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Saturday, July 26, 2014

Lughnasadh


VÃ¥rblot_2010_offergÃ¥vor.jpgLammas or Lughnasadh is the first of the three Wiccan harvest festivals.  The Earth is fruitful and abundant, crops are bountiful and livestock are fattening up for winter.  Wiccans mark the holiday by baking a figure of the God in bread and eating it, to symbolize the sanctity and importance of the harvest.  It was a time for celebration with horse races and a feast for God Freyr. 

Traditionally, three stalks of the first grains are bound together into a sheaf and kept as an amulet of fortune.  Sometimes it was also left in the field for Odin’s horse Sleipnir.  Pagans see this as a time when the God loses his strength as the sun rises farther south each day and the nights grow longer. The Goddess takes on the aspects of the Harvest Mother, the Earth is fruitful and abundant, crops are bountiful and livestock are fattening up for winter.

Ironically, today this is probably the least-honored Wiccan festival.  As we've become industrialized, harvest celebrations have all but been forgotten.  Our daily bread comes not from the bounteous fields, but plastic-wrapped bulk at a supermarket.  Now would be a good time to remember just how crucial the farmers' harvests are to our continued well-being.  For the Urban Pagans, find a Farmers Market to attend or for others try baking your daily bread from scratch, not from a box. 

This is a great activity for children, covens, family clans and solitaries.  Lammas Loaf:

1 cup bread flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 slightly beaten eggs
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup shortening

Preheat oven to
220 C (220 degree Celsius = 428 degree Fahrenheit).  Sift flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder in large bowl.  Blend in eggs, milk, and shortening.  Beat the combined mixture as you chant:

                       
The Earth Mother grants us the grain,
                        The Horned God goes to dark domain.
                        By giving life into Her grain,
                        The God dies, then is born again.


Pour mixture into greased corn cob molds for cornbread sticks or into greased or lined cupcake pan.  Mixture can also be baked in a square pan, shaped like a man, and then sliced when cooled.  Bake 20-35 minutes until top no longer indents when touched.

 

lammas88298a0621b1030f.jpgYou can buy readymade dough at most stores and follow the directions.  Readymade dough can be also found gluten free in the freezer section if needed.  Your Lammas loaves do need to be plain, try mixing in nuts or cinnamon.  Either way, don't forget to leave some for you Divine Friends and Ancestors. 

 



The Wheel of the Year has turned once more,
and the harvest will soon be upon us.
We have food on our tables, and
the soil is fertile.
Nature's bounty, the gift of the earth,
gives us reasons to be thankful.
Mother of the Harvest, with your sickle and basket,
bless me with abundance and plenty.

 


 






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