Naturalistic Paganism

Celebrations

Heat! Productivity! Strength! Growing Darkness!  These and many other themes join with the baking of bread and early harvest celebrations of Lunasa.  An odd tangent, but related to many of these, are diamonds.  Diamonds are made under incredible heat and pressure, and have extremes of many properties, from strength to the conductivity of heat and many more.  Just last week, prior to Lammas, the discovery that quadrillions of tons of diamonds may exist below us, in the depths of our Earth, was made.  This is based on the stiffness of the material far underground, and is both intriguing while also being far from proven.  Time will (hopefully) tell if this is true.  Whether true or not, diamonds also incorporate another aspect of Lammas – that of a hint of darkness, sadly experienced by many who mine or traffic diamonds today.  We each can do our part to help by only buying diamonds which are blood free.

Some of the ways many of us are celebrating were published a few weeks ago.   For my family, celebrations with our annual blueberry harvest and evening ritual will be this Friday.  For some of us, the celebrations will be later this week – the actual midpoint between the Solstice and the Equinox is August 7th.  However you are celebrating (including Imbolc celebrations in the Southern Hemisphere), may your be celebration be blessed.