On Wednesday of this week, Wiccans will celebrate Lammas, or Lughnasadh. It is the first of three harvest festivals on the Pagan calendar. The second being the Autumnal Equinox, or Mabon, and the third is Halloween, or Samhain (pronounced Sow-en). Lammas marks the peak of the Earth's bounty, be it fruits, vegetables, grains,etc., and the blessings of the Goddess and God for that bounty.
But in modern times, when the majority of people do not live in agricultural societies, and aside from the harvest of your own personal gardens (tomatoes, petunias, etc), how can we possibly celebrate a harvest?
Harvests come in many different forms. The harvest of your own daily hard work, the harvest of a happy, healthy family and home, the harvest of your own personal accomplishments. Through your own cultivation and attention to those things, they have grown and thrived. The harvest of your thoughts and ideas. What do you achieve when you nourish them? With proper care, they have the possibility to become reality, and maybe make the world a better place.
Like an agricultural harvest, our own personal harvests don't always go as planned. We also have our seasons of flood and drought. Perhaps the harvest is a lot smaller than we thought it was going to be. Sometimes we have a back-up plan for those bad harvests, sometimes not. And we all know that sometimes it takes everything in us to bring that small harvest in. But man do we feel good when we do!
During this week of celebration of the first harvest, which harvests are you celebrating? Personal? Professional? Big or small? Is there something you wish to harvest? A project? A completion of something or an idea? The possibilities are endless! Those harvests are all there. Just look hard enough and you will find them. Help your family and friends bring in and celebrate their harvests as well. You will be better for it.
May the Goddess and God of the Harvest bless all of your harvests. In whatever form they come in.
But in modern times, when the majority of people do not live in agricultural societies, and aside from the harvest of your own personal gardens (tomatoes, petunias, etc), how can we possibly celebrate a harvest?
Harvests come in many different forms. The harvest of your own daily hard work, the harvest of a happy, healthy family and home, the harvest of your own personal accomplishments. Through your own cultivation and attention to those things, they have grown and thrived. The harvest of your thoughts and ideas. What do you achieve when you nourish them? With proper care, they have the possibility to become reality, and maybe make the world a better place.
Like an agricultural harvest, our own personal harvests don't always go as planned. We also have our seasons of flood and drought. Perhaps the harvest is a lot smaller than we thought it was going to be. Sometimes we have a back-up plan for those bad harvests, sometimes not. And we all know that sometimes it takes everything in us to bring that small harvest in. But man do we feel good when we do!
May the Goddess and God of the Harvest bless all of your harvests. In whatever form they come in.
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