New Lammas/Lughnasadh video!
I recently read something in a new Wiccan book release that made me sad and a little frustrated. In this work, the author stated that Lammas/Lughnasadh celebrations on the Wheel of the Year in Modern Paganism can feel like an outlier, a festival that for many people is hard to connect to, understand or celebrate. If you do not live in a rural area, why celebrate this festival at all? As such an important festival to our ancestors, we have to realise the importance of this festival not only in this context, but also in the modern day.
Historically, Lammas/Lughnasadh is the celebration of the first harvest, or games/festivals occurring just before the first harvest. It was an opportunity for people in a rural setting to meet others from the surrounding countryside, often from many miles away, in order to make trade deals, marriages and also enjoy games of competition. When your world is quite small as you live and breathe your farm/village life, the chance to get out and meet others is so very important, as I’m sure we all have experienced during the various lockdowns since the COVID pandemic. Imagine if that was your world all year round, and this was your only chance to see people outside of your village.
As well, the taking in of the first crops is something that should be celebrated in any nature-based tradition. Whether you live in an urban setting or not, what happens to the harvest in or near where you live, or in your own country on a wider scale does affect you, even if you are in the heart of a downtown metropolis. If the wheat harvest is bad, you will find bread and other wheat-based products go up. Same for any crop, whether that is apples, onions, potatoes, carrots – you get the idea. Not only does this affect you financially, but it can also affect you physically. If you are not supporting organic and locally produced crops as much as is possible within your capability, then you are effectively saying that nature doesn’t matter, and how we get our food is more important than the overall effect on the environment itself. This sort of thinking has led to genetically modified food, the long-term consumption of which we will only begin to notice in the coming years. The vast industry of monoculture crops requires much more pesticides and fungicides than a diverse or organic crop, as permaculture has shown us time and again. There is strength in diversity, and great weakness in monocultures. This applies not only to agriculture, but to all culture.
Everything is connected. Everything is related. To think that you are separate from something is mere illusion. Just because you might not live in a rural setting, doesn’t mean that what happens there has no effect on your life. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and how we treat our environment all affects us every second of every day.
Let’s remember this when it comes to Lammas/Lughnasadh; let us remember the interconnectedness of all things, and the sacredness of all things. Let us remember how important this time was for our ancestors, and how important it is still, today, wherever we live. It’s not an abstract concept, especially if we follow a nature-based tradition. It is a real, living, breathing, contributing part of our world, and should be one of the most important festivals in the Wheel of the Year.
To find out more about Lammas/Lughnasadh, I have written about it and the other festivals celebrated in Druidry and much of Modern Paganism in my book, The Book of Hedge Druidry: A Complete Guide for the Solitary Practitioner.

White Peaks, Derbyshire, taken on a walking holiday
Most people who enjoy hiking know that getting to the top of a mountain can be difficult. But for those who are experienced, perhaps after about 40 years of climbing those mountains, we begin to understand that it is the descent that is actually the more challenging of the two. Sure, you become breathless as you make your way slowly up the mountainside, sweat on your brow and your legs muscles pumping. But on the way down, you have to take special care, your balance comes into play, and one wrong move can leave you stranded on that mountainside awaiting rescue.
And it’s this analogy that I’ve come to understand as the integration of those rare moments of epiphany in our lives. Getting to the mountaintop can be the easy part; coming back home can be the more difficult. We got to the top, now we’re on our return journey, tired, but taking the memory and experience with us to internalise. Having the epiphany is easy – integrating it into every day is the more difficult part of the journey. It’s the inverse of the mountain’s peak, and once we’ve traversed this sometimes treacherous way, it’s then that we can find that lovely and level middle ground.
It doesn’t matter whether it was a small realisation or a grand epiphany that you’ve come to in your life; the really important thing is how to integrate it into your soul and your life. You can’t just have it and then forget about it – or, you could, but then what’s the point? The real point is to make it a part of your life, each and every day. To live the realisation, to make it a reality.
And it’s not easy. Our everyday lives can be so busy, and filled with a plethora of tasks and minutiae that can take precedence unless we are careful about how we manage our integration. It’s all good to go on a retreat, to meditate, to do pathworking or journeying work, even spellwork, but then it’s up to us to bring that into our lives as well, and not just let it rest “out there in the universe”. We have to make it manifest, we have to make time and integrate the work. We have to come down that mountain.
And it can seem dull and boring, all the repetitive tasks that we have to do each day, when we’d rather be receiving even more epiphanies. We have to do the dishes, clean the bathroom, cook our meals, teach our kids, feed the cats, mow the lawn, pay the bills, etc. We have to get on with the chores of the day.

My little Kiri cat 🙂
But these elements, numerous as they are, form such a large part of our lives. So why shouldn’t we make them even more special, and give them more significance? Why can’t we internalise our hard work and let that inspiration flow out in everything that we do? It’s all a matter of perspective. On the summit, it’s easy to see all around you, to have that greater perspective. Scooping out the poop in the kitty litter box isn’t nearly as grand.
But that revelatory experience doesn’t have to fade with time. We can carry that in our souls, even when we’re running to the bin with a very stinky scoop of poop. For me, the act of service helps me to continue my revelatory experiences in everything that I do. It’s something that we’ve always taught at Druid College, and something which I’ve expanded even further in my studies and work with the Sisterhood of Avalon. That service, whether it’s working for your community or taking care of your stinky cats can be the thing that connects you to everything else. It is in those moments of interconnection that we realise that we are all a part of a greater tapestry of life, woven from many threads, stronger and even more beautiful when we support each other.
That larger perspective is carried in our hearts and minds, and into everything that we do, from the choices we make each and every day to the way we interact with people every single moment. And it’s not easy. Coming down the mountain there are loose rocks and stones that can trip us up or roll under our feet, causing us to lose our balance, wrench our knee, put our back out. But if we’re careful, if we’re mindful, we can hopefully get back to everyday life intact and in good condition to keep that momentum going. There are the pitfalls of losing our way, losing the daylight, losing the map or compass. But unless we’re really unlucky, most of us will make it back and into our nice, warm homes where we can integrate fully the experience. And it’s keeping that feeling in our hearts as we go about our daily tasks can be equally as challenging. That is the real inverse of the summit.
But once we have achieved that, then we find the level path that allows us a good vantage point, and is much easier to manage as well. We find that balance point in our heart and souls, and the way forward becomes more pleasant. So the next time you reach that mountaintop in your life, find a word that summarises the experience, something that you can recall when you are cleaning a clogged drain, dealing with a difficult neighbour, or sitting in a lonely silence. This is what you can use to make the vision real, to make the intangible, tangible. Manifest this in your life, and then all that work will truly be worth it.

The valley where I grew up in Quebec, taken from the lovely and level trail of an old disused railway.
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Here in the final installment of my YouTube and podcast mini-series on the elements. I hope you enjoy it! To listen to all podcast episodes, please visit my Bandcamp Page.
Join me as I set up and perform my ritual for the Beltane full moon, 2020. 🙂
I had fun filming this video 🙂 May the Beltane season bless you all!
My Elements mini-series podcast now has its fourth installment. This mini-series is available for free on my YouTube channel. You can also listen to all the other podcasts, along with audiobooks, meditations and more with my Bandcamp subscription.
Tomorrow is the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere, the time when the days become longer than the nights, when the sun crosses the celestial equator. It’s a tipping point in the cycle, where new energies come into play. This crossover, this shifting of energies happens over and over again, in a never-ending cycle of the seasons, the play and dance of the sun across our planet’s sphere. How do we work with these energies?
Right now our world is in imbalance, and we see that reflected in everything around us. It can be devastating when one follows an earth-based tradition. The rampant destruction of nature, our capitalistic, over-consumption culture and the degradation of cohesive and compassionate communities is at an all-time high. We are seeing the effects each and every day, on the news and social media, an influx of information 24/7 that our brains aren’t wired to handle, which only leads to more stress and fear.

As followers of an earth-based tradition, how do we cope with all this? We watch our consumption, we give back, we do the ecologically and socially responsible things. But we still have to cope with the stress, the fear, the despair sometimes. When it all gets too much, what can we do? For me, there are two answers. Watching funny David Bowie interviews (really, that man was not only a genius, but exceptionally funny!) and getting out in nature.
Getting outdoors is perhaps the best medicine we have, if we are able to get outside into the fresh air and sunlight, feeling the wind on our faces or looking at the vast expanse of stars overhead. For those who are not mobile, I know that this can present a problem, and we have to work with this as best we can, even if it is to sit by an open window for five minutes (close the doors to the room so you don’t lose all the heat in your home). If you live in a city, try to get out to a park (if you aren’t in quarantine). Any way you can, try to commune with nature, to refresh those bonds in our hearts and minds, to remind us of the beauty, power and strength that lies all around us, all the time. If you’re lucky enough to live in the countryside, so much the better.

We can also work for ourselves, to strengthen our hearts and bodies, to connect with nature, our gods, the ancestors, the spirits of place, the fey folk. We can use the inspiration of nature. There is magic all around us, in the water that comes from our taps, in the air that we breathe, in the candle’s flame and in the earth beneath our feet. We can work with these energies to help us physically, mentally and spiritually. We are a creative bunch. There are no limits for the work that we can do with nature all around us. If we use the energies of the Spring Equinox on top of all these other energies, we are making good use of the time and tides of our lives.

Tap into the energies of the growing light if you live in the northern hemisphere (or the energies of the growing darkness in the southern hemisphere) for your work. Pray, do magic, meditate, commune, establish your own personal connection to these energies. Work with the flow, not against it. Listen to the voices of the gods and goddesses, the ancestors, the Fair Folk. What do they have to tell you about right now? What advice can they give, and what can you do, for yourself and the world around you, to make it a better place? How can you be a better functioning part of your ecosystem? How can you ride the tide of this very special time, to do the work that you need to do?
As a suggestion, in the northern hemisphere, at the equinox we can do work to increase health, compassion, love, holistic living, and peace using these energies. In the southern hemisphere, we can work with the energies to decrease panic, war, anger, ill-health and so on. It can be difficult to ride these incredible waves of energy at this time of year. Everything is thrown up in the air, and it only settles come the next holiday, whether that be Beltane or Samhain, depending on where you live. That is the time when we begin to see the manifestation of the energies, the reality of the situation. At the equinoxes, the energy is ethereal and wild, like the wind. But we can harness that energy, with a little imagination, courage and determination. We are the practitioners of the magical arts. We are the Dreamweavers and the Shamans, the Druids, the Witches, the Wiccans and everything else. We are the earth itself, she is us and we are Her. We only have to remember that, in order to live in balance and right relationship.

Let’s use our hearts, our minds, our imagination. Let’s work for the benefit of all. Let’s take care of each other, and be the example that we want to see in the world. Things are difficult for most, yes, but we can help each other. We are not alone, we live with everything else on this planet. Our interconnectedness is what makes us strong, and our forgetfulness of this relationship is our downfall. Do what you can to make your environment strong and healthy, for everyone concerned, human and hon-human. Work your magic, pray by the moon, use the energies of the equinox to bring about change. Remember the Old Ways and the Old Ones, use the brilliance of current technology combined with the magic of herbs and stones. Use the gifts that lie all around us, and give back to the earth and each other. Take great care of each other.
Blessings of the equinox to you all.

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