August celebration
August by Miranda Gray (c) 2000
In the Northern Celtic tradition the 1st August is the festival of Lughnasad (or Lammas) when the harvest of the first fruits and corn is celebrated. It is a time of plenty, of fruition and endings, when the fruit falls and dies holding the seeds of new life in the future year. It is also the time when we bow to the Mother energies with gratitude and turn to face the coming darkness of the Enchantress. We can feel sadness that the time of light is ending as we put our feet on the very first steps of the labyrinth path that spirals slowly into winter. The presence of the Mother lies behind us, and the Enchantress in all her challenging wildness begins to grow towards us with each step.
If you are a Womb Blessing sister in the Northern Hemisphere, celebrate the return of the Enchantress archetype of the Earth Mother and welcome her wild magic, deep spirituality, inspirational creativity and power. Be ready for transformation and change and a wild ride as the energies of the Earth and the Womb Blessing Enchantress year combine with your own Enchantress pre-menstrual phase energies and the Enchantress decreasing phase lunar energies!
Wear something that symbolises the Enchantress to you to remind yourself daily that her energies are growing in your life. Do activities in tune with her presence and energies – be creative, be impulsive, be wild and unrestricted. Have a creative project or a project which involves clearing and making change, and have a spiritual activity that you do daily as you dance the labyrinth steps towards the Crone who appears on the 31st October.
If this Enchantress phase is wild, remember that there will be peace and rest in the Crone energies, not just in the winter but also through next year. So now is the time to be active when the Enchantress calls and gives you her energy and guidance. Go out under the stars and drum your feet on the earth. Dance to the rhythm of your heart and to that of the Earth and stars. We are women of magic, women of power and women of freedom. Drum for women who are desolate and abandoned so that they may know their power, their dark beauty and their magic.
The Enchantress brings us one deep and powerful message – to love and accept ourselves – and she will make it as loud and as obvious as she can. And she will disrupt your life to get her message across! The key to the Enchantress phase is self-love – to listen to our innermost needs and to lovingly nurture ourselves by accepting and meeting these needs. So if situations get stressful and overwhelming; if emotions get strong and reactive; if your power feels aggressive and frustrated; listen to your needs, and do something towards meeting them to show that you love and accept yourself and your beautiful and wonderful femininity.
The additional meditation for the August Worldwide Womb Blessing celebrates the abundance that we have as women and helps us to release it in our lives.
Womb Blessing sisters in the Southern Hemisphere, today you start the journey of walking out of the darkness of the labyrinth. The Womb Blessing Enchantress energies blend with the Maiden archetypal energies of the Earth, both dynamic and both independent and empowered. Until the 31st October the intuitive magical wildness of the Enchantress year energies will be tempered by the intellectual and structured energies of the Maiden. This is an amazing time to bring ideas from your intuition out into the light and to take the first steps towards making them reality. As the Maiden energies of your menstrual cycle combine with the Earth energies and those of the increasing Moon, the Maiden will help you to make things happen in your life that meet the needs of your Enchantress and to create self-love.
For the Southern Hemisphere the additional meditation celebrates the renewal and rebirth of our femininity back into the world.
Love and hugs
Miranda xx
