be used to symbolize the things we bring into our lives at this time of year. With school starting for many people in August these days, accompanying back to school sales, transitional rituals about this change are appropriate for many families and covens with college-age members.
One of my coven members often bakes bread during ritual in her Lammas rites. Bannock bread is extremely easy to produce, and baking it during ritual makes for a memorable rite. If you are celebrating outdoors, it’s easy to do this with a charcoal grill or small fire. It’s a little trickier if you are celebrating with a group indoors, unless you have access to a fireplace or can gather round the oven for ritual.
Lammas is the first of three holidays often associated with the idea of the sacrificial god. There are many deities that can be used for such rituals. Adonis, Tammuz, and Osiris immediately come to mind, but the most popular is not a traditional deity, but John Barleycorn, a figure from English folk songs. The story of John Barleycorn is the story of the barley getting cut down and turned into beer, though the musical versions around are far more violent that the reality of the process.
Beyond the sacrificial god, solar deities are popular at Lammas. Though the sun has begun to wane. August is often the hottest month of the year. Sun deities aren’t limited to male deities either, Goddesses such as Hathor (Egyptian), Bast (Egyptian), Saule (Lithuanian), Olwen (Welsh), and Sunna (Norse) are welcome reminders that our ancient ancestors saw the sun in a variety of different ways.
Because Lammas is not about the grain harvest in locations, it’s a great opportunity to stretch one’s ritual wings. I’ve always felt that just about any sort of ritual is acceptable at Lammas because people have generally low expectations for this sabbat. I had a friend whose public Lammas ritual was built around The Wizard of Oz, complete with a tin man, scarecrow, wizard, and cowardly lion. Everyone in the ritual got to be “Dorothy” experiencing “Oz” for the first time.
Unconventional Lammas rituals extend beyond book and movie adaptations. The ritual itself could be held in an unconventional spot. How about rituals in a pool on a hot August day? Or a coven trip to the local county fair? Rituals and Witch activities don’t necessarily have to be done inside the standard magick circle. With some of the public groups I’vebeen a part of over the years, I’ve often used Lammas as an opportunity to expose people to Druid style rites, along with those of other Pagan groups outside the world of Witchcraft.
The sabbats are a gift, not a requirement. Celebrate in a way that works best for you and those you share your ritual space with. Lammas may be sort of an outlier, but it’s our outlier and still has a lot to offer.
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