Lammas for the Busy Witch
Celebrating the sabbats is easy, even if you’re a busy witch! Today we’re talking about Lammas aka Lughnasadh. This is the first harvest festival of the pagan Wheel of the Year.
Lammas isn’t a major sabbat for most witches. It’s easy to skip it since it’s the first of three harvest festivals, and we get it. It doesn’t stand out like Samhain, Yule, and Imbolc tend to. But, if your goal is to live just a little more magickally, celebrating all the sabbats will help you boost your magickal energy. Here are some busy witch tips to celebrate it!
Creating Your Altar for Lammas
Colors:
- Golds
- Tans
- Browns
- Beiges
Think fall for your altar colors. We’re not quite to the pretty autumn colors yet, so think wheat, corn, and sunflowers for the colors to select for your altar cloths, imagery, and gemstones.
Gemstones:
- Jasper
- Moonstone
- Citrine
- Carnelian
- Moss Agate
- Peridot
Busy Witch Hack: Use fake flowers! Not only are they economically sound, but if you live in a place like Morgan does – in Arizona – there’s no sunflowers around at the height of summer. So, she hits up her local crafts store to grab fake flowers for her altar! They’re always beautiful and you can reuse them, making it far more economical. Plus, you never have to water them.
The intention is what counts. If you have fake sunflowers on your altar, it’s the energy and intention of the sunflower that matters.
Gratitude Bowl for Lammas
Here's a beautiful way to create a Lammas altar. Place a bowl or glass at the center of your altar and little pieces of paper beside it. Lammas is about looking at how far you’ve come this year and it’s a great time for gratitude magick.
Write down the things you’ve accomplished this year and things you’re grateful for and place them in the bowl. Then, on Lammas, you can read them, or you can leave them until Mabon and read them then! In fact, you may also want to continue to add to this bowl and read them all at Samhain.
Food for Lammas
Think of foods that are being harvested this time of year. Here are some ideas:
- Blackberries
- Wheat
- Corn
- Grains
You can include apples too, but they have more of a Mabon energy, like squashes, gourds, and pumpkins.
A lot of witches will bake bread from scratch for Lammas, which is beautiful and amazing! But that doesn’t work for all of us. Instead, buy freshly baked bread at your grocery store’s bakery. Grab some sort of herb bread, like rosemary or a whole grain bread, and call it good.
Busy Witch Hack: Buy freshly-bake cornbread since it satisfies both the corn and bread aspect of the sabbat.
No guilt! No shame! You’re too busy to be kneading bread for 27 hours.
Where the magick comes into play is this: as you’re preparing the bread, slicing it, or warming it in the oven, infuse that food with your intentions. Infuse it with gratitude for your accomplishments this year, for the people, things, and places in your life. Infuse it with positive energy for everything you have in your life that makes it beautiful. This is what makes it magickal.
Bonus: Beer and ale are made from grain! (wink, wink) Fruit and herb teas are a great substitute for alcoholic drinks if you don’t consume alcohol.
Make a Lammas “Sacrifice”
The easiest way to offer a sacrifice at Lammas is to make a food offering. Using the bread described above, “sacrifice” a bit to your deities in gratitude. You can also make a corn dolly.
Another sacrifice you can make is an internal one. This would be something you’re ok with releasing but also maybe a little reluctant to sacrifice from your life. As an example, if you’ve been a smoker for 20 years, smoking brings you comfort, but you know that giving up smoking is for your greater good. You also know it’s going to hurt like a b****. Lammas is a great time to sacrifice the comfort and security of smoking for your greater good. It’s like the familiar prompt to release the things that don’t serve you to make room for things that do!
So, what’s been holding you back? Sacrifice that over to the universe or your deity and move on.
Happy Lammas, witches!