Hello friend! 

Today, we in the northern hemisphere have an opportunity to mark the Celtic festival of Lammas, or Llughnasadh. Lammas falls at the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox and signifies the liminal space between light and darkening, marked by the first harvest.

If you follow the festivals of the wheel of the year - the solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarters - you might find Lammas gets less PR than some of the others.

But for farming communities, nothing could have held more emotional and material significance than the first harvest.

After months of back-breaking effort, this marked a sweet moment of completion. It would have been a time to make corn doilies, visit sacred springs, and gather new grains to bake the “first loaf” - which would be offered to the gods or spirits of the land as a gesture of thanks.

It’s a time between worlds. The work is done, the harvest now can’t be changed - too late for last-minute requests to the gods. It’s a moment to approach with gratitude for what is, whatever the outcome.

It reminds me of the late, great Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects: how “Coming from Gratitude” is where it all begins, and where the spiral of inner work always weaves back.

In the Tending to Endings deck, our Harvest card speaks of the satisfaction of completion. But sometimes it’s not that clear cut. When the field is still half tilled, when we’re between worlds, when it’s too late to change things but we don’t yet know their outcomes - those liminal moments offer vacant space for gratitude.

Where is your field half harvested today? What are you practicing gratitude for? Reply to this email and let us know!

Tell us how you’re finding the prototype cards

If you picked up a pack in our recent print run, we’d love for you to fill out our survey to let us know how you’re finding them. It will take maximum 10 minutes and helps us make sense of this project and how to evolve it.

That’s all for today!

With Lammas gratitudes,

Heather, Ally, Will