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It is a feast celebrating both the Goddess and the God, a time of both male and female principles, but also a time of transition. Even as we reap what we have sown, gather the rewards for our work, the God willingly is sacrificed at the hand of the Goddess and blood is on the fields even as seed was spread on the fields in spring. The grain we reap is the product of a dying plant. The promise of new life in the spring is nestled in the heart of every grain we reap, even as the grain pounded into flour and kneaded into bread will sustain life through the coming seasons. The Goddess herself, now in the time of her bountiful and abundant Mother phase, is also present as the reaper of grain, the reaper of souls and life, the Crone who gently eases life into death that it may be recreated as life again. Corn and all products of corn are most especially celebrated, including ale and beers from corn and other grains. European peoples also frequently held fairs at this time, to display their harvest products, trade horses and other livestock, as well as hiring (for a year and a day a worker would contract with an employer - until the next Lammas fair). We deprived urban Pagans often have no corn patch to harvest for this festival, but we can still celebrate with a feast of corn products. Often around this time you begin to find the lovely dried ears of colored corn available and I like to decorate the altar with them. I also had the amazing good fortune to run onto a wonderful little basket with sides made of corn cobs, woven together with corn stalks. Corn dolls are also easy to make, or to find in many craft stores, and very appropriate decorations. Little men and women are made of bread, as well as stars, for the feast and ritual. What an excuse to have fun making gingerbread men! Starhawk in Spiral Dance outlines a beautiful ritual to sacrifice fears through channeling them into the bread people and tossing them into the fire. That's not practical where I live, but I crumble and toss them outside for the birds to enjoy. Then we share the bread stars as we think about what we wish to harvest. This is my husbands time to shine - as this is his feast to cook. He has created his own delicious recipe for burritos, which are served with Mexican corn, rice, and delicious salsa as well as any other side dishes which sound good at the time and, of course, corn chips and dip, not to mention jalapeno cornbread and plain corn pone which we make because the hounds love it. Lammas is the greyhounds favorite holiday! Not only do the hounds get to pig out, we spread some outside for the birds, and now we even have some fish in the creek out back spoiled to corn pone nibbles, so I suppose we'll have to take them some, too.
Green Corn FestivalThe Native American holiday of the Green Corn Feast or Green Corn Festival varies from tribe to tribe, and in some tribes is, indeed, celebrated to this day. It is considered such an important and sacred festival, that very little information is actually available about it, being kept within the tribe. Some tribes celebrate it earlier than August 1st, believing that the green corn must be blessed, and the homes & people of the tribe cleansed and made worthy, before the first corn could be harvested. There is a tremendous, wise, and insightful book about the Cherokee relationship to Selu, the Corn-Mother, and modern life, written by Marilou Awiaktka. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Native American, particularily Cherokee, beliefs. I believe anyone would benefit from a reading of this particular book, and will include a link for it at the bottom of this page.
I have a favorite ditty for this celebration, a traditional English song;
Our harvest begins We have now to endeavor to get the corn in We reap and we sow And stoutly we blow And cut down the corn that sweetly did grow
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