Blessed Lammas & the Magic of August

A blessed Lammas and welcome to August! This month, and this particular celebration is all about the abundance of the second harvest. In June, we celebrated the longest day of the year and the first harvest. Now, we start to really reap what we've sown. Farmer's markets are in full swing and flush with fruits and vegetables of all types on display. Our seas, too, are teeming with life now, providing nourishment along the food chain.

August also brings us the dog-days of summer. It's still warm (or hot depending on where you live), everything around us is green and fruiting, but there's a tang of autumn in the air now. The sun rises later, sets earlier, and brings us long golden rays in the late afternoon hours.

Whenever I visit my own sacred space, I feel this slow but sure shift in season stirring beneath my feet. The water is a deeper blue or green now, having transitioned from wild, winter greys and waves to feisty brights and storms in spring, to turquoise glass and ripples, dappled with sails and overflown by sea birds of all types in June and July. But it, too, knows of the dog-days of summer. Gone are the juvenile animals from their safe harbours and tide pools. In the coastal forests, the beach rose blooms have turned to ripening rose hips and the wild meadow flowers from bright white, pink, and blue, to tall goldenrod and black eyed susans.

It's fitting that August be so green and gold, both colours of abundance. When we celebrate the abundance of the second harvest today, we're not just giving thanks for tables laden with food either. We're now reaping our own personal harvests - the seeds we planted at the beginning of the year are fully bearing fruit now, or they may have died on the vine from lack of care, or perhaps even an intentional neglect as we realise that that particular crop wasn't worth our time or resources to tend.

There are also many ways you can welcome August, and Lammas/Lughnasadh today. Try finding a place in nature, whether on a beach or under a tree in the forest (or your yard or a nearby park) and tease out what your personal harvest looks like in your journal. You might attend a harvest festival or a Lammas ritual circle in which Lammas Bread will be baked or served, and welcome abundance that way. Crafting is also a wonderful thing to do on this day, making things from straw or corn husks, or perhaps some other craft done with friends. Tonight, we're crafting a Lammas sea witch ball in honour of this sabbat, and August here at the shop.

However you spend this day, welcome to August. Be sure that you make the time to connect or reconnect to nature in whatever way feels best for you, slow down, revel in the abundance you've created, and rest in the long, golden rays of the August sun.