The Writing Witch

“August’s Eve,” also known as Lammas / Lughnasadh, is the first of the three harvest festivals, and the last sabbat of Summer.

Celebrated around August 1st, this is the Wheel Of The Year checkpoint that marks the midway point between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox.

In this episode of the Alchemy Of Affluence Podcast, we’re continuing our exploration of the plant-tend-harvest cycle of manifestation as it pertains to the Wheel of the Year from a personal development perspective.

By this time in the year, you’re discovering how the ideals, values and intentions you set at Midwinter are actually playing out in action as your year shapes up around you. Here’s how to harvest the fruits of your labor that have manifested exactly the way you had planned, while also leveraging the hidden blessing of others which may have manifested in totally surprising ways!

Read on or listen:

This season is not particularly well represented in mainstream culture, but it’s been extremely valuable in my seasonal manifesting practice for the past several years since I began my witchy journey. And it’s my hope that it will become one of your most powerful times of year as well!

With the other checkpoints, I think we tend to count down the days more in anticipation. There’s a lot of hype around the spring celebrations – Not only because most people who are transitioning into the nature-based path are already accustomed to celebrating similar themes at Easter – But also because we’re looking forward to better weather!

And later in the Fall, we look forward to watching the leaves change and celebrating the more main stream harvest traditions, like Halloween and Thanksgiving (which have their origins in November’s Eve and Autumn Equinox traditions, respectively).

And even in the dead of Winter, Yuletide seems to have strong traditions in most cultures, which of course are all versions of Winter Solstice celebrations…

But then there’s August Eve, which is very easily overlooked, and for some, difficult to relate to in a way that’s relevant to our modern lives.

By this time of year, the excitement of it being summertime has pretty much already run its course, and Autumn really hasn’t set in yet. Where I live, in New York, August is easily taken for granted because, well, it’s just plain HOT. People are heat exausted and feeling pretty lazy and hazy typically.

Unless you happen to already have a strong connection to Lammas or Lughnasadh traditions (which are celebrated in Christianity and Wicca respectively) or if you happen to be closely involved with the corn harvest in your area, its really easy to miss the point of this holiday all together.

As beautiful as some of the Celtic traditions are for Lugnasadh, with all the corn and wheat and the burning of wicker men (which always makes me laugh and think of Nicolas Cage, by the way), none of that really seems to hit close to home for me. And I’ll admit that for the first few years of my witchy journey, I had a hard time deeply relating to this checkpoint, because none of what I was reading about it really had much at all to do with my real life.

Back in 2015-2016 (my second full year of ritualizing the seasons) I got really into gardening, which was immensely helpful in not only connecting me with the spirit of the Earth, Sun and Elements – But also in learning to understand the plant-tend-harvest-compost cycle of manifestation in our realm of exisence.

I experienced first hand how August’s Eve season is the time of the harvest of Summer vegetables, and the time when autumn colored flowers like sunflowers, marigolds, and black-eyed-susans are in bloom… But it wasn’t until after processing my 2016 seasonal journey that I came to really grasp the spiritual and personal development aspect of this time of year.

Traditionally, Lammas / Lughnasadh is considered the first of the three harvest festivals – The time to celebrate the Summer sun one last time before it really begins to wane. As we know, the days have been growing shorter ever since the Summer Solstice back in June, and so even though in most parts of the Northern Hemisphere there are still lots of hot days (likely even the very hottest) still to come, the fact of the matter is Summer is in the process of coming to an end.

I like to think of August’s Eve as the “beginning of the end” of Summer, which is very helpful in keeping track of my manifestation progress for the year. What we are “planting, tending, and harvesting” along our personal journey are our intentions. Supposing that we’ve set intentions at the beginning of the year to evolve in some way, then we solidified those intentions and “sowed those seeds” at the Spring Equinox. At the Summer Solstice, we celebrated however far we’d come without judgement. And now at August’s Eve, we get to pause and assess what we have brought into fruition so far.

We get to observe how our Summer plans are coming along, and decide whether there’s more we wish to achieve before it gets too cold. For example, if its August and you haven’t been to the beach yet well, you’d better get on that! Or, if you’re a student who’s classes start up again in the Fall, and haven’t made a fun memory this Summer vacation, time to grab your friends and go for an adventure!

As for me, In the first few years establishing Alchemy Of Affluence Academy, I often launched new courses in the Fall, so August’s Eve was a time to start planning ahead and spreading the word.

The above are just a few examples, but the idea is to take these themes and apply them to your life:

Pausing to acknowledge the beginning of the last days of summer, and beginning to make the shift into planning ahead for the Fall and Winter.

If you’re familiar with the Tarot, an easy way to connect with August’s Eve season is to associate it with the energy of the Seven Of Pentacles – an opportunity to see the fruits of your labor from the past year, while also checking in with yourself to decide what you still want to accomplish before the cycle comes to a close. The end of the year can easily creep up on you really quickly unless we pause to do this now.

There’s a sort of bitter-sweetness to this time of year, which is reflected in the Celtic traditions of Lughnasadh, if you’re curious to do any research on the subject. It’s one of the witch’s sabbats that’s often been associated with ritual sacrifices of various kinds, because although we’re celebrating what we’ve created this year, we’re also sort of mourning the warm and bright part of the year… Kinda like that Britney Spears song that says, “I’m always missing you before the goodbye.

This time of year has been really powerful in my seasonal manifesting practice because, for me, Summer tends to be a time when I’m easily swept off with the faeries, and may not be following any kind of strict schedule or pursuing my goals in any overly structured way – Which is a really good thing, because there is nothing so valuable as the joy of the present moment… But by this later part of the Summer season, it’s time to check in with myself and make sure I’m in alignment with my core values from more of a goal-oriented perspective.

This process can look totally different for different people, and can even vary a lot from one year to the next in one’s own life. What’s interesting about this time of year is that part of what you’re harvesting may in fact be the discovery of NEW goals and values and the inkling to begin casting off old ones that are no longer serving you.

By this time in the year, you should have been in the process of discovering how the ideals, values and intentions you set at Midwinter are actually playing out in action as your year shapes up around you. Likely by August, you’re harvesting some fruits that manifested exactly the way you had planned, while others may have manifested in totally surprising ways.

For example, in 2019, I started my year with intentions to expand my business in ways that were TOTALLY not aligned with the path my soul ended up needing to take that year. I had even planned to move to California by 2020. But by August 2019, it was not only clear that those things were definitely not going to happen, but it was also clear exactly WHY some of those goals had been so far out of alignment with my spirit.

I was in a strange place of being immensely grateful for everything I’d learned – Making plans to use this new understanding of myself to set updated intentions for the Autumn and Winter – While also feeling kind of sorry for myself for having been so foolish as to think I’d had it all figured out before!

To be honest, if such harsh disappointments had happened at an earlier time in my life, I likely would have been in a despondent state of depression about it. But because I was able to stay connected to the intuitive guidance I was receiving (and had an understanding of how the seasons relate to our menifesting process) I managed to actually experience some joy and comfort within that state of discomfort.

I ended up getting to know myself SO much better… Which eventually led to major epiphanies that ended up steering my life and career into a far more fulfilling direction, which I’m now seeing the fruits of in incredible ways!

Ready to harness the magnetic magick of gratitude and align with your best possible outcome for the remaining months of the year?

I invite you to join me for this fun guided journaling adventure!

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