june 26

Happy Harvest!

I created a list of subtle witch tips for folks who are looking for some low-key harvest celebrations during this busy time.

🌽 Bake a loaf of Quick Bread - Unlike most breads which take hours to prove, quick breads are just that - quick! Have a search around Pinterest or your favorite recipe places and find something that strikes your fancy. I happen to be partial to beer cheese breads with caramelized onions. While mixing your dough be sure to infuse it with thankfulness for all that you have been granted this year.

🌻 Do a ritual centered around your goals for the year - Make a list of everything you hoped to work on this year and evaluate how far you’ve come. Make offerings in celebration of all you’ve accomplished and meditate on what you can best do to manifest everything you’ve hoped for. 

🌽 Go for an early evening walk - Bask in the warmth and light that continues to suffuse the later hours of the day. As the days grow darker, you will come to miss the greenery and easy evening productivity. There’s no easier way to be grateful for something than to acknowledge it in the moment and be fully present in the world.

🌻 Let go of regrets with a burning spell - Lughnasadh is also a period of reflection as with the bounty of life comes the memory that death is not far behind. Sit quietly and meditate on what plans you had that are not working out, or what endeavors you should be letting go of. Write all your regrets and what you want to rid yourself of on pieces of paper or corn husks if you’re feeling particularly seasonal. Gather all of them up and burn them one by one to release yourself from such burdens as we go into the tail end of the year. 

🌽 Tidy Up - While we usually think of harvest time as a period of abundance, for farmers it is also a time of cleaning. Once the bounty of the fields is collected, work begins to prepare the ground for more crops, or for the soil to sit under a sleepy blanket of snow until spring. Take some time out of your Lughnasadh celebrations to clean your space - your altar, your home, or even just your bed or desk. Evaluate that which is no longer serving you and consider donating unwanted items so that others may benefit from your abundance!

Aka Lúnasa or Lammas, the first of the 3 harvest festivals, celebrated on August 1st.

I know Lughnasadh is still a ways away, but I thought I’d jump the gun a bit anyway cuz I LIKE BREAD.

🌻Go pick apples or any other produce that’s in season! You can offer some to the Earth or whatever deities you worship. In ancient times, people would bury their offerings at the tops of hills during Lughnasadh.

🌻Bake bread! Make it magical by inscribing symbols or runes into it, using herbs and spices with special properties, and adding sun water. Bless it. Ask your deities to put their energy into it. As you knead and mix, imagine all your magick getting folded in right into the dough. Think of this loaf of bread as your own unique little bundle of magick. This bread can be for anything you want, but some common Lughnasadh themes would be abundance, prosperity, healing, family harmony, and good over evil.

🌻Bask in the color gold

🌻Perform spells for abundance and prosperity

🌻Organize a group sports event—paintball, laser tag, baseball, capture the flag, even something as small as a jump rope competition. The point is to honor Lugh through traditional athletic competitions! What kind of competition that is, is up to you.

🌻Visit a sacred well. No sacred wells around? Go visit a body of water that’s special to you and spend some time dipping your feet in, basking in the sun, and eating some seasonal fruits.

🌻Go to a local farmers market and buy some in-season produce, then cook it up however you want. Save some to offer to the deities of your choice, and eat the rest with friends!

🌻Do a tarot reading for yourself. What’s beginning to manifest in your life? What’s ripe, and what still needs time?

🌻This celebration traditionally included matchmaking and courting. Why not give this tradition a modern twist by going to a speed dating event, a blind date, or another dating-related event?

🌻Sit outside and paint with golds and yellows and oranges. Wear flowers in your hair. Drink some dandelion tea.

🌻Fill your altar with sheaves of wheat, decorative corn, sunstone and citrine and pyrite, gold colors, scoops of earth in decorative jars, fresh-picked herbs and weeds and wildflowers, and that cool thing you painted earlier.

lughnasadh/lammas altar 🌞

Lammas (also called Lughnasadh) is a sabbat from the Wheel of the Year that is celebrated on August 1st to mark the beginning of the harvest season

🔥 Room Healing Spell 🔥

A spell that can be cast at any moon phase or any time of the day to turn your room into a magick-inducive environment. The perfect spell for baby witches who want to start with spellwork. I created this when I was 12 (2006) and it has been 11 years since then and it’s still effective.

Recommended to Cast During: Any moon phase at any time of the day.

Colors: Black and White

Needed: 

🌿 2 Candles (either white or black)

🌙 An Athame (or any pointed object for engraving a candle)

🌿 A Wand (or any stick that is made from any natural material such as twigs, pencils, wooden chopsticks, selenite crystal, clear quartz wand)

To Cast:

🌿 Light one of the candles.

🌙 Start engraving a protection sigil or any symbolism that you dedicate with strength and protection on the unlit candle.

🌿 Twirl your wand around your engraved candle and say,

“Go away negativity and sway away. Positivity, if you wish to enter, you may.”

🌿 Light the engraved candle and carry it.

🌙 Bring the engraved candle with you and light the four corners of your room moving clockwise (start with north)

🌿 Meditate for 5 minutes after (chakra meditation is recommended or plain floor grounding is alright; that is to lie down completely on the floor)

What To Expect:

🌿 Your room will turn into a much more relaxing environment.

🌙 Negative energy that was collected through time will be diminished.

🌿 Better sleep, better naps, better magick.

LITHA

🧀Fruit & veg, herbed bread, cheese, honey cakes, chicken, pork, sunflower seeds, lemonade, ice tea.

🍋Lemon, orange, cinnamon, rose oils.

🔮Moonstone, tigers eye, amethyst, flourite, agate. {Or any crystals in warm colours}.

🌞See the sun rise & set, eat outdoors, make or buy a sun catcher, bake a sweet cake, let sunlight cleanse your rooms, clear cobwebs, wear a flower crown, make honey/sugar scrub, wear warm tones.

🎬Peter Pan, Fairy Tale, Ferngully, Stardust, Tinkerbell, Maleficent.

LAMMAS

🌽Multi grain bread, corn on the cob, bbq meats, fried chicken, potatoes, soup, rice, nuts, black current juice, beer, peppermint tea.

🌹Rose, chamomile, passion fruit, all spice oils/scents.

🔮Citrine, clear quartz, tigers eye.

📖Finish a project, make a bread to share, enjoy nature, take care of plants, decorate or craft, acknowledge what you are grateful for, journal future hopes.

🎬Parent Trap, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, Cheaper by the Dozen.

MABON

🍇Pies, nuts, smoked or roast poultry [bbq chicken with smoky bbq sauce], soup, corn, apples, plums, grapes, cinnamon donuts, caramel popcorn, peanut butter, butterscotch.

🌲Sage, pine, cinnamon oils/scents.

🔮Amethyst, clear quartz, citrine, yellow agate.

🌾Make scented pinecones, spend time under the stars, donate food or goods [RSPCA], burn bad habits, visit the deceased, harvest take care of plants, bask in nature, meditate.

🎬Open Season, Brother Bear, Spirit, Pocahontas, Brave.

SAMHAIN

🎃Pumpkins, toffee apples, ginger bread, chai, nutmeg or cinnamon spiced foods, hazelnuts, sweets.

🌰Nutmeg, cinnamon scents.

🔮Obsidian, onyx, bloodstone, amber, fossils.

🕯Cook a family recipe, light a fire, remember & honour the deceased.

🎬Hocus Pocus, Addams Family, Monsters Inc, Little Vampire, Corpse Bride, Casper, Hansel Gretel Witch Hunters, Underworld, Van Helsing.

YULE

🍪Cookies, fruit cake, turkey, eggnog, ginger tea.

🕎Cedar, frankincense, myrrh oils.

🔮Bloodstone, citrine, clear quartz.

❄Give or volunteer, bake shortbread or sugar cookies, share a meal with loved ones.

🎬Santa Clause, Rise of the Guardians, 101 Dalmatians, Frozen, Snow White Winters War, Narnia.

IMBOLC

🍩Poppy seeds, pumpkin seeds, bread butter pudding, scones, muffins, garlic, onions.

☕Vanilla, cinnamon oil.

🔮Amethyst, bloodstone, onyx.

🕯Light white candles, plant seeds, bless your pets, declutter & clean your living space, bake orange and poppy seed muffins or cake.

🎬Mr Poppers Penguins, Happy Feet, Balto, Ice Age, Mirror Mirror.

OSTARA

🍌Roast ham & pineapple, eggs, milk, seeds & nuts, banana bread, chocolate milk, green vegetables.

🌹Jasmine, light florals, sweet garden, wild flowers.

🔮Amethyst, rose quartz, moonstone.

🌹Light candles, plant seeds, share a roast ham with loved ones, bake banana bread, finish spring cleaning, lay tumbled stones in your garden bed, take deep breaths [inhale new energy & exhale old energies], wear spring colours whites & florals, collect wildflowers or buy flowers that call to you & research what they mean, walk through nature.

🎬Epic, Strange Magic, The Secret Garden, Spiderwick, A Bugs Life, Barbie Fairies.

BELTANE

🍞Breads, cakes, honey, leafy greens, fruit & veg, seafood, iced tea, lemonade, milk.

🌼Florals, sweet garden, honeysuckle, jasmine, rose.

🔮Amber, citrine, moonstone, red jasper, rose quartz.

🌼Wear a flower crown or flowers in your hair, dress in red or white, make a bonfire & roast marshmallows, garden, take a walk, spend time in nature, pick fresh flowers to decorate.

🎬Moana, Arthur Trilogy, Avatar, Jungle Book, Tinkerbell, Barbie.

HOW I CELEBRATE ALL SABBATS OR ESBATS

☾Sage cleanse the house, light candles, diffuse oils.

☾Clean sheets/bedding/pillowcases/towels.

☾Eat at least one traditional food.

☾Watch a relevant movie.

☾Take notes in my BOS of how I celebrated the Sabbat to look back on next year.

☾Charge my crystals & tarot decks in the full moonlight.

☾Do a tarot reading relevant to the Sabbat.

☾Spend time outside with my dogs 🐶

/ˈlaməs,ˈläməs/

the first day of august, formerly observed in britain as a harvest festival, during which bread baked from the first crop of wheat was blessed.

symbolism: prosperity, reverence, purification, change, fruitfulness.

tarot: wheel of fortune + justice.

colors: yellow gold, orange, green, light brown.

foods: homemade breads, grains, nuts, crabapples, rice, grapes, pears, meadowsweet tea, beer, elder wine, cider, berries, locally grown produce.

crystals: citrine, paridot, cat’s eye, golden topaz, sardonyx, carnelian, moss agate, obsidian, aventurine, clear quartz, rhodochrosite, marble, lodestone, granite.

herbs: yarrow, mint, meadowsweet, poppy, clover, vervain, basil, mint, mugwort, hops, aloe, acacia.

flowers: heather, queen anne’s lace, milkweed, peony, elder, poppy, myrtle, sunflower, rose, marigold, goldenrod.

inscence: rosemary, aloes, chamomile, rose, rose hip, eucalyptus, sandalwood, frankincense, safflower.

deities: adonis, attis, baal, ceres, cronus, danu, dagon, demeter, hestia, lugh, mercury, neper, parvati, pamona, renenutet, saturn, sobek, tailtiu, tammuz, vesta.

misc: corn dolls, dried Indian corn, sunflowers, wheat stalks, the pentacle, cornucopia, broom, hearth, iron.

activities: bake bread, have a bonfire, harvest from your garden, take a nature walk, make corn dolls, prosperity magick, visit a farmers market, dry herbs.