Lammas in Tasmania

The Wheel of the Year turns bringing the Sabbat of Lammas or Lughnasa to the Southern Hemisphere. Lammas is one of the four Fire Festivals and is celebrated on the 1 and 2nd of February and August 1st in the northern Hemisphere. Lammas speaks wheat, corn, beer and giving thanks!

Tasmania is still in fire ban season. You can still celebrate with fire if it is contained in a fire pot or pit. You do need to register your ‘fire’ with the local fire brigade.

Lammas is a time to honour nature and show gratitude for life’s blessings. The first harvest of the year has ripened and ready to be celebrated.  It is the middle of Summer, and the earth is alive and abundant. You are witness to life all around you.

The warmer weather brings baby and teenage native hens (turbo chooks) being shepherded across the road at great speed, hawks flying over paddocks looking for prey and eagles if you’re lucky!

For me it is a welcome sign that Autumn nearly here 😉 The glut of Summer vegetables is slowing down and I will soon be preparing the garden beds for Winter crops. Tomatoes are slow to ripen this year, but beans, blueberries, strawberries, snow peas, silverbeet, beetroot, squash and celery have been plentiful. The lemon tree has been providing lemons! The strawberries have runners all over the garden beds.

The smaller shrubs planted last year are thriving and I have planted more herbs. The silver birches have been gifting any available space with babies again – four years after the hundreds they gifted for the very first time. I can feel things begin to slow down as the calendar begins its descent towards Mabon and Samhain – my favourite time of the year 😊

I have left a few plants for seed collecting as the garden is beginning to wind down from the Spring and Summer harvests. If you have the space, it’s an ideal time to think about setting up a compost or watering system. Maybe even put in a water tank for your gardening needs.

More and more I look at ways to walk upon Gaia more gently. You may be feeling the call to do so as well. Try to waste less by making meal plans and shopping for just those items. Freeze, dehydrate or preserve the abundance from your garden and have real pesticide free food year-round.

Space is usually the block to putting this idea into practice. Look at your linen press as an option for food/preserve/seed storage and see what can be offloaded into other spaces. Perhaps each bedroom can store its own bed sheets, blankets, doona cover and towels to make more space in the linen press.

You may feel that you need to change certain products you use to more environmentally friendly ones. I make most of my own cleaning products and my essential oils have always played a part in cleaning, energetically clearing or freshening up benchtops, inside cupboards and doors, the fridge etc.

It has been a creative season for me. Litha certainly brought an abundance of inspiration and insight. My channel to Spirit has been pretty active and I am needing to listen to my body more. At times it tells me to sleep more than I am used to and I understand that much is happening on the astral.

Lammas magic is the magic of facing up to change. The Sun King, (the God of the Harvest, the Green Man or John Barleycorn) surrenders his life with the cutting of the corn. He surrenders his life so that the community can be sustained over winter. He is eaten as bread – honoured, and is then reborn as the seed that returns to the earth.

Lammas is a bittersweet celebration. Everything dies in its season as everything is then reborn. Immortality. Our Souls are eternal – reincarnation is the cycle of life.

One aspect of the Goddess is Demeter. She represents the abundance of the First Harvest of Grain. Mabon is the Second Harvest of Fruit and Samhain is the Third and final Harvest of Nuts and Berries. She is the Harvest Mother, Earth Mother, Corn Mother. She is the fullness and fulfillment of the harvest and holds the seeds of all future harvests. She is the nurturing Goddess who feeds the community throughout winter. 

Celebrating Lammas might look like:

Having a feast with friends and making home-made bread

Honour the land with ceremony or ritual

Journal – perhaps look at what you wish to spiritually focus on over the colder months

Write a letter to yourself that is loving and open it at Imbolc (August 1st)

Take a walk out in nature and pick wild flowers, collect interesting rocks or fallen branches

Craft a corn dolly

Meditate, dance or craft out in nature

Make smoking sticks

Watch the sun rise or set

Create a Lammas tea blend or invent a boutique beer!

Walk a labyrinth

If you prepare an Altar for Lammas listed below are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

The Gods and Goddesses for Lammas are: Goddesses Dana, Cerridwen, Luna, Rhiannon and Demeter. Gods are Lugh, Baal, Odin, Adonis and Dagon

You can create a sigil, print an image or fashion a figure to represent your chosen deities.

Colours of Lammas are orange, yellow, gold, green and brown. Incorporate these colours with Altar cloths, ribbons or candles.  You can decorate with herbs and greenery from wheat, heather, acacia, myrtle, fenugreek, rosemary, eucalyptus and chamomile. Incense choices can be sandalwood, frankincense. Crystal choices are amber, aventurine, citrine, clear quartz, peridot, tiger’s eye. 

You may wish to have an image, figurine or carving of a rooster, calve, deer, phoenix, centaur or griffin. You can think outside the box with representations such as feathers from a rooster, antlers, poems about an animal etc.

Bake bread from scratch and place a roll or small loaf on your Altar, or some of your freshly harvested corn, berries and apples. Apple cake, apple pie, apple strudel is a welcome option as well. Throw in some blackberries or blue berries and you have covered all your bases. If you brew your own beer, you may have timed it well enough to pop your first bottle for the Sabbat! The same goes for your water kefir, june or kombucha fermenting 😉

Spiritually, abundance has undergone a massive change! Humanity is moving away from a focus of immediate gratification and accumulation. Now being embraced with a higher vibration, abundance is fueled with 5th Dimension energy. The abundance of ‘Soul Food’- joy, happiness, peace, serenity, health, friendships and life are being pursued to fills our hearts and feed our Souls.

As your ego is given less energy, you are releasing low vibration behaviours. You are healing your inner child which makes way and gives space for embracing the higher energies coming in, and you are attracting healthy relationships and connecting with healers, teachers and spiritual communities.

Deepening spiritual practice in 2025 brings you a year or release. Your awakening is NOW. You can work on releasing yourself from the chaos and the drama. Self-awareness is one key you can easily utilise.

Being consciously aware of your words, thoughts and actions has the power to shift the 3rd Dimension paradigm from your own reality to that of the 5th Dimension. Being consciously aware of what you are surrounding yourself with will help you keep your personal vibration high. Being consciously aware of when you need to ask for assistance, help or healing will support you moving continuously forward.

Keep working on holding the Light within. Detach and detox from the 3rd Dimension drugs of choice. Fear, manipulation, anger, greed and everything else that is low vibration keeps you from standing in your truth, your sovereignty. Hold the Light. You are not alone. You are one of many. And we stand beside you.

There is no right or wrong way to honour Lammas. What-ever way you chose to observe or celebrate Lammas is right for you. Enjoy it, embrace it for it will soon be the time for the trees to show us how beautiful it is to let go 😊

May the Light forever dance across your path.