Lammas Tide

Lammas marks the time when the ebbing air tide turns, and the water tide flows in.
The ebbing air tide has been a time of waiting, patience and paying attention.

When the water tide flows, it will bring a time of ripeness, of completion; a time to gather the fruits of your labor, and a time for truths to be known. This is the first of the three harvests, the harvest of fruit. With the Fall Equinox comes the harvest of grain, and with Samhain, the harvest of blood.

This, like the planting time from the Spring Equinox to Beltane, is a period of intense hard work. It is a time of intense activity, both work and play.

The Mother at this time is at the height of Her power, her breasts flowing with milk at the very sound of a child's cry. Honor Her with works of healing and compassion, and by with a portion of each thing you earn or reap. The Mother of All Living tells us that she demands no sacrifice; she says this because she needs to make no such demand; a portion of every labor and every love returns to Her by the law of Nature. When that return is brought to Her consciously and with gratitude, she rewards Her children by opening to them the storehouse of Her wisdom; the truth which lies there is our own, which She has saved for us from our gifts of past seasons. The first fruits of harvest are come, and stores saved from the last harvest may now be safely eaten since we are now assured that they will soon be replentished. Thus, at this season we eat new fruit and old meat, celebrating new achievements and old wisdom.

Love and labor are one in the Mother at this season. Seek to perform all your work with love, and work to sustain your love for others.

Like the Planting Time this is a season which, in the old days, required the give-and-take of community effort, as large teams harvested one farm after another. Look carefully at the patterns of reciprocity in your relationships with those love and care about, ask yourself whether they are balanced and fair, and what you can do to improve their equilibrium.

Try to float to the surface of the Tide, to take a long and broad view of things so as to maintain your perspective. Take time from your full and busy days to study and contemplate the huge expanses of space and time--astrophysics, karma, your past lives. This is the most productive Tide for trance divination, for travelling in trance and dream the roads that lead to the future and the past.

The Lammas Queen

Come to me now, in the first hour of harvest,
Hour of falling wind and sun,
And the sweet rushing in of the salt sea tide.
Now I am fruit, moist and heavy before it falls.
Mine is the milk that lets down and flows
To the sound of a hungry cry.
I claim as sacrifice the first fruit of your labor,
And return to you from my golden store,
The fruit of your labors in seasons past.
I bare my breast and the world spills forth;
Joy and loss and flame and shadow.
Drink and be whole, for the joy will last

Thunder Moon

The hot, humid days jostle and bump up against each other until, every few days, there is a small eruption of thunder, lightning and rain. The weather seers always predict a wilder storm than ever occurs. We hope for the storm to break the heat, but it doesn't much, or for long.

The old idea was to pray to the Thunder God for mercy and safety in the storm.

But at the moment I'm praying rather for a great breaking storm to relieve the tedium and lighten the heavy air.

The Time of Ripening

(The ebbing Air Tide, between Midsummer and Lammas)

This is a time, most of all, for attention and care. Things are growing close to fruition, and the only thing to worry about is that ill luck and carelessness may be the ruin of all you have gained. There is little to be done now in the way of strenuous work, but much need for watchfulness.

Take reasonable precautions against accidents and natural disasters. Trust your own wisdom and intuition, but also seek out the advice of those wiser and more knowledgeable than you.

Take stock of uncompleted jobs and unfinished business in your life, and give yourself to the possibly tedious or emotionally demanding tasks of wrapping things up, bringing things to closure, or polishing and perfecting.

Set yourself the exercise of striving for perfection in some piece of work. Seek also to perfect knowledge, skills, and relationships. Marshall your energy and organize your resources for the busy and demanding Harvest Time to come.

The Goddess and God at this time are the mature Mother and Father of creation, crowned Queen and King. They are Titania and Oberon, recovered from their Midsummer mischief and confusion, ruling together reconciled and fulfilled. Let their joy and playfulness lighten the mood of a serious time

Heat Wave

Let's hope it's a heat wave, anyway, and not the new summer.

Mrs. Drinkwalter and Bobby are not North of Berkeley for the summer, but way way to the east of Berkeley. Every summer, they leave one of the few parts of the U.S. that is comfortable in July. Mrs. Drinkwalter does this because blood is thicker than water. Bobby goes along because he is a very small dog who is zipped into a mesh and canvas carry-on bag and given little choice in the matter.

When the temperature is slightly above 100 and the humidity slightly below 100, lassitude and depression take over.

My friends in Texas deal with similar weather, but live with high-powered air conditioning that is always ready at the flick of a switch. Here in New England we endlessly fiddle with fans and cranky window AC units that have to be hauled out of closets. We experiment with, and argue about, when to open or close which windows and doors, when to draw the curtains, how much time can reasonably be spent in the town pond.

Everybody's weak points get wobblier. Sad people get sadder, crazy people get crazier, the kids squabble, the dogs behave badly.

Nothing much is accomplished.

The Case Against Healthy Living

My mom, at 90, (that's microsoft clip art on the left, I do respect her privacy), has more or less lost her mind. She has gone from crabby and forgetful, to nasty and clueless, to weirdly paranoid. She believes that there is a conspiracy afoot to use her for medical experiments and collect her money. We, her children, are required to answer trick questions to prove that we are who we say we are, and not part of this plot. My sister flunked because she couldn't remember her birth weight.

My parents are cousins, and the traits they share emerge in all their offspring. Many of these traits are actually kind of cool. Good skin. High HDL. Verbal intelligence. A sense of humor. One of the not-cool traits, it now appears, is a decline into disabling dementia in the late 80's. My dad suffered only a year of or two of vagueness before he died of a stroke at 87. My mom, who has lived the healthiest life imaginable in every way, still has nothing life-threatening wrong with her at all. Her heart is fine, her lungs are fine, no diabetes. She has the blood pressure and lab results of a 30-year-old. She has arthritis, and she is mad as a coot. People in her family have made it past 100. This could go on for years.

I hope very much to follow my father's model. I am revising my ideas about healthy living. I want that stroke or heart attack that will finish me off before the paranoid delusions set in. I figure that by eating enough doughnuts and not exercising too much, I might be able to time it about right.