First Harvest

A Bountiful Time to Pause and Reflect on the Journey with Gratitude and Prepare for What’s to Come

Six months pregnant with my daughter

Today is August 1st and it’s been a long while since I have felt drawn to journal. With everything that has been going on in the last six months with this fourth (and last!) pregnancy trying to keep my gestational diabetes in check and being anxious to welcome my daughter into this world, winding down from stressful work and preparing for an early leave, I have not had much energy to do too much spiritually. It’s not to say everything has been at a stand still. Now and then I have had the time and energy to do some journey work, divination, creative work, and up until the last week or so, I had still been practicing kung fu weekly (which definitely served to keep me healthier physically, but was a form of meditative, focused practice for me). But I certainly haven’t been steadily engaging my spiritual practice as I had before my pregnancy when I was following the monthly coursework of the Sacred Path Apprenticeship.

Inside cover of one of my Book of Shadows

I would have to flip back through my divination journal and see when I really felt drawn back to re-engage my work (I think it had something to do with lunar node shifts!), but it wasn’t too long ago. Perhaps in the last month or two have I felt re-energized and eager to refocus some of my energy and work on connecting with the things that “fill my cup” and feel fulfilling and joyful. I have started a new grimoire and have been leaning into my creative side to draw and paint within its pages, I have felt called back to my witchy/magical roots (reading, gathering materials to craft for now), which is where all of this started when I was around thirteen years-old. I created a new kitchen altar on the table where I seem to do all of my creative work, dipped back into my stack of reading, created art for my own purposes rather than for clients, dabbled with jewelry-making again, and in the process have felt like I have been coming back to myself.

On the first of the month, I receive an email with a video message from Nikiah, who runs the Sacred Path Apprenticeship and mentors its students. The little check-in is meant to introduce the work of the month and help students tune into the energy of the changing seasons. Because I have been so disengaged from this particular work, I hadn’t been tuning into these messages, but this morning, while enjoying my cup of coffee, I put the video message on. It is August 1st, a day celebrated by some as the First Harvest, Lammas, or Lughnassadh. Back when I was actively following Celtic-based spiritual traditions, I would be observing certain ritual and seasonal practices, but since I have shifted towards ancestral explorations, my seasonal observances have been sporadic. To be honest, it’s been challenging trying to tune into a different seasonal cycle (Chinese holidays and 24 Solar Terms) and release the practices I have been so used to observing through the many cycles since I started on this earth-honouring, season-observing spiritual path. I have been trying to tune into some of the holidays my ancestors may have celebrated, but even they feel somewhat foreign, though many are also synced with the seasonal cycle. I have been connecting with what feels right for me and letting go of the rest, trying to forge new traditions for myself and my family, which has been going well enough, but those Celtic observances do seem to fit more in line with the climate and local seasonal changes I notice around me that I often find myself confused and feeling “in-between” whenever they come around, unsure of what to do. In many cases, I do nothing and let these portal times pass by, which only continues to make me feel out of sync, untethered.

During this morning’s video message, Nikiah spoke about the significance of the August 1st holy day in Celtic traditions but also acknowledged that some of us seekers might not come from such ancestral lineages, and so she invited us to research what our own ancestors might have been practicing around this time. I was very grateful for this invitation and reminder of the exploratory work I am trying to do, and returned to some of the resources I have been referencing in my studies, around Chinese astrology, the lunar calendar, the festivals and Solar Terms.

I forgot that the Double Ninth (Qixi) Festival is celebrated sometime in August. It is observed on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month and this year will be celebrated on August 22nd. It is known as the Chinese Valentine’s Day, a day for lovers as the folklore surrounding the festival centres on the story of the Weaver Girl and the Ox Herder. While I don’t feel particularly connected to the “Valentine’s Day” aspects of the festival, some of the more interesting cultural practices to me during this festival include weaving and needlework competitions in honour of the Goddess of Weaving, praying to the Goddess for Skillful Hands, Ingenuity and Wisdom, and catching spiders.

Pen and watercolor painting I created for a University class on Star Stories

I’ve felt particularly drawn to the Weaver Girl as Goddess of Weaving because of interests in other Weaving Goddesses around the world and their associations with fate, magic, creation, and transformation. Though we know the Weaver Girl through her story with the Ox Herder, I am sure there is more to her than that. I am reminded now to seek her out and see what it is she has to teach me, especially as I am in the process of trying to refocus my energies towards aligning with my particular Fate road and purpose in this life. I am in a place of new beginnings.

Though Lammas is associated with High Summer and the Western element of Fire, in Chinese tradition, we are about to transition from “Great Heat” (associated with the Chinese elemental phase of Earth) into the next solar term of “Start of Autumn” on August 7th, which is connected with Metal. The following solar term is “End of Heat” on August 23. I’m still trying to understand the Five Phases system since I have been working with the Four Element system for a long time, but as I tune into the energetic shifts, it is interesting to me that I have always felt like June and July are more Fire and high summer, and in August I start to feel the shift towards beginning a new cycle (school year, ramping up of work projects, Celtic new year in the autumn) which feels different and less fiery. Layer on top of that this general feeling in my life that I’m transitioning out of old, outmoded ways of being into something new, it seems as those this month is an excellent opportunity to explore these energetic shifts more intimately and continue to try to move away from the familiar, comforting systems I am used to in order to take the next steps in further exploring these other traditions and practices. In aligning myself more fully with the energetic shifts of the seasons, the moon and stars, in particular, the Five Elemental Phases, perhaps I can better leverage the energy towards helping me move into this next phase and new beginning, and with the Ghost Festival following Double Seventh in late August (August 30th), I will make offerings to the ancestors and beloved dead and ask for their guidance and support in this process.