Lammas, the loaf mass


I celebrated Lammas yesterday by doing some A.T. maintainence. I knew it was Lammas, but hadn't researched it past knowing it was the end of summer peak.

In the wake of the UU shooting I have been very sad, and it was so good to spend a day in the high mountain near Clingmans Dome, walking, sling-blading grasses, mining rocks with my hands, eating nuts and fruit, talking to Julie and the others in my little work detail.



Lammas, the loaf


Celebrated on the “cross season---halfway between the summer solstice and fall equinox.
Called “first harvest.
Ends the period of greatest light—6 weeks on either side of the solstice.

Lammas, the loaf mass



The following is from School of the Seasons
http://www.schooloftheseasons.com/lammas.html

The Celts celebrate this festival from sunset August 1 until sunset August 2 and call it Lughnasad after the God Lugh. It is the wake of Lugh, the Sun-King, whose light begins to dwindle after the summer solstice. The Saxon holiday of Lammas celebrates the harvesting of the grain. The first sheaf of wheat is ceremonially reaped, threshed, milled and baked into a loaf. The grain dies so that the people might live. Eating this bread, the bread of the Gods, gives us life. If all this sounds vaguely Christian, it is. In the sacrament of Communion, bread is blessed, becomes the body of God and is eaten to nourish the faithful. This Christian Mystery echoes the pagan Mystery of the Grain God. Grain has always been associated with Gods who are killed and dismembered and then resurrected from the Underworld by the Goddess-Gods like Tammuz, Osiris and Adonis. The story of Demeter and Persephone is a story about the cycle of death and rebirth associated with grain. Demeter, the fertility Goddess, will not allow anything to grow until she finds her daughter who has been carried off to the Underworld