Tag: summer

Lughnasadh, celebrated on August 1st, is the first harvest of the year, halfway between summer solstice and autumn equinox. Also known as Lammas, it is a celebration of creativity, craftsmanship, and harvesting what you sowed. This can be a powerful time for writers to connect with their productivity, hone their craft, and practice gratitude for what has been accomplished. This post includes a discussion of the difference between Lammas and Lughnasadh, the themes and meaning behind Lammas, Lughnasadh rituals for writers, Lammas correspondences, and ideas for how to celebrate Lughnasadh. It also features thirty creative writing prompts inspired by the holiday which can also be used as Lughnasadh journal prompts.

The Wheel of the Year is turning again. You can really feel the change up here. You definitely notice when it starts getting darker—not dark, still—but darker. Last week, for the first time in months, I turned the light in my bedroom on. I try not to look at the way the fireweed blooms are racing up its stalks. Or the fact that the irises and the dandelions are past their prime. Or that I know deep down we missed our chance to to pick spruce tips, which are one of my favorite foraged foods.

Instead, I am focusing my attention on the fact that, like every week in the Alaskan summer, the land has given us new wonders, both in our garden and in the woods. It’s a chance to resolve that even if I missed the spruce tips this year, I can make sure I make the most of currants and the kale. Plus, my first dahlia is threatening to bloom.

What is Lughnasadh?

It’s the first harvest! Lammas, also known as August’s Eve and Lughnasadh, is a time to celebrate the fullness of summer and to begin preparations for the winter. It’s time to enjoy the abundance of fruits, flowers, and vegetables that the land is offering up, while also preparing some of that abundance for the leaner times. The holiday revolves especially around grains like wheat and barley, and the crafting of those grains into foods, like bread and beer.

It’s the day that the Wheel of the Year starts to turn toward fall. Though the earth is still bursting with abundance, you can hear the first whispers of winter.

In the northern hemisphere, Lammas is usually celebrated around August 1st, about halfway between summer solstice and autumn equinox. In the southern hemisphere, Lammas falls around February 1. Lughnasadh is across from Imbolc on the Wheel of the Year. 

Like Imbolc, Lughnasadh is often overlooked, which is maybe not surprising. It’s a holiday about wheat and when we’re all out here lost in the throes of summer, we might not think a holiday about wheat is super-sexy. And maybe there’s a part of us that doesn’t want to recognize that the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting real.

But it’s a beautiful time to pause and really appreciate the abundance that is around us this time of year: Berries are coming ripe, the shyer flowers are bursting forth, and there’s still so much sunshine. It’s easy to get so caught up in the joy of summer that you fail to savor it, to be grateful for it. The lovely thing about Lammas is that it gives us the chance to slow time, to take it all in, take stock, and renew our summer energy.

Lammas vs Lughnasadh

You might be wondering, what’s the difference between Lammas and Lughnasdh. For the purposes of this post, I am using these holidays interchangeably, but they are definitely not the same. Lughnasadh traditions and histories differ from those of Lammas, but there are also some important similarities.

Lughnasadh was originally a Gaelic festival (shout out to my foremothers!) named after the god Lugh, a master craftsman and artist who created a funeral celebration for his mother after she died from overwork trying to get the crops to grow. Another story associated with Lughnasadh imagines Lugh as the one who sacrifices his life so that the community can eat. As John Barleycorn, Lugh inhabits the spirit of wheat and barley, allowing himself to be cut down so that others will not starve.

The name Lammas is derived from “loaf mass,” a nod to the importance of bread in this Anglo-Saxon Christian holiday. Like Lughnasadh, Lammas celebrates the first harvest around August 1st and pays special homage to the grains that are coming ripe. It was a time to harvest the first grains, bake the first bread, bless the fields and houses, and give thanks.

Many people use the terms Lughnasadh and Lammas interchangeably these days, and I can see why. To me, these holidays are different flavors of a similar celebration. Including these holidays together allows me to consider as many options for celebrating this time of year as possible.  

Lughnasadh Correspondences and Symbolism

Colors of Lughnasadh 

The colors that evoke the feeling of Lammas are those of wheat, the sun, and plants. Think fiery. Orange, yellow, green, brown, and red can all be used to remind us to be grateful for the harvest we currently enjoy and to start preparing for the close of the year.

There are so many ways to celebrate a holiday using just color. Wear red, write with an orange pen, add some more green to your writing space, or bring in a vase of yellow flowers. All these little signals can help you feel the energy of the season and be a little more mindful and intentional.

Foods for Lammas

Barley! Bread! Wheat! Beer! Lughnasadh is a very glutinous festival. You can imagine that baking plays a prominent role in traditional understandings of “Loaf Mass,” so anything baked is welcome at a Lughnasadh feast. But there are other foods to celebrate at this time as well. Just look around you at what is coming ripe. Here at our house we have strawberries and currants, salad greens, and the very first of our tomatoes and cucumbers. The zucchini have just started to emerge. Honey and mead can also be a great representation of the fullness of the sun and the abundance of the earth at this time of year. 

Crystals for Lughnasadh 

Again, the crystal correspondences for Lughnasadh are those that evoke fire and the sun, as well as those that evoke growth. You can choose a crystal based on what you want to highlight. Yellows and oranges, like citrine, carnelian, and tiger’s-eye can help you shine. Green abundance crystals like aventurine and moss agate can help you channel the growth and peace of nature. 

The Meaning of Lammas

Though Lughnasadh is one turn of the Wheel of the Year that is often overlooked, the themes celebrated and evoked at this time are especially profound. Why do we celebrate Lammas? Some of the themes of this time of year have to do with rebirth, gratitude, abundance, harvest, and craftsmanship. Many of these can be very powerful for creatives.

First, there is the abundance to celebrate. It’s a time of creativity, of things coming to fruition. The earth is highly productive right now, and you can be, too. Use this period when the sun still shines bright to create and celebrate that creation.

It’s not just that the world is alive with the creative abundance of summer. Lammas celebrates that we worked for the harvest, that the intentions and seeds we planted earlier in the year have come to fruition. It is not only gratitude for the fertility of the earth, but also to our former selves for planting seeds, putting in the effort, and knowing how to make things grow. 

It’s a good time to reflect on the work you’ve put in thus far and on how much your work has helped guide you toward your goals. Pat yourself on the back for the new skills you’ve gained, the work you’ve done so far, and the harvest that you are now reaping. 

Not only that, it’s time to harvest what we’ve grown and turn it into something. This is the importance of bread for Lammas. It’s not just that everything is flourishing, it’s time for us to take action and turn the gifts we are given into something meaningful, something important, something that will feed us. And that’s exactly what we need to do with our words and our art at this time of year. Take the raw material and the skills and turn them into something that will nourish the soul.

Lammas is also a great time to think about the direction you are heading, and to change course if need be. There’s still a lot of time for growth before the winter. It’s even the time of Lammas growth, a phenomenon in trees where they put on a second flush of leaves. You too still have time for tremendous growth in the coming months. What do you want to accomplish in your writing life? How can you use the energy of Lughnasadh to support that? Let this pause before we fall into autumn rejuvenate your creativity. Take advantage of it! 

How to Celebrate Lammas

There are quite a few writing-oriented ways that you can use the energy of August to further your writing practice, and especially to hone your craft as an artist. It’s a great time to practice gratitude, reflect on the year so far, work on honing your craft, savor the sensual feast that is summer, and set yourself up for the rest of the year. Here are some ideas for Lammas rituals that can also support your writing and creativity.

1. Give thanks. Look at what you have to be thankful for in your writing practice. Do you have a great community? Have you written a lot of words this year? Created one piece you are especially proud of? Create a list of all the things around your writing practice that you are grateful for. Keep this list near your writing space, in your planner, on your desktop, or in a drawer, as a reminder when the days start getting darker.
2. Take stock. Lammas is a perfect time for reflection. What have you harvested? Have you reached the goals you had hoped to by this point in the year? What has been accomplished? What has fallen by the wayside? What unexpected growth or challenges have you encountered? Challenge yourself to make a list of 25 accomplishments and wins so far this year. You might be really surprised at how much you have done, even if it wasn’t the writing goals you expected.
3. Create a scent that represents what you want to harvest with your writing. This is a great time to gather your fragrant flowers, your favorite herbs—everything that the land is bursting with—while the growth of the plants are hitting their peak. Make a scent that reminds you of this moment, this harvest, the bounty that is provided. Use this scent in your writing sessions to remind you of the fullness and abundance that is available when we nurture what we want to grow.
4. Level up your craftsmanship. When was the last time you focused on the craft of writing? This is a great time to get in touch with those skills, grow your craft, and really focus on the practice of writing. Find a craft book, a course for writers, or craft videos on youtube and develop your skills. Maybe a few new ideas will help you go further or get unstuck.
5. Burn your negativities. What do you think is holding you back right now? What’s keeping you from reaching your writing goals? What do you need to let go of to make the most of the rest of this year? Write down all your negative attitudes and bad habits and burn them. Let them go. 
6. Bless your writing space. This is a time of year when blessings are all around us. We can use this energy to give new life to our writing space. How can you make your space a little more sacred? A little more conducive to creative production and harvest? Create a small ritual to recognize, give thanks, and bless the space where you write, even if it’s the kitchen table.
7. Recalibrate. You can see now what has been going well so far this year, and what has not. Lammas is this unique moment in time when we can see the direction we’ve been heading, and we still have time to change course and experience growth and creativity before the slow times of winter. What has been working and what has not? How can you move forward in a direction that will help you realign and get on the right track?
8. Set yourself up for the great harvest. It’s a good time to be finalizing the projects you are working on. It’s time to start shaping them into their final forms and getting them out into the world, whatever that means to you. What is the end goal of your writing? Being published in literary magazines? Developing your blog? Finding a publisher? Start moving in that direction. Polish off those pieces and get them out the door. It is time for harvest!

Lughnasadh Writing Prompts

Here are 30 Lammas writing prompts to help get your ideas baking. I have created these prompts to be interpreted in many ways, so don’t worry about “what it means.” Just let yourself write and see where your creativity takes you.

Many of these are intended as inspiration for creative projects like poetry, short stories, or memoir. However, I’ve tried to leave them open-ended enough that they can also function as Lughnasadh journal prompts. How can you explore yourself through these lenses?

1. Write about your first taste of the harvest.
2. Write about a corn doll that comes to life.
3. Write about a great sacrifice.
4. Research one of the crystals of Lammas (Here is a partial list: aventurine, citrine, golden topaz, obsidian, moss agate, rhodochrosite, clear quartz, carnelian, peridot, sardonyx, tiger’s-eye.) How is it made? What are its properties? What does it represent? Create a character with the same attributes as the gemstone you researched.
5. Write about someone who doesn’t know they are in decline.
6. Write about a plant inhabited by the spirit of the divine. 
7. Create a narrative in which a wicker man takes on all the negativity of the people around him.
8. Write about the dimming of the sun.
9. Create a recipe for bread that makes dreams come true.
10. Write about a king who sacrifices himself for the people. 
11. Finish a piece of writing you have already started. Craft it into something fulfilling.
12. Write about a skill you know well as if it were the favorite sport of the gods.
13. “This is just the beginning of the fall…”
14. Write a poem, story, or hermit crab essay in the form of a contract.
15. Make something greater than its parts. Free write about summer. Cut out the best lines and make them into a poem.
16. Write about an athletic competition that takes place at a funeral. 
17. Write about collecting seed from something as it dies.
18. Research a local fruit. What is its lifecycle from fruit to seed to fruit? Tell its story.
19. Write about a prophetic dream that is spawned by an ash leaf under the pillow.
20. Write about what happens when you eat the body of the sun god.
21. What is a smell that you associate with baking? Write about that smell and the memories around it.
22. Write about a habit that goes up in smoke.
23. Write about someone sharing their first fruits. 
24. Spend time outside. Document every detail you can. Soak it all up. Use this as the basis for a story, essay, or poem.
25. Write about the first whispers of darkness.
26. Use your memory. Think of one moment you wish you could capture. Write about that moment in as much detail as possible. 
27. This photo by Cerqueira on Unsplash.

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28. This picture from Ivan Rohovchenko on Unsplash.

29. This picture from Étienne Beauregard-Riverin on Unsplash. 

30. This picture from Ashley Light on Unsplash.

I hope you enjoy these Lughnasadh rituals and writing prompts. It’s the time of year to celebrate everything we’ve accomplished so far, everything that has grown, and everything we have created. Feast on the berries and breads. We are an extension of the creativity of the land, and it is our turn to take what is on offer and turn it into something fulfilling, something beautiful.

So give thanks for the strawberries and savor that first dahlia. Bake some fireweed scones and let the things holding you back go up in smoke. These summer joys are fleeting. But they are oh so beautiful. And that’s something to write about.

I hope this helps you find some way to connect with the season and with your writing. Are you doing anything special for Lammas/Lughnasadh? Have any of these writing prompts inspired you? I would love to hear about it! 

If you are looking for more prompts and rituals based on the Wheel of the Year, you can find them here. For more creative writing prompts, look here. For more ideas about how to deepen your writing practice with rituals, check out this post.