FROM LAMMAS TO AUTUMN EQUINOX
THE EARTH SCHOOL JOURNAL
A journey through the medicine wheel
SUMMER II
Serap Kara · From Summer Solstice to Lammas · Reporting to Pachamama
Pachamama, since the summer solstice we have been busy watering our dreams and balancing the intensity of summer and heat. We intentionally created sacred time and sacred space to be in nature, touch the earth, sing with the plants, collect the morning dew, seek out the cooling forest and eat wild strawberries. We danced with the wind, welcomed the rain, and bowed to the mountains. We opened to replenish our inner resources with cosmic power and light.
© Grit Siwonia
We remember both the sensitive child within that wants to be nurtured and the protective mother who cares for her child properly. During summer, the goddesses have invited us to become both child and mother and embody pure light and nourishing energy. As the sun's power increases, we appreciate the cooling water and shade physically and symbolically, call upon the clear and cooling powers of winter within us to balance excessive heat and overstimulation around us.
Pachamama, this was a time of balancing fire with water. Now we stand in the eye of Lammas, the moment of the first harvest. Your moon is transforming into a sickle with which we will cut the corn to feed us in winter. I close my eyes and feel the weight of the sickle in my hand and try to decide which plant is ripe and full to be harvested. And there it is, a blues, a song from afar, bringing a sense of sadness and finality and with it deep gratitude for the opportunity of choice.
Pachamama, we ask for your presence, for your gift of Ceremony, to harvest freedom, love, dignity, and strength for the next cycle of creation for us personally and our global family.
~ did you know...
For the Anglo-Saxons, Lammas was also called Loaf-Mass, the celebration of the first loaf of bread. It was the custom for the mistress of the house to bake a loaf of bread from the grains of the first sheaf plucked by hand. Her honorary title was hlofdige, the bread kneader, from which the word Lady eventually developed. Her husband was the hlofward, the loaf-keeper, from which the word Lord emerged.
source: Wolf Dieter Storl
Lena Brandt · The Celebration of Lughnasad · Celebrations & Rituals
Around the beginning of August, in the Northern Hemisphere, we celebrate the pagan Wheel of the Year festival Lughnasadh (whereas in the Southern Hemisphere, people celebrate the festival of Imbolc). Lughnasadh can be translated with “commemoration of Lugh“ and has the poetic meaning “wedding of light” in German. Another name used for Lughnasadh is “Lammas”, from the Anglo-Saxon or Old-English “hlaef-mass” (loaf mass, mass where the first loaf of bread is consecrated).
Lughnasadh takes place on August 1, a date commonly agreed upon. Originally, as a lunar festival, the day of celebration has no fixed date but moves according to the 8th full moon after Yule, when the Sun is in 15 degree Leo.
In German tradition, the celebration is also called the 'reaper's festival' ('Schnitterinnenfest'), indicating the time when the grain must be cut. Traditionally, the reapers take their sickles and cut healing plants and herbs. These healing herbs are blessed with divine support and are then added to the medicine cabinet where they are supposed to protect the family until the next year.
Lughnasadh is the festival of Lugh, the great Celtic sun king and god of light, and a celebration of the first grain harvest - a time for gathering and giving thanks for the abundance all around us.
The fields are full and fertile. Crops are abundant, apples are plump in the trees, gardens are overflowing with summer bounty, and the late summer harvest is ripe for picking. In nearly every ancient culture, this was - and, around the world, still is to this day - a time of celebration of the agricultural significance of the season.
The power of abundant growth, the nourishing harvest, and Mother Earth with all her bountiful gifts were honoured. Prayers were made for the protection of the harvest, and for a blessed harvest season that now began.
Lughnasadh is a time for reaping what we have sown throughout the past few months. We are invited to celebrate what has become ripe and ready, what is at the pinnacle of its potency, and to call in abundance to sustain us into the future. Cause while the natural world is thriving all around us, there is already this underlying knowledge that the bounty and energy of the sun is now beginning to wane. The seasons are slowly shifting. Active growth is slowing down and the darker days of winter and reflection are beckoning. We may consciously take in the warming rays of the sun and store their power for the times coming.
The celebration of Lughnasadh and the beginning of harvesting season is once more a wonderful occasion to get back in tune with the rhythm of Mother Nature and our own inherent rhythm. You may ask yourself: What kind of magic can be activated when we re-establish a living connection with the earth's cycles? What can Cacao teach us about the earth's natural rhythm? And how can we give thanks for the abundance we are given by Mother Nature?
You are invited to reflect on when and where you experience this abundance in your life and how you celebrate and share that abundance with others. Make offerings to your beloveds, your community, to Cacao, and your spiritual allies. May you remember to thank the Earth for her bounty and her gifts.
Simone Meentzen · Summer Queen Mullein · Plant Diary
Rooted deep in the earth, the queen towers high up to the sky. She stands tall and majestic. She doesn't mind noise and dirt, thrives splendidly in barren places, on railway embankments, on sandy hills, along roadsides.
For people, it has been a symbol of indomitable strength, courage, perseverance, and strength of soul. She is an ancient symbol of the Great Goddess.
A biennial plant, it first develops its leaf rosette close to the ground, which then looks like a wonderful mandala in autumn. In the second year, a high flower stem grows from its center. The end of the stem shines up like a candle with tiny, silky, yellow blossoms.
The leaves of mullein are woolly and soft, the thick felt-like coat protects against drying out. In the past leaves were used in a variety of ways, dried as a herb, as an additive for herbal tobacco, as tinder to light a fire, as a wick for kerosene lamps ... in ancient times the entire dried plant was also used as a torch, when the tip was dipped in tar and ignited.
Mullein is said to have magical power as a weather protection plant - thanks to its connection to the sky, it can protect the home and yard from lightning strikes. As a healing plant, mullein is the focal point in the herbal bundle, a tradition that goes back to pre-Christian times. Lugnasadh or Lammas was a Celtic harvest festival where people celebrated the “wedding of light”. · Read more
Medicine recipe ~ mullein tincture
The mullein with its honey-scented blossoms is a valued remedy for coughs and chronic hoarseness.
Collect fresh mullein blossoms, about a handful before midday. Put them in a sealable glass jar or small glass bottle and fill it up with brandy until all the flowers are covered. Let this tincture ripen in sunlight for 4 weeks, shake it briefly every day. The flowers can be filtered off after 4 weeks or they can remain in the glass.
Store the tincture in a dry and dark place. This tincture can be taken in case of hoarseness or cough, 9 drops 3 times a day before a meal.
© Simone Meentzen
© Alexandra Neubauer
Alexandra Neubauer · Vom Wesen der Gesänge und Träume · Regenbogenmedizin
Der Südwesten im Regenbogenmedizinrad markiert den Platz der Medizingesänge und des Träumens. Lieder sind es, die etwas in uns zum Schwingen bringen, heilsam wirken und zu Herzöffnern werden. Sie lehren uns auch, den sehnsüchtigen Ruf unserer Seele wieder wahrzunehmen. In uns existiert eine Landkarte unseres Lebens, auf der wir unsere ureigenen Pfade beschreiten. Träume und Visionen sind auf dieser Reise die direkten Botschafter unserer Seele, die uns leiten.
Nicht nur im Schamanismus ist die Spur zu finden, dass die Schöpfung ein Gesang ist, ein Klang, eine Schwingung. Die Bibel hält in ihrer Schöpfungsgeschichte fest: „Im Anfang war das Wort und das Wort war bei Gott und das Wort war Gott. … Alles ist durch das Wort geworden und ohne das Wort wurde nichts, was geworden ist.“ (Joh. 1.1).
Die Darstellung „Alles ist Klang“ findet sich als weiteres Beispiel in der Schöpfungsmythologie der Veden, den heiligen Schriften der Hindus. So kann der Urklang OM interpretiert werden als alles was je war, was ist und sein wird.
Um ein Medizinlied zu finden ist die Natur ein wunderbarer Ort. Empfehlenswert ist, in der ersten Morgendämmerung noch lange bevor die Sonne aufgeht aufzubrechen. In dieser so klaren, stillen Phase des Tages kann man sich mit der Bitte aufmachen, sein Medizinlied zu finden und folgt einfach intuitiv den Zeichen, die sich zeigen. Das kann der Ast eines Baumes sein, der an einer Weggabelung in eine Richtung weist oder der Ruf eines Vogels, dem man folgt. Man geht so weit, bis man an einen Ort kommt, der dazu einlädt zu bleiben, um dann aufmerksam zu lauschen.
In der Natur fühlen wir uns auf natürliche Weise frei und wohl, denn sie bewertet uns nicht. So fällt es uns leicht, uns vertrauensvoll dem Geschehen hinzugeben.
Unser Bewusstsein darf sich weiten, unsere Sinne werden geschärft, unsere Sensoren öffnen sich selbst für das Übersinnliche. In diesem Beobachtungsraum auftauchende Geräusche wie die Flügelschläge eines vorbeiziehenden Vogels, das Gurgeln von fließendem Wasser oder das Rascheln von Blättern werden zu den Komponisten des Medizinlieds.
Die im Spiegel der Umgebung auftauchenden Klänge laden ein zu einem offenen und neugierigen Spielen mit ihnen. Vielleicht entsteht ein Summen, ein Nachahmen der Klänge oder ein Tönen von Silben, eventuell zeigt sich auch ein Text – alles ist genau passend.
Hat man sein Medizinlied gefunden und durch wiederholtes Singen gut eingeprägt oder aufgezeichnet, kann man dem Ort und den Spirits, die beim Auffinden des Lieds geholfen haben, ein Dankeschön in Form einer Kräutergabe hinterlassen. Mit dem Finden des persönlichen Medizinlieds beginnt nun die Reise erst so richtig, denn das Erforschen der ihm innewohnenden Kraft geschieht im Alltag, wo man es für sich z.B. in herausfordernden Lebensphasen singen kann, um zu erfahren, dass man immer eine heilsame eigene Medizin bei sich hat. · Weiterlesen
TIME KEEPING
Rhythm & Calendar
1 august
lammas
pagan calendar
8 august
new moon in leo
astrological calendar
8 august
lions gate
planetary calendar
9 august
international day of the world's indigenous peoples
global event since 1994
12 august
perseids meteor shower
astrological calendar
22 august
full moon in aquarius
astrological calendar
7 september
international day of clean air for blue skies
global event since 2019
7 september
new moon in virgo
astrological calendar
