Lammas

In the wheel of the sacred year, I think of the solar holidays, the equinoxes and solstices, as providing a basic framework.  They are about the relationship between dark and light, day and night.  The Cross Quarter Days are determined by the dance of the sun and moon.  When the sun rises on the horizon at a place marked by the moon, we celebrate Beltane, Samhain, Imbolc and Lammas.  Samhain represents the freeing of spirit from matter, which is why it has come down to us with ghosts and goblins and skeletons as traditional garb.  Beltane, when  we wind the maypole, is a celebration of how the bare trees put on foliage, how the bare ground produces plants, and how Spirit creates a body for itself.  So my understanding of the Cross-Quarter Days is they celebrate the dance of Spirit and Matter.  It wasn’t until someone with a birthday at the beginning of August, asked me about that holiday, that I gave it some more thought.  Lammas means Loaf Mass, a celebration of the first fruits of the agricultural year.  It’s an obvious Christianization of the older Celtic Holiday Lughnasad, a celebration of the god Lugh.  I had understood him as a god of fire and the arts & crafts, but it turns out that the solar designation comes from the Victorians.  (See Wikipedia for more details) The beginning of August is in Leo, Fixed Fire.  From these hints I thought “What happens to Spirit and Matter at this time?”   Analogous to the firing of pottery and the baking of bread I saw that matter that was malleable is now fixed in form.  In May, Spirit incarnates in matter, the artist gathers his materials.  In August, matter becomes fixed, the work of art takes its final form.  So, in November, Spirit has to break the form to be set free for something new.  So if there is a change in Matter in August, what happens at Imbolc, the opposite holiday in February?  The name comes from the Celtic word for ewe’s milk.  It’s also called the “Quickening of the Year”.  From these hints I began to understand that Imbolc at the beginning of February celebrates a change in the state of Spirit, a new inspiration.  So I saw in the Cross Quarter Days the cycle of creativity.  A new vision is born at Imbolc, gathers material in Beltane, the form is fixed at Lughnasad, and broken at Samhain.
Today at Neskaya we will celebrate Lammas with Fire Dances and Harvest Dances.  One I especially like to do is Issos, an ancient Greek dance, in which our feet draw the pattern of the head of wheat.  I also like to do the Cantique de Jean Racine which has gestures symbolic of the gathering of energy, formation of seed, growth into bud and blossom, and the blossom opening fully and letting the petals fall.

For more information on the sacred year