Lughnasadh is Right Around The Corner

Hello and Blessed Be!

Lughnasadh (also know as Lammas) is right around the corner (taking place anwhere from tomorrow to Tuesday the 6th depending on how you calculate the day(s)), so I thought I would share with you some information on this holiday and how I plan to celebrate it. Lughnasadh is the first of the Wiccan harvest festivals (though it is celebrated by other Pagans too) and in Wiccan lore marks the time when we can clearly witness the beginning of the death of the Sun God. His death can be seen through the earlier sunsets, cooler nights, and the vast amount of produce coming into season during this time.

Even though the God is dying this is a time to celebrate because the seeds planted during Imbloc (physical, mental, and spiritual) are becoming ready to harvest. While the trend now days is to celebrate this holiday on August 1st or 2nd its actual date is the day that lies halfway between the Summer Solstice (Midsummer/Litha) and the Autumnal Equinox (Mabon) which lands on either August 5th or 6th depending on how you count. Originally this holiday would have been celebrated when much of the produce became ready to harvest and the date would vary widely year to year. However you choose to calculate the date for this holiday there are some key themes involved in most Lughnasadh celebrations.

Primarily this holiday is a time for food and community; and fairs, farmers' markets, and craft shows are great embodiments of this theme. If one of these is happening during this time somewhere near you I encourage you to check it out, spend some time with friends or family, sample the foods, browse the wares and in general have fun.  As part of my Lughnasadh celebration I will be attending a Renaissance Faire and Art Festival and am greatly looking forward to the elephant ears, handcrafted wares, and spending time with my friends. Another good way to celebrate this day is to look into what is coming into season in your area (both farm grown and wild) and then using some of these fresh ingredients to make dinner for your friends of family.

The other main theme of this holiday is death and growth. The Sun God is dying but he is doing so willingly so that the people will grow and prosper (though the harvest of fruits, grains, and veggies). This is a prime time to witness how some things must die so that others can grow. Produce is harvested to feed a family, a rabbit is killed to feed the coyotes, a tree falls so that smaller plants may receive light and grow, all of these are reminders of how we are all part of the never ending cycle of life, death, and rebirth. This theme of death is what has lead to the burning of the "wicker man" that many Pagan groups take part in this time of year. The "wicker man" is usually made of stick, grasses, and/or corn husks and represents the God. People either then fill him with thanks and their hopes of what will bear fruit in their lives (either by speaking it or placing a slip of paper in him) or by filling him with all the things they wish to be rid of, either way the "wicker man" is then lit and a party or feast begins.

If you can't do anything else this Lughnasadh I encourage you to get out and spend some time in nature. Take note of which plants are flowering, are their any berries that are ripe, and what plants have gone to seed. Remember that as one life ends, another begins, and still another continues, summer may be coming to an end but it is glorious while it lasts so give thanks and go have fun :) And as usual I would love to hear from you, what are your plans, do you have any past Lughnasadh experiences you would like to share?

A Poem

Hello and Blessed Be!

I wanted to share with you a poem that I wrote called "I am a Pagan". This poem came about as a way for me to reconnect with my path after spending a long period of time in an environment where I could not continue my usual practices. I recite this poem to myself whenever I'm feeling lost and I even wrote it in my Book of Shadows (which is a book that is usually used by Wiccans that acts as a manual and record of their religious path and includes things such as spells, prayers, rituals, essays, poems, recipes, tables of correspondences, etc, essentially anything that is meaningful or important to them). 

I am a Pagan

My mother is Selene,

My father is Pan,

My brother is the Raven,

And my sister is the Wolf.

My family are the animals large and small

My friends are the plants a many,

And my ancestors are the countless stars that smile down upon me.

My body is that of the Goddess,

But I carry the fire of the God in my heart,

And even though I am a child of this Earth,

My head is often in the clouds.

My temple is the majestic forests,

My home is where ever I lay my head,

And my final resting place will be that land of eternal summer,

Across the vast sea of tears,

In the realm that exists beyond the veil.

Obviously there is much more to my religious identity than this, however I find this to be a good summery and a good way to remind myself of who I am. If this inspires anyone else to write a poem about religious identity (feel free to follow this form or create your own), or if you have already written something like this, I would love to read them :)

Be Careful What You Bind Your Spells To: A Cautionary Tale

Hello and Blessed Be!
Firstly I'd like to apologize for my very long absence. To sum it up, I needed some "away" time due to numerous personal and financial issues that had cropped up in my life. However I am glad to be back and while my posts will be more frequent, they will still be sporadic.

Now onto the lesson (that I learned the hard way), that I wanted to share with everyone today. We all know, or at least should know, that we must be careful when doing magical workings due to potential unseen repercussions, and that we also must consider these before we start any new spells or other magical workings. As you may have guessed, in February of 2012, I had not considered the consequences of my actions and this resulted in some very interesting repercussions in February of this year.

So my story begins with a miniature rose plant named Alice that I had received from my (at the time) long-term boyfriend. Knowing that plant life didn't last long in the apartment we were living in at the time, and believing that the love between us was strong I performed a (self-invented) ritual to tie the condition of the rose's growth with the growth and strength of the love (not the platonic kind) that existed in my life. The wording I used, which ended up being very important later on was, "As love in my life grows and blooms, so too shall this rose." My thoughts at the time were this, "if I want this rose to survive my roommate and her wild parties I should magically connect it with something strong and unwavering...I know! I will tie it to the love between me and my boyfriend, there is nothing stronger in the world than that!" Oh, I was wrong, and the gods love to remind us that nothing is concrete, especially when we get cocky (in my defense though we had been considering marriage, so my belief that it would last a lifetime wasn't completely unfounded).

For the longest time this seemed like it was an excellent idea, Alice thrived as did our love, but gradually our relationship stagnated and Alice suffered. At first it was only little things, like the cat suddenly deciding his new favorite past-time was shredding her leaves, but as our relationship fell into a rapid downward spiral, my rose became infested with spider mites (which managed to survive everything I threw at them) and rapidly declined too. By the end of it all poor Alice was nothing but a leafless withered stem, and the combination of being left by my boyfriend of 3 years and the apparent death of my rose was almost too much to bear. Remember the wording of the spell, "As love in my life grows and blooms, so too shall this rose," well that also meant that as love in my life withered and declined, so too shall this rose. Luckily I met someone else and as the spark slowly but surely grew between us, Alice recovered. Now she is back to her magnificent self and despite being warned by everyone that her spider mites would return, she is till mite free and even the cat no longer messes with her.

Now this may not seem like that big of a deal but we need to remember that while Alice may only be a plant she is still a living organism, and while I like to consider her my "enchanted rose" she would probably think of herself as more of being cursed to have her growth controlled by the whims of the heart of a college student. I imagine there could be some sort of karmatic retribution of this, even if it is small, and if only due to the irresponsible way that I acted (I really only did so that I could have a pretty rose). Also what does this do to the potential of her rose petals for other spell work? I still don't have the answer to that one.

So what have I learned from this? Don't bind fluctuating things such as luck, health, love, etc to an item, it doesn't even have to be living. Let's say I would have instead did a spell to tie the condition of the love in my life to a trinket saying, "as long as I have this trinket, our love will be strong," and then lost said trinket, that too would have been bad. So to sum it up, be careful of your magical workings, and always consider the possible consequences.