Lammas
Once again we are here, at the turning point of the wheel of the year.
This devotion, this Sabbat is Lammas.
Lammas arrives quietly. It creeps up on us after the Summer Solstice. Here in this place you can feel it before you can name it. The sun still burns warm on our skin, yet something has softened. The grass is dry beneath our feet. The evenings are arriving just that touch earlier. The cicadas still sing their song, but not with the same intensity, there’s a slowing down. The land itself seems to have slowed, going within. And I feel we recognise this, we feel the shift in our bones before our mind catches up. The need for a longer rest, a deeper breath, a quiet sense of wanting to go within, just that little bit more.. We’re not in the stillness of winter, but it is quiet here. There’s a knowing. A subtle shift in the air. A moment where the land seems to exhale and say, now we gather.
On the Wheel of the Year, Lammas sits between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox. The light is still strong, but it is no longer growing. The days are subtly shortening. The land is offering, but it is also preparing to release.
This is a moment of balance between effort and surrender. This is often where we struggle most, we are taught to keep pushing, to keep striving, to believe that rest or pause means failure or if we give into our needs to rest, to take a moment, that we are less deserving. Lammas disrupts that belief in the most beautiful way, it reminds us that there is wisdom is knowing when to stop forcing growth, when to pause. That surrender is not giving up, it’s recognising the completion of the time. The tending to has completed. Now, we allow the results to reveal themselves without interruption.
It is not the time to plant at Lammas. You do not initiate something new. You witness. You receive. You honour what already is. To witness is an act of devotion. It asks us to stay present without reshaping the story. To look at what stands before us without immediately deciding whether it is good or bad, successful or lacking. Witnessing requires maturity. It requires silence. It asks us to sit with truth as it is not as we wish it to be. This in itself, is the most sacred work.
Spiritually, Lammas reminds us that nothing stays in bloom forever and that this is not something to fear. It is something to respect.
Here in Victoria, Lammas falls on Sunday, this Sunday. The 1st of February marks the first harvest on the Wheel of the Year in the Southern Hemisphere. It is the threshold between growth and gathering. Between effort and offering. Between what has been tended and what is now ready to be received.
If we think of the past few months, what has been growing within you? What has been gathered? What effort have you given? What offerings have you put out in the world? What have you been tending? What are you ready to receive?
In traditional times, this was the way of life, gathering and growing of food and supplies needed for the winter coming months. Now we think of it more in a way of energetics or our life’s growth, our relationships.
Lammas is not a loud sabbat, it does not demand celebration.
What Lammas asks for is presence. It asks us to look honestly at what we have grown. In all aspects of life. Where has there been growth?
Traditionally known as Lammas or Lughnasadh, this festival honoured the first cutting of grain. The wheat. The barley. The sustenance that would carry communities through the colder months ahead. This is what I was speaking to earlier. The devotion of Lammas has changed over the centuries.
The word Lammas comes from “Loaf Mass” meaning a blessing of the first bread baked from the new harvest. This was not symbolic. This was survival. This was life, secured through a relationship with the land. Now, we use it as symbolism, we may place bread on our altars to honour our ancestors who once honoured the cuttings of the first grain, who once devoted a day to this is gratitude of the sustenance they received for survival.
These rhythms live in our bones whether we remember them or not. Our ancestors relied on this moment as survival. Their bodies moved with the land because they had no choice. Somewhere within us, this knowing remains. A cellular memory of gathering, of gratitude, of preparing for what comes next. When we honour Lammas now, we are not recreating the past, we are remembering it.
Lughnasadh was also a festival of skill, labour and devotion. Named for the Celtic god Lugh, the master of crafts, it honoured the work it took to grow something to fruition. The calloused hands. The patience. The tending through drought, storm and uncertainty. Labour was once understood as sacred because it was relational. You worked with the land, not against it. Skill was devotion. Effort was offered with humility, knowing the outcome was never guaranteed. Lammas honours the dignity of showing up, regardless of how the harvest turns out.
It was a different time then. Everything was slow. It was intentional. Nothing was rushed. Nothing was taken without reverence. To harvest was to acknowledge sacrifice because to cut grain is to end a life so another may continue.
Lammas teaches us this truth gently, but firmly that every harvest carries both gratitude and grief. There is grief for what did not come to fruition and the energy that we poured into those wants without return. For the hopes that required us to grow in ways we didn’t expect. There is grief for the versions of ourselves that were needed to survive the growing season, but are no longer required. Lammas allows us to hold this grief alongside gratitude, without asking us to choose one over the other.
Today, we may not be harvesting grain with our hands but we are still harvesting. We harvest courage. Boundaries. Those hard conversations. Building self trust quietly over time. We harvest endings that once felt like failures but now feel like truth. Those endings we didn’t know we needed. Some harvests do not look abundant from the outside, yet they have cost us deeply. Lammas reminds us that not all harvests are meant to be displayed. Some are meant only to be acknowledged.
We harvest seasons of growth. We harvest lessons. We harvest choices we made months ago without knowing where they would lead.
Lammas asks:
What has come to fruition in your life?
What has taken more energy than you expected?
What is ready to be gathered and what is already beginning to fade?
This is not the final harvest. That comes later, at the Autumn Equinox. Lammas is the first noticing. The first awareness. The honest check in we have with ourselves. The moment where you pause and say:
This worked. This didn’t. This changed me.
This is a time to be aware, to acknowledge. To see the truth. This kind of honesty is not harsh, it is freeing. It loosens the grip of stories we’ve outgrown and allows us to meet ourselves as we are now, not as we were when the season began.
Honouring Lammas does not require elaborate ritual. It requires devotion. Devotion now often looks quieter. It lives in attention. In relationship. In choosing to notice rather than perform. Lammas does not ask us to do more. It asks us to be in conscious relationship with what already exists.
Here are some ways to honour this time both traditionally and intuitively:
1. Bread as Prayer
Bake bread or prepare food with intention. As you do, reflect on what has nourished you this season. Bless it before you eat. Thank the unseen hands, human and more than-human, that made it possible.
2. A Harvest Reflection
Write or sit with these questions:
What has grown because I showed up consistently?
What am I proud of, even if no one else sees it?
What am I ready to stop carrying forward?
Let the answers be messy. Let them be honest. Dig deep here. Pull back layers.
3. Offer Back to the Land
Return something to the earth whether it’s water, flowers, grain, prayer. Acknowledge that what you have received did not come from you alone.
4. Honour the Body
Lammas is deeply physical. Stretch. Rest. Eat well. Touch the ground. The body is part of the harvest too.
Speaking of the body, Lammas carries womb wisdom. It understands creation. It understands timing. It understands that not every cycle ends in life but every cycle ends in knowing.
The womb, literal or energetic, is a place of both growth and release. Lammas mirrors this perfectly. The womb knows when something is complete, even when the mind resists letting go. It understands that a cycle ending without life still brings wisdom. That release is part of creation. Lammas teaches us to trust this knowing, to honour what has fulfilled its purpose, and to let it return to the dark where new life eventually begins. It teaches us that something can be successful and still be complete. It seems fitting that I sit here and write to this knowledge, this wisdom while I myself experience the magickal workings of my womb, the cyclical shedding and harvest of my next cycle.
It reminds me that we do not cling to the harvest. We bless it and let it feed what comes next. We sit in gratitude for what we have, and give blessings to what is coming.
If we wanted to sit in ritual, in devotion, I feel Lammas invites us to bow.
To the land. The nature spirits. The nature folk.
To the effort it took to get here. The blood, sweat, tears it took to become us in this moment.
To the parts of ourselves that showed up even when it was hard. Giving gratitude and thanks for our own determination, our drive.
Sitting in this reminds us that abundance is not endless and that this makes it sacred.
As the Wheel turns, I hope you gather what is yours with gratitude. Take time on Sunday to reflect.
May you see what is ready, release what has served its time. Allow the shedding in the physical and energetic. Allow room for the next growth.
May you trust the quiet wisdom of cycles in the land and within yourself. When we honour these cycles, we see the resonance, the similarity of it within ourselves. We give ourselves time to shed, to slow, or to push forward and claim what we’re ready for.
Lammas is here. The harvest has begun. What do you have in the palms of your hands?
If you feel called, take a moment outside. Hold something that represents your effort this season. Touch the earth. Touch your body. Let yourself acknowledge what has been grown, without rushing to decide what comes next.
Already my mind is spinning with my harvest, the gratitude in my heart swelling. But for now, I put this to rest, knowing on Sunday when I sit in ceremony, in devotion that it will all be shown. I ask you, can you spare a moment for this? A moment to honour what once was a devotion in the way of life.