Dear Astro Witches of the Holy WILD Ways,
I want to talk to you about the REAL Lughnasadh (named after the Celtic god Lugh. Christians later named it Lammas) and the Lion’s Gate portal.
“The real Lughnasadh?” you ask… Yes, well, the cross-quarter days are not set on static dates, as known by the Witch. They move with the Sun, just as the Solstices and Equinoxes do, changing to the exact astronomical moment betwixt and between the solstices and equinoxes which fluctuate by as much as 2 days from year to year, not a fixed moment in time as our calendars place them. Makes sense yes?
WE the WITCH’s, name these specific fire festivals (festivals of the power points of the cycling Sun) the Great Sabbats and consider them even more potent for alchemical work than the ‘lesser’ Sabbats, the solstices and equinoxes.
Imbolc in Aquarius, Beltane in Taurus, Lammas in Leo, Samhain in Scorpio, all occur at 15°, the exact halfway point of the Sun’s sojourn in that sign and Season. Do you seeeeee that they also all occur in the Fixed signs, which is the heart of each season?
They are considered the ‘Grand Sabbats’ of the year because they are the moment of the most potent peak of outward flowing energies, and therefore the best time to work Magick
This year, Lughnassad occurs on Wednesday, August 7th, at 11:19am PT. So if you celebrated on the calendar day of August 2nd when most of humanity marked this day, it will be a deLIGHT to know that you can continue to deepen into your ritual marking this Holy time. These festivals were never a one day affair. They lasted for days! And if you missed the collective celebration, you now have an opportunity to gather round your own fire and do some ritual work at one of the most potent magick times of the yearly cycle of Sol.
We have turned toward Harvest and the dying time of the year. This Moon is referred to in Celtic and Witch traditions as the Corn Moon. My teacher of all things WITCH, Danielle Dulsky, calls this season the Season of Midday Grace.
“This is a moon of potent mourning and rising ferocity, with the Dark Goddess slowly stirring in the deepest pits of our wild psyches.”
During this waxing Corn Moon cycle, which began at the New Moon on July 31st,… consider the myths of your ancestors, particularly as they relate to the archetypes of Death, Grief, Mourning. These will support your unfolding into this cycle. They were often turned into scary creatures by the patriarchal retelling of the stories, yet these beings, animal, human, magickal, have a vital role in the cycle of Nature, as all death does.
One does not have to seek out this face, as it is vitally present with us at this moment. We are suffering as a nation and a world, at the atrocities, we have recently witnessed to. The vigils which have sprung up around the nation in response to these last shootings have given us a place to mourn and grieve, to give a home to the complexity of emotions that have been brought to the fore.
Life is very complex and difficult. Loss and grief and fear have been with humans since the beginning. The key is for each of us to be aware of this while we are grieving with our own losses, and in our support of others through grief’s challenging yet deeply profound passageway. Many are referring to this passage as the Stages of Grief. It is an organic process that nature has embedded within us to support dealing with grief. For those of us who feel called, we are its midwives.
There is the World scene, and there are our own personal lives. My belief is that we can tend to both by tending to one or the other. My personal ritual which always includes the challenging material of my life can include this mourning of the collective, this holding space for what is occurring in the world. And vice versa. My tending to a public vigil will give my own personal grief a place to be mirrored and supported.
RITUAL
Some of the rites I would include in your Lughnassad ritual is Altar creation, with both symbols of the archetypes of this season upon it. Any myths or fairytales of the Mourners and Funerary priestesses you may discover in your Ancestry. It could also be an individual who held this place for the community. Personal and collective images and totems of what is occurring in your life. For me, while I am feeling the current tragedies, what is most present for me is the seriousness of climate crisis and the silent killer that is taking out more than 47,000 humans a year in this nation alone. And that is just opioid overdoses. That is 4,000 humans a month. Many of whom are our young people. Bowing deeply to that loss and to finding our way with this difficult situation.
Also, look to what has struck you personally in this immediate moment or over this recent cycle. I emphasize the word ‘struck’ as it may feel like it came out of the blue, which has a Uranus sensibility to it. I see it as more as the Wild Psyche saying HERE THIS! Thissssss is the dark matter for you to work over this next Autumn cycle. My personal experience and looking at others lives, is the dramatic events occurring has a taproot into my personal shadow., Autumn is indeed the Season of Shadows, and thus no surprise that it would begin its activation now.
If we remember that Shadows are truly a gift of the Self returning home to the self, we can take up the work with more Heart, the symbol of Leo… with courage to look into our darkness, perhaps more than what we would usually do when we see parts of ourselves that are disturbing. Welcome it home. Place it in some form of creation on your altar. Create a talisman, particularly if it is what feels like a big shadow!
I am going to gather items, writings, and then look for a rock perhaps, dead leaves, earth… items from my shadow partner…. collage and paint, and then it feels like for this one, I need to wrap it in velvet and red thread. I willl burn old things from my altar, papers which I had to work for and which have come to pass…. old bills, old tirades
I will work on a painting and do bodyprayer. I will engage in stream of consciousness writing. I invite you to fashion your own rite and take photos of any part of it. Share it with us here below.
Let us know how you are… where you are… what is unfolding in you at this point. Where does 15deg Leo land in your chart? We are in the waxing Crescent phase of the Moon in Scorpio. At the Full Moon in Aquarius, I will invite us to do ritual together.
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I do want to mention what is zip zap zowing around as the Lion’s Gate, which for me is this very cross quarter day at 15deg Leo I am talking about here, rather than August 8th, which is a static day on the man-made calendar. I wrote about it quite extensively in the Sol & Leo Book of Secrets, so I will post that in a separate for you.
I will be doing a LIVE EVENT on Facebook tomorrow, August 7th, at 1pm PT on my personal facebook page and then post it here as well!
Hallowed be loves! Deepen into the force that is eternally here with us to support our WILD Magickal Self Creation ways. We are indeed the Art Sorceressesssssss we have been waiting for. Stirring and stirring and stirring our brewwwwwwwww to support ourselves, our lives, our creations, our humanity and all creatures thereon, our Holy WILD Gaia!