Sprouting the Grain of Life at Lughnasad

LUGHNASAD the "Loaf Mass"

The Celts celebrate this festival from sunset August 1 until sunset August 2 and call it Lughnasad after the God Lugh. It is the wake of Lugh, the Sun-King, whose light begins to dwindle after the summer solstice. The Saxon holiday of Lammas celebrates the harvesting of the grain. The first sheaf of wheat is ceremonially reaped, threshed, milled and baked into a loaf. The grain dies so that the people might live. Eating this bread, the bread of the Gods, gives us life. If all this sounds vaguely Christian, it is. In the sacrament of Communion, bread is blessed, becomes the body of God and is eaten to nourish the faithful. This Christian Mystery echoes the pagan Mystery of the Grain God.

Grain has always been associated with Gods who are killed and dismembered and then resurrected from the Underworld by the Goddess-Gods like Tammuz, Osiris and Adonis. The story of Demeter and Persephone is a story about the cycle of death and rebirth associated with grain. Demeter, the fertility Goddess, will not allow anything to grow until she finds her daughter who has been carried off to the Underworld. The Eleusinian Mysteries, celebrated around the Autumn Equinox, culminated in the revelation of a single ear of corn, a symbol to the initiate of the cyclical nature of life, for the corn is both seed and fruit, promise and fulfillment.

You can adapt the themes of Lughnasad and Lammas to create your own ceremony for honoring the passing of the light and the reaping of the grain.


Honoring the Grain God & Goddess

Bake a loaf of bread on Lammas. If you've never made bread before, this is a good time to start. Honor the source of the flour as you work with it: remember it was once a plant growing on the mother Earth. If you have a garden, add something you've harvested--herbs or onion or corn--to your bread. If you don't feel up to making wheat bread, make corn bread. Or gingerbread people. Or popcorn. What's most important is intention. All that is necessary to enter sacred time is an awareness of the meaning of your actions.

Shape the dough in the figure of a man or a woman and give your grain-person a name. If he's a man, you could call him Lugh, the Sun-King, or John Barleycorn, or the Pillsbury Dough Boy, or Adonis or Osiris or Tammuz. Pauline Campanelli in The Wheel of the Year suggests names for female figures: She of the Corn, She of the Threshing Floor, She of the Seed, She of the Great Loaf (these come from the Cyclades where they are the names of fertility figures), Freya (the Anglo-Saxon and Norse fertility Goddess who is, also called the Lady and the Giver of the Loaf), the Bride (Celtic) and Ziva or Siva (the Grain Goddess of, the Ukraine, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia).


Let the tuath use this day to dress a well in thanksgiving, to make offerings to the
Mother Goddess river of their region and to bathe themselves and
their farm animals in "wild water", a stream or a river, a lake, a
pond, or the sea. In every case shall offerings and prayers of
thanksgiving be made to sacred water.

Then shall the people make offerings to standing stones, dressing
them with wreaths of new grain and flowers and placing first fruits
at their feet. And let them cut a sheaf of new grain and set it
alight in the ancient manner, burning off the husks with fire. Then
let them grind the grain in a quern or a mill and bake a bannock
from it saying;

On the feast say of Lugh and of Danu,
I cut a handful of the new corn,
I purified it by fire,
And rubbed it sharply from the husk with my own hand.
I ground it in a quern,
I baked it on a fan of sheepskin,
I toasted it to a fire of rowan,
And I shared it round my people.
I went sunwise round my dwelling
In the names of Lugh and Danu
Who have preserved me,
Who are preserving me,
And who will preserve me,
In peace, in flocks
In strength of heart,
In labor, in love,
In wisdom and mercy,
until the day of my death.

Then the people shall carry the bannock three times sunwise round
their dwelling. Then shall they stop before their field or garden
and break the bannock. Each member of the household shall take one
piece of bannock and throw it behind them naming a thing they wish
to appease, whether blight, disease, worry, the fox, the crow, or
any other influence that interferes with their good life.

Likewise shall Lughnasad be a festival of the High Places. After
bathing in sacred water and appeasing the forces of chaos shall the
people visit a mountain top or a hill top, and better it be a
mountaintop or a hilltop where there is also sacred water. And if
there be water there let them honor the water with offerings and
prayers of thanks. And let them also honor the Sun that gives
energy to the crops, the Moon who makes the crops grow with Her
juices, the lightening who purifies the air and the winds
that bring good weather. Likewise the good soil that nourishes all
beings.

Then let them feast and play games, pick berries and make merry
as they please.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/moonraking/folklore/



LUGHNASAD CHANT:

John Barleycorn is cut down dead, it is His time to die,
The Sun that warmed our Summer days no longer is so high.
We praise Him and our Goddess fair, we thank him for the corn
we gather in the harvest now and leave the fields forlorn.

Corn rigs and barley rigs,
Corn rigs are bonny!
I'll not forget that happy night
Among the rigs with Annie!


Burning Man Witch Theme Camp

Event Details: Burning Man is a HUGE anual event. There are different theme camps and we are doing a Witch Theme Camp this year. If we have 150 + people, then we are eligable for a Witch Village. Our camp will be offering incense making and spellcrafting workshops.

There is no money exchange at Burning Man (other than the fee to get in) . Everything is on the barter system.
Check out the Burning Man website...it's awesome.

Anyone interested should contact Lady Morrigan at The Enchanted Realm in Reno, Nevada at 775-322-6666.

Blessed Be and Merry Meet!

Event Location: Red Rock in Gurlach
Event TIME Details: 7 day camp out

Directions: From Reno, I-80 East to the Gurlach exit, go north (a long, long ways) and pass Gurlach, follow all the traffic and signs to the Playa at Red Rock...you can't miss it, there will be about 5, 000 cars on the road!

Websites: http://www.burningman.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BurningManWitchesThemeCamp/
Mailing Address: 715 Redwood Place, Reno, Nevada 89502