unless a grain die
Lughnasadh: bringing in the season of harvest
It has been a long time since I have kneaded bread.
In my memory, my hands were always a patchwork of tacky dough coated with flour, and my entire body would sway back and forth with the wump, wump rhythm of kneading. My mother and I learned a process of French bread making that had us starting with dough stickier than normal and kneading with a unique style: scoop, flip, smack, fold, turn; lifting the dough up off the surface, flipping it over in the air and smacking it down again, then folding the top over and rotating the dough before doing it all again. Every few wumps would be followed by a pause as we scraped the clinging bits of dough off the surface and sprinkled a bit more flour down, repeating as needed until the dough was silky and came away cleanly. I perfected this system over countless early mornings spent making sourdough English muffins from scratch before the rest of my family woke up, back when I was an eager-to-please late teen and Proverbs 31 Woman-in-training. There’s nothing like the smell of sourdough English muffins sizzling on a hot griddle, it’s even better than coffee, I swear (and that’s saying something). And then there was the challah to be baked on Fridays, a stickier dough made with honey and egg that rolled out of the oven shiny with egg wash and smelling sweet and yeasty, a blessing for the hard-won day of rest to come. And in the summers, focaccia bread: thick flat bread fragrant with olive oil and rosemary and begging to be spread with hummus and black olive tapenade (mine and my mother’s favorite summertime lunch, best served out on the porch and accompanied with chilled sun tea). I used to do all of that; back when meditation was still a dirty word, and not something that I knew I needed. I gardened, I worked in the barn, I walked in the woods. I kneaded bread.
Yesterday was the festival of Lughnasadh (pronounced: LOO-nah-sah), the first of the three harvest festivals in the agricultural wheel of the year. Sometimes also called Lammas, the Christianized version of the ancient pagan festival, a name which will immediately suggest a magical Elven loaf of sustenance to fans of a book and movie trilogy involving a very short person’s enchantment with a particular piece of jewelry. Actually, the association is not far wrong: Lammas, Lughnasadh, is the festival of bread following the grain harvest. Tiny seeds multiplied through planting, made even more abundant through milling and mixing with yeast.
As Anjou Kiernan puts it in The Ultimate Guide to the Witch’s Wheel of the Year:
This turn of the Wheel brings the difficult work of reaping all that we have sown. Harvest season sustains us, but at a price—the seed we have nurtured from intention to nourishment we must now cut down in the field, a noble death that gives us life1.
Death and rebirth is THE recurring theme of the Wheel of the Year, and is especially evident during the harvest months. The land has ripened, and will soon begin her decline into winter. Plants that I have nurtured from seed are madly burgeoning with fruit of all kinds; while others, like my lettuce, has already bolted and been cleared to make room for other plants. Soon I will be putting in my fall crops: more lettuce and carrots and ground cover blends, whilst also waiting for my first big tomatoes and sweet corn (which got a late start this year, thanks to that very rude mid-May frost). Summer is, and is going. “The goddess has given birth to the harvest and both she and the god must die to nourish the human race,” says The Witch’s Wheel of the Year. My young Christian self responds:
Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. [John 12:24-25, The Message]
(Except, I never read The Message as a kid, since that was a blasphemous version).
Wump, wump, wump. I see myself there in our drafty old kitchen beside the wood burning cookstove, cast iron griddle atop the stove hot and ready, swaying to the rhythm of my kneading. It was like prayer. It was an act of true love.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough. [Matthew 13:33, New Living Translation]
I still make sourdough bread for my husband and kids, even though I can’t eat it anymore (an act of true love, indeed). And I don’t knead it by hand anymore, either, thanks to the modern miracle called a Bosch Kitchen Machine that my mother-in-law gifted us on the occasion of our wedding (my undying thanks, Mom!). The sound of bread kneading has a mechanical resonance to it now, but I still find it soothing. I know by the sound of the engine if the dough is coming together nicely or if it needs more water or flour. The making of cultured sourdough bread takes 24 hours, requiring more planning than I normally put into bread making and teaching all of us about patience. There is a wonderfully homey magic about bread. I will never tire of the little rush I get from peeking into my bowl and seeing the nicely mounded dough, risen and ready to be divided into loaves. And the smell of it fresh from the oven…I swoon a bit every time. Recently my grandmother, who has been gluten free for years, shared her bread recipe with me and it’s given me back all the feels of bread making, including the melty wonderfulness of steaming hot bread spread with butter that I can actually eat (thank you THANK YOU GRAMMEE!!!). It’s perfectly yeasty and egg-y and reminds me of challah. I get emotional every time.
But yesterday, in honor of the festival, I made corn bread. It was all I could manage with guests coming that evening, and it goes nicely with the chili I had simmering in my trusty crock pot. In a moment of witchy inspiration, I grabbed a double handful of nasturtium blossoms from the bowl in the fridge where they had been waiting to be dehydrated and folded them into the cornbread batter. It was delicious, and has perhaps sparked a new harvest tradition. The Wheel turns. Old traditions die and are reborn anew; like the seeds of my Christian upbringing that I spent years killing and burying, and which have sprung up again, transformed by their union with the earth and my earthier roots into…this newsletter, and all it represents for me. During this season of harvest, I am grateful for who I was, even as a teen and young adult—cringe-worthy apologetics and all—because she became me, now. It took her a few painful cycles of dying and rebirth-ing to get here, and there will be many more to come as I get healthier, calmer, more balanced and aware. But right here, right now…I wouldn’t trade this harvest for anything.
make peace with all the women you once were. lay flowers at their feet. offer them incense and honey and forgiveness. honor them and give them your silence. listen. bless them and let them be. for they are the bones of the temple you sit in now. for they are the rivers of wisdom leading you toward the sea. //i have been a thousand different women Emory Hall, @emoryhall
I am the Christ. I am the Goddess. I die so that I can be reborn, bountiful and glorious, again and again.
And again.
Wishing you a bountiful harvest this Lughnasadh, in whatever form your intention has sown this year; and a renewed gratitude for who you were, because of who you are now.
Lammas (Corn) Bread2
2 cups cornmeal
1-1/2 cups measure-for-measure gluten free flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk (may substitute almond milk or oat milk)
4 eggs
1/2 cup olive oil (not extra virgin), or coconut oil mixed with olive or avocado oil
Two large handfuls washed and dried nasturtium flower heads, about two cups loosely packed
Whisk together eggs, oil and salt. Add milk and stir until fully combined. Add corn meal and flour, and sprinkle the baking powder evenly over top. Stir again until combined, then fold in the flowers. Spread into a greased 9x13 inch baking pan and bake at 400 degrees for 20-23 minutes, until edges have pulled away from the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool five minutes before serving. Best with soft butter and honey. Enjoy!
Kiernan, Anjou. The Ultimate Guide to the Witch's Wheel of the Year: Rituals, Spells & Practices for Magical Sabbats, Holidays & Celebrations. United States, Fair Winds Press, 2021.
Adapted from: Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (15th edition). United Kingdom, Wiley, 2010.