{"id":638,"date":"2010-08-01T15:03:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T15:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=638"},"modified":"2023-08-01T12:50:26","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T16:50:26","slug":"lammas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=638","title":{"rendered":"Lammas"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wheel of the sacred year, I think of the solar holidays, the equinoxes and solstices, as providing a basic framework.\u00a0 They are about the relationship between dark and light, day and night.\u00a0 The Cross Quarter Days are determined by the dance of the sun and moon.\u00a0 When the sun rises on the horizon at a place marked by the moon, we celebrate Beltane, Samhain, Imbolc and Lammas.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Beltane, when\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So my understanding of the Cross-Quarter Days is they celebrate the dance of Spirit and Matter.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until someone with a birthday at the beginning of August, asked me about that holiday, that I gave it some more thought.\u00a0 Lammas means Loaf Mass, a celebration of the first fruits of the agricultural year.\u00a0 It\u2019s an obvious Christianization of the older Celtic Holiday Lughnasad, a celebration of the god Lugh.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (See Wikipedia<\/a> for more details) The beginning of August is in Leo, Fixed Fire.\u00a0 From these hints I thought \u201cWhat happens to Spirit and Matter at this time?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Analogous to the firing of pottery and the baking of bread I saw that matter that was malleable is now fixed in form.\u00a0 In May, Spirit incarnates in matter, the artist gathers his materials.\u00a0 In August, matter becomes fixed, the work of art takes its final form.\u00a0 So, in November, Spirit has to break the form to be set free for something new.\u00a0 So if there is a change in Matter in August, what happens at Imbolc, the opposite holiday in February?\u00a0 The name comes from the Celtic word for ewe\u2019s milk.\u00a0 It\u2019s also called the \u201cQuickening of the Year\u201d.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So I saw in the Cross Quarter Days the cycle of creativity.\u00a0 A new vision is born at Imbolc, gathers material in Beltane, the form is fixed at Lughnasad, and broken at Samhain.
\nToday at Neskaya we will celebrate Lammas with Fire Dances and Harvest Dances.\u00a0 One I especially like to do is Issos, an ancient Greek dance, in which our feet draw the pattern of the head of wheat.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

For more information on the sacred year<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wheel of the sacred year, I think of the solar holidays, the equinoxes and solstices, as providing a basic framework.\u00a0 They are about the relationship between dark and light, day and night.\u00a0 The Cross Quarter Days are determined … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-circle-dance","category-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}