Lammastide 2023: Reflections
Today in so-called Australia it is the 31st of January. It is currently 31 degrees Celsius and seems like it might storm. Ah, so, even as the patterns seem to be taken apart ever so painfully, I can still trust that on the east coast of this continent this cross-quarter (I variously call First Fruits, High Summer, Lammas, or Lughnasadh) is going to be stormy and wet.
Yesterday I was walking to the house of beloveds along the great river of Yuggerah, Jagera, and Turrbal Country - Maiwar. I lived in that very house for two years before I moved to Gadigal and Bidjigal Country almost two years ago. I was walking to a dinner party prepared by and tended to by beloveds and it felt like one worthy of this cross-quarter festival which I will be deeply thinking about and engaging all week. For me the cross-quarters festivals are at least week long events.
I decided to walk through the ‘South Brisbane Cemetery’ and so by custom I needed to first head towards the grave of the first buried. I walked to Jane Hockings grave who died on July 31st, 1870, and was the first recorded burial there the very next day - August 1st. This has especial significance to me as someone who observes the festivals of witches which we inherit from Germanic, British, and Celtic cultures. And so she was buried at the cross-quarter - in the southern hemisphere adaptation - that is often named by the English and Christian name of Candlemas or the Irish name of Imbolc, connected with a feast of Brighid. St Brigid in the Wildwood Tradition is considered to be not only the midwife of the Prince (one of the Sacred Four - four great witching spirits) and the lover of Our Lady but also the witness to all who are born and all who die. Brighid appeared before me and urged me to go to a familiar-to-me ritual site marked by another auspicious date.
The grave of David G. Bell - who died at 3 months of age on April 30th in 1891 - marks this ritual site, as did a powerful and witchy tree humming with native bees. I walked there and the tree had been felled and the ground opened up. At first I couldn’t find the site, I was lost in the trees and graves. I usually found Bell’s grave by the tree… and then I realised what had happened.
I couldn’t help but feel the Lammas-ness of it all. Themes of death, sacrifice, cutting down are central to many witch’s understanding of this feast in our mythos. In Sophian Wildwood lore we understand that our Prince of Paradise as the Goat (who once was Stag and Bull as well, also the most human and most animal of Gods) has been dealt the death-blow by the great scythe or sickle that the Lady carries. The hand of Fate has brought down the swift and sharp scythe and the star now bleeds into the land. It is what happens, it is the law of things. Our Lady the Raven Queen is covered in the black veil of mourning and rage. This is some of the mythos that some Wildwood witches hold dear at this cross-quarter.
From Midsummer to Lammastide a lot of people living in so-called Australia feel very fearful. We anticipate great heat or fire and flood. Not only this, but as January continues on we come to January 26th which is marked as the day of invasion here by First Nations communities and by many non-Indigenous people who seek to be in solidarity and allyship with First Nations peoples. By some Australians it is marked as so-called ‘Australia Day’ (and of course they’d be angry that I called it Invasion Day) which has been continuously marked as a public holiday on January 26th only since 1994. For Indigenous people this day is also a countrywide day of mourning and of survival. So for some witches and pagans, attending the rallies, protests, and ceremonies led by First Nations folks is a key part of the end of January. This to me is crucial to the Lammastide realities experienced here. If we can not bring ourselves to face genocide, colonisation, and invasion our own recent ancestors may have been complicit in and that I/we directly privilege from, we have no business connecting with the witch mysteries.
So mourning or witnessing another’s grief and rage are central to Lammas and Lughnasadh rites for me. As is contemplating sacrifice and I specifically mean the sacrifice in which the sacred is revealed to us directly and intimately. Between Midsummer and the Autumn Equinox is a festival of deep sorrow because of deep love. And there are so many layers.
I consider there to be three layers or three points of focus in my marking of these festivals.
The first layer is when I say Lammas or Lughnasadh (or Bealtaine or Samhain, etc.) I bring my attention to my ancestors who are British, Scottish, and Irish and their customs and observances. I bring my attention to specific cultural streams and inspirations, which I also do not need to be genetically-related to, many people have been to forced to live in societies sculpted by Christian and colonialist versions of these cultures. I am a witch who works with Christian iconography and symbolism as well as Pagan and Heathen lore within my traditional and folkloric Craft, so these syncretisms seem natural and powerful for me. My witchcraft arises from the realities of a world sculpted by cultural collision and colonisation, the witching spirits I conspire with help to repair, remember, and to inspire new-old ways of being inside of these nightmare landscapes.
The second layer is the mythos or the deep stories and themes that are connected or intimately felt through the door of the particular sabbat. Each tradition or house of witches might relate to different levels or phases of their sacred stories at different times of year. This may also be a Christian liturgical influence and parallel, though certainly many non-Christian cultures also thread story like this through happenings round the year. Essentially which faces or sacred dramas of the tutelary Gods and Spirits are most relevant, charged, or holding gravitas right now.
The third layer and the one that grounds it through here and now is the bioregional realities. What is flowering or dying back right now? Which birds are active, what insects am I noticing or not noticing anymore? What are the clouds and the tides doing? If I bring my attention to the human animals scurrying around this place what is going on in their behavioural patterns and in the social sphere? I always notice in Reclaiming and Wildwood rituals that the emergent altars are formed of what is here and now, what is going on in this place, braided with the mythic and witch-lore carried on from other places and times, and from otherworlds too. And I love that.
I often sense through at least three things converging,
the three souls
three realms of land, sky, and see
three cauldrons of hips, heart, and head
three ancestors of blood, land, and craft or inspiration
three serpents
three roads
and yes, these three layers are also important for me.
At this time I am also remembering fondly the 13 year-old adolescent who had recently worked out to mark the sabbats at opposites times to the northern hemisphere. Lammas was the first feast I marked at the more relevant time of the year. I bought freshly-baked bread from a bakery near me, it was raining, I prepared the dining table, called the archangels from the four cardinal directions to feast with me. Looking back, I am amused that somehow that first appropriately-time sabbat represents large pieces of the core of my Craft. Journey somewhere to get something of worth, be in the elements, come back to the hearth-hold or to the community-fire, and call the Great Ones to witness what you do, and do it with them.
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