Lughnasadh / Lammas: Celtic Harvest Deities, Folk Rituals, and Seasonal Witchcraft
Lughnasadh is the time when we shift from high summer to the very beginnings of the harvest season. If you live rurally, the landscape starts to shift from green to gold, and the sound of the wind through the leaves changes pitch. There is just a hint of a rattle in the leaves as they move from supple green expansion towards the time they will become brittle, die, and fall to the ground to nourish the soil for the next cycle. This is the season of Lughnasadh and Lammas, an ancient Celtic fire festival and the first harvest on the modern Wheel of the Year.
The names for this season, Lammas and Lughnasadh, are often used interchangeably, but they each carry distinct cultural threads.
This festival has become a blend of the celebration of the first of the grain harvest and the earlier holiday of Lughnasadh, which some people translate as the death of Lugh or the death of high summer.
Mixing of a Lammas Loaf on my altar with Nordic runes
Lammas/Hlafmæsse/Loaf Mass
Lammas is a much more modern festival coming from the Old English “hlafmæsse” meaning “loaf mass,” which was a Christianized harvest festival celebrated in Anglo-Saxon England. On this day, a loaf baked from the newly gathered grain would be brought to church and blessed. Or sometimes the priest would go out to the fields and bless the grain. There were many rituals and practices surrounding the harvesting of grain that were given a veneer of Christianity once conversion occurred. Folk magic always survives. The face of it may change, but it is still there.
Deities of the First Harvest
Lugh stands at the center of Lughnasadh. Known as Lugh Long-Arm, the many-skilled one, Lugh was not a god of any single domain but rather of all the arts. He is a solar figure in some traditions, but more accurately, he is a culture-bringer, a warrior-poet, a sovereign craftsman. His festival is not only agricultural, but is also celebratory of skills and excellence.
In the English countryside, we find echoes of harvest spirits in other forms. John Barleycorn, the personification of the grain itself, was sung about in folk ballads as a being who must be cut down and fermented to nourish the people.
Though not a god in the traditional sense, John Barleycorn stands as a sacrificial figure, killed and transformed so the community might live. His presence reminds us that the harvest is never without cost. There is even an old union song using John Barleycorn as someone who gives his life for the cause.
Demeter and Ceres, while not Celtic, often show up in modern witchcraft observance of the harvest. And if you work with the Greco-Roman pantheon, that is as it should be.
But in the Celtic world, we find Tailtiu, the queen/Goddess whose death is honored at Lughnasadh. Tailtiu and other similar regional Goddesses are symbols of strength, focus, and endurance combined with the nurturance offered by the land.
The Wheel of the Year & Lughnasadh/Lammas
In modern witchcraft, this is the first of three harvest festivals, followed by Mabon (Autumn Equinox) and Samhain (Final Harvest). Lammas marks the beginning of a transition. We are still in summer, but the apex is behind us. The energy of growth begins to pivot toward gathering, ripening, reckoning.
For agrarian peoples, this was a tense and holy time. The grain might still be vulnerable to wind, rain, or blight. Folk customs rose to meet that fear; blessings for the reapers, charms to protect the barns, divination to guess the yields to come.
Lammas is a time to reflect on the fruits of our labor, to ask what we are harvesting not only in the field, but in our lives. It’s a time of gratitude and letting go, knowing that at some point what we have started must be released in order to complete its cycle.
Folk Magic and Regional Rites
Across Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, Lughnasadh was marked with great gatherings. These were not quiet affairs. There were horse races, bonfires, drinking, music, feasting, matchmaking, flaming wheels rolled down hills, parades, oath-swearing, and trial marriages that would last “a year and a day.” The most famous of these gatherings took place at Tailteann in County Meath, named for Lugh’s foster mother.
Hilltop pilgrimages were also common. Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, and sites like Slieve Donard in the Mourne Mountains, drew walkers at Lughnasadh time, often blending the pre-Christian custom of flower burial in high places, to honor the death of high summer with later Christian pilgrimage.
In parts of the British Isles, Lammas was also a time for country fairs and markets arising from the older Lughnasadh festivals. Young couples might get to know one another at the gatherings and in the fields.
Corn/Quern/Grain dollies were woven from the last sheaf, believed to house the spirit of the grain. This grain spirit would be kept through winter and plowed back into the earth come spring, continuing the cycle. Or paraded through the town.
In the Americas, the are typically made from the husks of corn which is one of the indigenous grains. But in Europe, they would be made from wheat, barley, or rye stalks.
Weather lore abounded, too. If Lammas Day was dry, it was said the rest of the harvest would be safe. If it rained, there might be rot. Witches and cunning folk often watched the skies carefully and read the signs in birds, winds, and dreams.
Sacrifice and Renewal
At the core of Lammas and Lughnasadh lies sacrifice. Not in the modern sense of suffering, but in the old sacred meaning - to make holy. The cutting of the grain is a death. But it is also the beginning of nourishment, of bread, of beer, of life carried forward.
Offerings can be made to the land in thanks, burned in a bonfire, or left in a high place. The first fruits, literal or metaphorical, can be shared with kin or given back to the spirits who helped them grow.
One of my Lammas Altars
Tending Our Place in the Cycle
Even if you don’t have a garden or farm, thanking and acknowledging the earth as our source of true wealth is still important. In your modern witchcraft practice, you don’t need fields of wheat or mountain games to honor Lammas.
But you can work with the themes of grain and gratitude in whatever way feels right to you. You might bake bread with intention, bless your tools, give thanks for your body’s work and wisdom, or tend your garden spirits.
Offerings to Lugh might include crafted objects, poetry, or acts of skill and beauty. Offerings to Tailtiu and the ancestral mothers might look like land-tending, composting, or devoting energy to sustaining your home and community.
Whatever your path, this is a time to mark. Not because the calendar says so, but because the Earth is speaking. The winds are shifting. Fall is on the way, and the knife is near. Our bodies know this, and the spiral of our DNA whispers to us. We are all a part of this.
Lammas Magic is Earth Magic
When we honor Lammas or Lughnasadh, we aren’t just reenacting old rites. We’re tuning ourselves to the pulse of life. The cycle of seed to harvest to seed again. This is not a metaphor. It’s the essence of what it means to be alive, to be human, to be part of a living world.
Many times, I’ve heard older witches say that these celebrations are just part living in tune with the seasons and doing what makes sense and part honoring the spiral of life so that the wheel continues to turn.
As witches, animists, or pagans, this is the kind of magic that calls us. It reminds us that our magic is not just about casting spells or lighting candles, but about listening, tending, and weaving ourselves into the sacred web of season and soil.
Lughnasadh Blessings, Colette
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