BS: Wheel of the Year

Subject: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 13 Jul 14 - 04:43 PM

Who here observes the classic Wiccan / neo-Pagan 'Wheel of the Year'?

I've dabbled in and out, never really taken it too seriously though.

If you do a bit of neo-paganry, what do you do?

Lammas coming up in a couple of weeks. i've made some scented oil with orange and sandalwood and I've found out some orange candles. yet to think any further.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Jul 14 - 04:47 PM

I would make a terrible witch or warlock, I am always noticing the solstice or equinox a couple of days after it's gone by... but I do like to notice them, holidays you don't have to believe in mythology to celebrate! Planet-wide, too, if you don't mind the seasons for the solstices...

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 13 Jul 14 - 05:05 PM

Most people are aware of Hallowe'en. Most Morris people are aware of May Day. A few people will light a candle for Candlemass. But Lammas? Who remembers Lammas - other than GUEST,CS, obviously.
England used to have a bank holiday on the first Monday in August, which roughly coincided with Lammas (though not by that name), but that got moved to the other end of August, the same way they moved the Whitsun bank holiday to the end of May instead of keeping it at a set six weeks after Easter, which meant that the bank holidays were more sensibly spaced out.
So yes, I'm up for celebrating Lammas. What do I need? Hallowe'en is pumpkins. Candlemass is candles. Mayday is may/hawthorn blossom. Any ideas?

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jul 14 - 06:32 PM

Well over 60 times round now, and conscious that the summer's glory is burdened with declining days. Not long till dark evenings, and the far next year's hope tempered by the probability that I will be less capable of fulfilling it. And so it goes on, whether you burn candles or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Jul 14 - 07:42 PM

Before I opened this thread I guessed it was about some motor industry award, probably presented on TV by Jeremy Clarkson and a team of blonde bimbos, with the winning product being rolled on stage along a carpet of flashing lights to a crescendo of cheesy funk-lite music.g

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 13 Jul 14 - 07:58 PM

I'm not pagan nor xian nor any other "ism" but I do identify most closely with the idea of the Wheel of the Year, and I make up my own little observances. I am very keenly aware of the passage of the seasons, of the solstices and equinoxes and full and new moons- and I love the songs and tunes that folks have come up with to express their joy and awe and awareness of the seasons and changes.

Right now in this hemisphere I am ripe with the resplendence of high summer, of the verdant glory of July just before things start to turn brown. I feel a bit like John Barleycorn or Jack in the Green at the height of his strength- I always feel healthiest in June and July. The full heat of summer hasn't yet pushed itself to the limit, and the daylight still lingers into the evening. But soon the berries will fall off the bushes and the grasses will be more brown than green. I'll love that too, but with a bittersweet love.

So that might make me a pagan, but I don't call myself that.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 10:49 AM

Topsie, I like Lammas as it's one of the more visually obvious of the old agricultural festivals. If you live anywhere near grain fields - I'm in East Anglia so plenty of those around here - you will start to see the harvest coming in around Lammastide.

The Anglo-Saxon word Lammas, translates as Loaf Mass, so bread baking should probably feature in your celebration I would think. I like to bake some nice bread and then go out for a picnic with it in the corn fields.

Any songs pertaining to harvest and sacrifice too, with the classic John Barleycorn fitting in perfectly. The colours I associate to this time of year are sun / wheat Gold and orange. Plus corn poppy red. The red of the poppy we see growing among the corn fields also to me echoes the red of blood, associated to sacrifice.

I'm not too sure what Wiccans do at this time of year, or how it fits into their mythic cycle, I think Summer Solstice is the time of the supremacy of the Oak King, so he probably still features at this time in some way.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 01:19 PM

Every summer my daughter and I have a small ceremony to welcome summer. We make bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches when the first large tomatoes are ripe. It has been difficult this year because on her last visit here (2 weeks ago) I had no ripe fruit yet. Silly perhaps, but in the terms of what grows on this property annually, it is interesting to note that summer is late this year. Global warming throwing off the dates of annual traditions.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 10:10 AM

We had our first salad of the year made with a full-size homegrown tomato just yesterday. The first one of the year is something we note with pleasure, though not religious significance.

The cherry tomatoes have been coming in for a while now - maybe two weeks. I am trying a new kind, "Sweet and Neat," and they are working out well. The fruit is shaped like an eggplant and is 1.5 inches long, so I don't get tired of plucking dozens of tiny fruits.

Yesterday I pulled elm, maple and redbud seedlings out of my beds. Do you suppose they represent the Dark Side of Nature?

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 10:44 AM

it makes sense that the three big grains of the area (barley, wheat & oats) all ripen around the middle of July, so the crops would be safely harvested and stored away by August 1. The Middle Ages had the advantage of a nice warm climate that favored agriculure and which was unfortunately replaced by the "Little Ice Age" a few centuries later. The joys of living in an interglacial period.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 12:49 PM

BRead, what a great idea for celebrating. ALso beer, if you like it, for a grain/harvest celebration.

I remember when I had a garden the lovely feeling of eating the first whatever that were actually ripe...

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,Solstice Boy
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 01:17 PM

I was born around 7.00 am on 21st of December.. which give or take a bit is usually winter solstice ???

near enough anyway.

So.. I still don't know if it make me special, or imbues me with any 'magick' powers..???

Would be nice if it did though... especially as I got stoned a lot and listened to all the 'Gong' LPs back in my hippyish youth.

But knowing my luck, if I was some kind of 'chosen one', I'd probably be the 'one' chosen for ritual sacrifice...???

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 01:29 PM

It's past time to pick grapes in my neighborhood. I haven't checked yet because everything is late. Usually I pick around July 4. I'll check this evening. Bread and wine. Good things from summer!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 03:33 PM

A plan: home-made bread decorated with ears of corn, and beer - those'll do it for me, I can hardly wait.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Jul 14 - 02:55 AM

My wife celebrates all these festival days. She also pays attention to cross-quarter days. I have a hard time keeping them all straight, but the folklore behind it all is fascinating.

I found a Web page on the Wheel of the Year that was quite well done:
http://www.thewhitegoddess.co.uk/the_wheel_of_the_year/index.asp.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 16 Jul 14 - 05:52 AM

This is from the Godalming Borough website, on the page describing the Lammas Lands along the river Wey:

"Lammas Lands are named after the old practice of taking a hay cut on, or by, Lammas Day (1 August) after which cattle would be turned out to eat the fresh flush of grass that followed the hay cut."

If it's to do with hay and cattle rather than corn, maybe the celebration should include either beef or cheese (or both), depending on whether the participants are vegetarians. I think I'll still include the home-made bread and the beer though.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 16 Jul 14 - 08:42 AM

I suspect that the haying was not reason for the harvest celebration. It's not uncommon to get more than one cutting per season and the name came more from the coincidence of the last cutting falling around the same period. Once you have the winter's supply of hay in and the pastures are getting poor, it's common to graze the hay fields. Besides... food for folks is a higher concern and reason for celebration... by people, that is. The livestock would vote differently if they could. LOL

Pastoralists, hunter gatherers and farmers all live closer to nature and the seasons. It's urban folks who end up truely out of touch...

more so today, because fewer and fewer folks have "country cousins".

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Rumncoke
Date: 16 Jul 14 - 04:02 PM

When the hay is gathered or the crop harvested animals can be put to graze or browse on the 'gleanings' from a grain or legume crop or the 'aftermath' on the hay fields.

There is a time in the year when most plants have ripe seeds and that is the time to harvest it, or to cut the hay so that it has the maximum nutrients. Cutting hay after the seeds have been scattered could mean disaster as the amount of hay needed to get the animals through to the next Spring increases as its nutritional value falls.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 16 Jul 14 - 04:15 PM

Agree with Sciencegeek, though there's no reason not to have some good cheese with your bread and beer, I'm all in favour of a Ploughman's style lunch num num!

I've been doing a bit of chanting recently, It's a surprisingly effective as a meditative tool.

Some paganish chants for harvest here that could accompany kneading bread (I've read a folk magical practice could include reciting a charm while kneading dough)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltBYkGnzZDM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhkvqIdHV0

Though it might be worth composing ones own.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Jul 14 - 04:30 PM

Ah, but haying can be a very social event because it's very often a cooperative group effort - and a very good occasion for a celebration! Why not make haying into a traditional celebration?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 07:34 AM

I think it more likely that the Lammas lands or meadows were named after the Lammas festival than Lammas festival being named after the Lammas lands/meadows.

Plus the Christianised Lammas was plonked over the pre-existing Celtic festival of Lughnasa (named after the sun god Lugh) which also celebrated the first harvest of the corn.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 09:36 AM

Joe, yes haying is often a communal activity... but the timing is such that anything more than a good feed is unlikely.

Hay and grain must be harvested when the time is right and the weather allows.   It's the busiest time of the agriculatural year... too many things can go wrong even without delays. Which is why the celebrations are for a successful and finished harvest. You sooo do not want to be out in the fields with a hangover... :)

As for cheese... the most likely dairy products in summer are butter and soft cheese... like pot or farmer's cheese. Think cottage cheese. Hard cheeses would be what was left from the previous year.

The next big times on the farm are apple harvest and slaughtering in the cool of the fall. Cider & fresh meat.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 11:28 AM

Nice idea Sciencegeek, I wonder if it would be worth making some simple homemade 'yoghurt cheese' - I may have a go at that. That would be something lovely to spread on fresh homebaked bread.

How to make yoghurt cheese:



http://www.tasteloveandnourish.com/2013/07/31/greek-yogurt-cheese/

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 11:47 AM

yogurt or cream cheese would both work, as well.

the origins of various foods is facinating... a wonderful film called The Weeping Camel shows a bit how the pastoral folks of Mongolia live by milking their flocks and consuming the milk flavored with various herbs. Sheep, goats, horses and camels are all milked... yaks, cows and water buffalo are milked elsewhere in the world.   Butter is rendered down into ghee - clarified butter- to preserve it and meat is a rarity in the diet. Only so many excess bucks & rams to be found in a culture that measures wealth in livestock.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 04:23 PM

Robin Williamson wrote a lovely piece called Lammas which ties a lot of ideas together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbvqBtosSTA

*

As a cross-quarter festival (halfway between Summer Solstice & Autumn Equinox) it's general focus is the full moon which this year falls on the 10th of August. Which brings me to this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU6f21Bdsbg

(Though most pagans might prefer this version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU6f21Bdsbg)

Have fun!

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 04:25 PM

Oops!

Pagan Version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkRiKeg7TPg

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 10:59 AM

I have A Glint at the Kindling somewehre.

Does anyone make corn dollies anymore? I imagine that would have been a typical Lammas craft activity. I've never made one myself.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 11:31 AM

Oh you gotta do it, CS! Great fun, very rewarding & never without that primal wyrd thang which seems to be the dark essence of folk. Love to see 'em in a country church during the harvest festival.

St. Michael's on Wyre - September 2011

I've even got a book on the subject somewhere...

Here's what WIKI has to say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_dolly

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 04:01 PM

The ultimate Wheel of the Year song. Great one for Lammas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLu8UDpJ_b4

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 07:55 AM

Topsie wrote

England used to have a bank holiday on the first Monday in August, which roughly coincided with Lammas

The true pagans of our time worship the Holy Banks (not to be confused with the banks of Jordan), with Dow Jones as their major deity. Sacrifices consist of buying junk shares (via computer - human share brokers being on holiday); the expected return on investment is similar as from former times' hecatombs.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: Rumncoke
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 06:41 PM

I have had a corn dolly hung on the wall for decades - I really should have taken it down and sown the seeds each year, but it seems to still be working well enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jul 14 - 02:13 PM

Interesting little piece in the Grauniad posted two Augusts ago, mentions a few ways in which the Loaf Mass / Lammas was traditionally celebrated in different places, and also how a campaign to bring back the art of local bread baking called The Real Bread Campaign has adopted Lammas as a part of it's push to encourage us to bake and eat better bread.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/aug/01/local-loaves-for-lammas


Campaign for Real Bread: 'Local Loaves for Lammas'

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 22 Jul 14 - 05:49 PM

I've never come across the term 'haying' before - we call it 'haymaking'.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 23 Jul 14 - 08:27 AM

"I've never come across the term 'haying' before - we call it 'haymaking'."

funny thing is that it's very commonly used here in the states... haymaking is more found in older books. at least, here in the eastern part of the country.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 11:18 AM

1st of August yesterday.
Did anyone do anything?
I'm holding off till the full moon on Sunday the 10th.

I'll be baking some bread, then (if dry) we'll have a Ploughman's picnic lunch in one of the corn fields around here. Later (again if dry) in the evening a small bonfire with a couple of beers and hopefully catch the moon.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: gnu
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 11:52 AM

The hey is finally in...

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 12:03 PM

Still plenty of lorries full of hay bales passing the house here. I'm going to have to try to keep a note of when the harvest is over and the haying completed.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: sciencegeek
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 12:14 PM

waiting for latest bunch of thunderstorms to stop before this cutting is safe to harvest... takes at least 2, usually 3 days of hot sun to cure & bale.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 12:37 PM

Don't get confused between hay bales and straw bales. Hay is dried grass and wild meadow flowers such as clover – it smells of summer. Straw is the stalks from wheat, oats, barley etc. after the grain has been removed.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 03 Aug 14 - 05:48 AM

Thanks Topsie, interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 08:16 AM

The night of the 'supermoon' (Sunday 10th August) was lovely and clear so we got a good view of the sky. The moon itself was extra bright, really vivid. We had a bit of a bonfire and we shared some bread that I had baked earlier in the afternoon (Mr called it 'Game of Thrones' bread because it was pretty rustic), and we drank Speckled Hen ale which is fittingly brewed fairly locally but are too strongly flavoured for me! It was pretty blustery and the breeze blew embers everywhere, so I didn't get much benefit from the heat of the fire as being a sissy I kept my distance from all the fiery brands being whipped up.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 08:18 AM

And we went for a drive out locally where there are lots of wheat fields - almost all of them are now straw and mud, though there was a smattering of patches of unharvested grain still to be seen.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 09:26 AM

Honey's in, needs a couple of weeks to settle before bottling. Massive crop.

Subject: RE: BS: Wheel of the Year
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 10:20 AM

"Don't get confused between hay bales and straw bales. Hay is dried grass and wild meadow flowers such as clover – it smells of summer."

LOL... if you're lucky. If not, it's full of weeds & stickers or else baled while still damp & musty smelling. I've even found the occassional beer can or unlucky snake in a bale. But they are delightful when freshly baled and safe in the barn.

Bright shiny bales of wheat straw are nice & often used at Halloween for "hay rides", and oat straw tends to have more grain still attached, so nice to use with poultry. They have a blast scratching through it.

CS... I enjoyed the one sample of Speckled Hen I brought back from England. I don't live close enough to a Beers of the World to get more.