A Kitchen Witch’s Lughnasadh

Lughnasadh or Lammas – 31st July/1st August (pronounced loo-nah-sah). A time to celebrate the first harvest, we give thanks to the Earth for its bounty and beauty.  Lughnasadh is associated with bread as grain is one of the first crops of the year to be harvested.

Symbols

Corn dollies, sun wheels, harvest tools, bread, cornucopias, sunflowers, sheaves of grain, sickles, scythes and herbs.

In the garden

The earlier summer flowing plants will be going over now, but there will still be plenty of colour.  Keep watering and dead heading your flowers saving and drying the petals and keep harvesting and drying  the herbs.

Herbs

Corn, frankincense, heather, oak leaves, sunflowers, wheat

Foods

Bread, corn, potatoes, nuts, wild berries, apples, rice, crab apples, squash, oats, grains, elderberry wine, ale and fruit pies.

Colours

Red, orange, yellow, green, brown and gold.

Incense

Rose, rose hips, rosemary, chamomile, bay, coriander, meadowsweet, oregano, rosemary, patchouli, frankincense, rose, apple, heather and sandalwood

Incense Recipe

Frankincense

Coriander

Meadowsweet

Oregano

Rosemary

Oils

Basil, rose, heliotrope, hazelnut, sandalwood, oregano, rosemary, jasmine, bay and clove.

Oil recipe

Sandalwood

Rose

Patchouli

Jasmine

Spell workings

Prosperity, abundance, good fortune, health, career and financial gain.

A Fruitful Spell

This is an edible spell (my favourite kind) and can involve the whole family or friends.

What you will need:

A variety of fresh fruit to make a fruit salad such as

Melon, Pineapple, Strawberries, Blueberries, Grapes, Oranges, Apples

As you start to clean and chop the fruit, focus on each type as you do so, adding it to a large bowl.

So as you chop the melon think about cutting up your money worries, visualise them disappearing.

Then with the pineapple, as you add the chunks to the bowl visualise each one being money that you add to your bank account.

For the strawberries, each one could be loose change that you find.

Grapes are good for abundance so as you add them to the bowl see them bringing abundance to you.

Blueberries are excellent for protection so add them to the bowl with the intent of protecting your spell.

Apples are also good for abundance so as you chop them and add them to the bowl visualise a healthy bank balance.

Oranges are good for luck and money so focus on this as you add them to the bowl.

When you are done as you serve each person give them a blessing of abundance and prosperity.  You could even have your guests say ‘So mote it be!’ as a blessing of thanks.

Lughnasadh Meditation

Make yourself comfortable, close your eyes and focus on your breathing, deep breaths in…deep breaths out…

As your world around you dissipates you find yourself standing in a field or lush green grass and wild flowers.   The air is warm, the sky is blue and the sun is shining.  Around you butterflies and bees flit about hopping from flower to flower.

From where you are you have a wonderful view of the landscape around you, field upon field laid out before you like a huge patchwork quilt.

You sit down on the grass and make yourself comfortable, it is such a beautiful day and nature is positively brimming with life all around you.

The bees are collecting nectar to store away to make into honey, ever busy, ever industrious.  You watch as one settles on a wild flower right next to you, so close you can hear the buzz, it collects the pollen, which adds to its already overloaded body, so covered in dusty yellow that it looks like the inside of a flower itself, then it flies off to the next flower, slightly clumsily as it is so heavily laden already.

In the field next to you are beautiful golden stalks of grain, swaying slightly in the late summer breeze.

In the field beyond that a combine harvester is cutting the grain ready to take away to store for the winter, the machine making stripy patterns in the field as it works its way around.

You notice a slight movement on the edge of the field just in front of you and look closer to see a small field mouse climbing up one of the stalks of grain, it stops as it hears a noise, still and quiet for a moment until it believes it has nothing to fear and then carries on climbing.  When it reaches the grain at the top it starts to eat, nibbling away at the seeds.

You look around the field you are sitting in, at all the beautiful wild flowers that Mother Nature has provided, the wonderful array of colours and the amazing scent that they carry with them.

A bird suddenly drops down on the fence post at the edge of the field in front of you, a black bird – he looks right at you and almost gives you a nod in greeting, he stops but for a moment and then he is off, soaring high up into the sky and heading for the trees.

You lay back in the grass and just stop for a moment, and listen – to the sounds of the machine collecting the harvest, the bees collecting pollen, the birds singing in the nearby trees, the sounds of late summer.  You feel the warm sunshine on your face, and the slight breeze that brings the scent of the grass and the flowers with it.  This is abundance, this is bounty, and these are the gifts of nature.  Take a moment to be thankful for all that you have, send out a blessing.

When you are ready, sit up and take one last look around and then slowly and gently bring yourself back to your reality, wriggling your fingers and toes and stretching your arms and legs.

Excerpt from Grimoire of a Kitchen Witch by Rachel Patterson