Strap yourselves in, kids, because this is the first of three posts about Sabbats. Because I wanted to do a PBP post on each of the sabbats, and that conveniently takes up Lammas, Litha, and Mabon, so it’ll be a pretty easy ride for the moment.
So, this week is Lammas, the first of the harvest Sabbats, celebrated at the start of August in the Northern Hemisphere, and at the start of Februrary in the Southern Hemisphere. I also call it Lammas and not Lughnasadh because it’s easier to pronounce, I’m not actually honouring Lugh, and I’m not Celtic enough, with regards to my path, to use that name. So Lammas it is.
It’s not one of my top faves, but it always gives me the image of Autumn, of snuggling into Autumn in the forest as it gets cooler and more like the weather I dig. We start making stews and soups, and leave the heat of summer behind. I love that. Because Autumn is my favourite season.
I like to imagine that anyway, because in reality, early February is when Summer is still kicking on, and it doesn’t really subside til late March. I may have to rejig my calendar to match this, because it feels weird to celebrate Lammas in the middle of bloody summer. đŸ˜‰ (I wonder how that would even work… *ponders*)
I think I’ll shift just Lammas into March, because the way I’ve got my calendar worked out, Lammas, as a harvest festival is just after where I have my Wep Ronpet celebrations. Far too early to harvest anything. Putting it in March makes a bit more sense, and even if March can still be summery, it’s the last bit of summer, and it’s all downhill from there. Then we hit Mabon, and go from there. (I won’t shift Solstices/Equinoxes; they have specific dates. The others are more flexible.)(…I think I’ll shift Samhain so it’s right before the Mysteries of Wesir, too. That seems more appropriate.)
…This wasn’t meant to turn into an entry on when I should celebrate Lammas, but there you go. But having the Sabbats as close to the correct seasons as possible is important to me, so I don’t mind shifting around the minor Sabbats so they fit better with the rest of my calendar. I’d rather shift the odd day where I can than rejig the whole calendar that, for the most part, works out for me. It’s just those other little dates that don’t quite fit the seasons.
It’s really interesting to think about that too, of summer potentially shifting from December-Feburary to January-March. Autumn is more like April-June, Winter turns up in July-September, and Spring runs October-December. It’s shifted since I was a kid, and I’ve felt this was the case for several years now, that the seasons have shifted a month along. I’m in no position to speculate as to why this is happening, though I’m tempted to suggest it’s more rotation of the Earth and axis tilt than just down to climate change. I think it’s a complicated combination of both, as well as other factors, that have shifted the seasons along. Winter is certainly drier than I remember it being, but that’s part of the trend too.
In a post I made last month, I talked about which Gods I’m thinking of celebrating/honouring at each Sabbat, and I had Wesir and Aset down for Lammas. Wesir as God of the Grains, and Aset of the Green Earth. Not a traditional epithet of Aset, I am willing to acknowledge, but I’m pretty sure Aset’s done that thing where She’s introduced me to Wesir, and now He’s just become part of my festival calendar. I conceive of Aset here as the Aset who conceived Heru from the revived body of Wesir with Her magic. She makes the Green Earth fertile, and helps bring forth life. That’s how I look at it, and weirdly, of all the myths of this kind associated with the Wheel, this is the one I can relate to the most, and one I don’t run screaming from because it’s all heteronormative and weird. I don’t know why it’s different; maybe it’s because they’re my Gods, and not some nameless God and Goddess, and somehow, IDK, it makes sense.
I’ve also just had a thought that this also relates to Sobek as Tatanen, the first mound of land that came out of the Nun. It’s a figmentary thought, and not quite complete, but I’ve seen those images of Wesir-shaped boxes with grains growing in them, and in the context of how I see this Sabbat, I see Sobek giving life to Wesir, too, as well as Aset, and that this is an echo of what Djehuty told me, that Sobek is Amun is Ra is Ptah is Wesir. Perhaps Sobek and Wesir are sharing fertility aspects here. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll figure that out one day.
…The Green Earth bit could also be Sobek, too, now that I think about it. Connecting Him to both Wesir and Aset makes some semblance of sense in this context, though it is all UPG, I’ll remind you, and just my musings on how to connect my Gods up with the Sabbats in a meaningful way.
What’s also weird is that, looking back at that provisional Wheel, I’ve got Sobek, Heru-sa-Aset, Aset and Wesir all over that calendar. In some ways, I’m not even surprised by that, as They’ve become my main Gods. But it’s also leading to many different headaches as I try to figure out how it all works with my UPG. It doesn’t have to work out into a single narrative, that’s what polyvalent logic is for, but it does mean holding more than one story in my head.
But I think I’m veering off-topic now, so I might just finish here. I’ll ramble on about Litha next week, and Mabon the week after that. I’ve also got one W topic set aside for the Wheel of the Year, and I’ll hopefully have figured out my calendar enough to do a good detailed post on it all by then. And why I prefer a fixed over a wandering calendar, and not just because I suck at maths. XD
Per Sebek 