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Lammas Sacrifice and the Sacred Mission

Lammas Sacrifice and the Sacred Mission

Last updated on: September 25, 2026 at 3:40 pm by Heron Michelle

Lammas Sacrifice and the Sacred Mission 2026-09-25T15:40:59-04:00 Heron Michelle

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Heron’s Note: Originally published in July 2015, this was the very first post of my new Witch on Fire column. I had just accepted what I understood as a sacred mission to write and teach—and had no idea where that promise would lead.

It is Lammas, high summer, and the time is nigh! The Wheel of the Year clicks onward through the grand sign of Leo. I don’t know about y’all, but down here in North Carolina, I’m feeling the heat of this fiery season—the juicy high tide of this Greater Sabbat deep in my solar plexus, deep in my Will.

I am on fire to continue the magickal Work I began with my Imbolc dedications.

Black Eyed Susan, Photo Credit: Heron Michelle

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…

Lammas is a pregnant time, full of expectation, succulence, and satisfaction. I’m beginning to taste the fruits of my labors within the Great Work—and in my backyard garden, too!

Not long after the Sojo Circle celebrated Litha, the Summer Solstice, beneath a scorching noonday sun, our Oak King fell in battle to the Holly King—complete with lightsaber swishing noises, because we liberally sprinkle the mirth in with our reverence. Soon afterward, I began to feel the shift: the deepening, the lengthening shadows that inevitably lead us toward the dark half of the year.

The message was loud and clear:

Vacation is over. It’s time to get crackin’.

Mind you, I’ve been “turning the Wheel of the Year,” as they say, pretty much continuously since 2005. Like anything worth doing, practice develops fluency. (Heron’s Fourth Rule of Witchcraft: You Must Be Present to Win. More on that later…)

Long ago, at a distant Imbolc rite, when I was still a new-baby witchling, I stood before the altar and, with giddy expectation, spoke these words:

Spirit! Great Weaver of all things, I seek to know your nature! Ignite within me your fires; wash me clean of doubt; blow my mind. I dance to your rhythms with earthen shoes and the starry heavens tangled in my hair. Show me the way! As I will, it is so. Blessed be.

Since that day, I have been a Witch on fire.

I am washed free of doubt. My mind enjoys regular blowings.

Spirit and I are old dance partners now, so I have learned to sense the subtle twirls and dips. The magick has become intuitive, yet remains utterly visceral to me.

The First Harvest

Here we are at high summer, and my “garden” is bursting, both literally and figuratively.

Each evening, I go outside to fill my basket with vegetables I have been cultivating since Ostara. I sing my gratitude to the plants, Reiki flowing from my palms as red and yellow cherry tomatoes fall into them. It is easy to feel the bounty of the first harvest approaching because that basket is getting heavier every night!

Photo Credit: Heron Michelle

Most books about the Sabbats, including my own training course in Modern Witchcraft, describe Lammas as the first harvest of grain. The name Lammas derives from the Old English hlāfmæsse, or “loaf-mass,” so we celebrate with bread rituals and adorn our altars with stalks of wheat. Then there must be the ubiquitous singing of “John Barleycorn,” because apparently that’s just what you do.

The other day, however, one of my students asked me where he could find dried wheat stalks for his altar.

“The arts and crafts store,” I told him.

Then I thought about that answer.

We are city folk, and I don’t know any local wheat farmers. Yellow corn? Sure. Wheat? Not so much. I’ve found dried wheat in the silk-floral section of the local craft store before, but the deeper I travel into this practice, the more I value collecting ritual materials firsthand and developing an actual relationship with what grows around me.

Besides, I own the local metaphysical shop. Buying my harvest symbolism from some non-local mega-corporation was beginning to feel a little…tainted.

That’s when my perception shifted.

What if the first harvest is less about reproducing somebody else’s agricultural landscape and more about recognizing what is growing right here, right now, because of our own endeavors and partnerships with nature?

For me, that means tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and flowers.

That is my Lammas harvest.

Lammas and Sacrifice

Lammas is also about sacrifice.

In the mythology through which I understand the Sabbat, the Sacrificial King voluntarily gives his life to feed his people. Likewise, the vegetable lives in my garden give themselves to sustain my family, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Despite any delusion I may harbor about sitting comfortably at the top of the food chain, nature is quick to correct me.

When I enter the garden in the liminal light of dusk, I have already given my sweat and labor to its cultivation, yet I inevitably leave behind a blood sacrifice to the hordes of vampirous mosquitoes. If they don’t get me, the rose bushes will. They will have their due, no matter what skeeter-beater potions and lotions I douse myself with.

There is no getting around it**: nature feeds on itself.**

Garden Messenger, Widow Dragonfly. This beauty is the predator of the mosquitoes for whom I am the prey. Reminder: Nature feeds on itself. Photo Credit: Heron Michelle

The harvest cannot be separated from sacrifice because every act of nourishment participates in an exchange. Something is consumed. Something is transformed. Something must be released so that something else may continue.

Which brings me back to the Great Work.

What Must Be Sacrificed?

At this time of year, I contemplate not only what harvest I am beginning to reap, but also what sacrifices must be made to create space for that bounty.

How is my energy exchange with the Universe remaining balanced?

As it happens, my dedication this year to my patrons, Aphrodite and Hermes, was to offer my voice and talents in service to Their work. I pledged to bring Aphrodite’s thealogy of Divine Love into the wider world through my writing. My students keep badgering me to write a book, so I also asked Hermes for His aid with communication, mediumship, and travel into other communities.

Within days of that dedication, I left for PantheaCon.

His message was resounding and, appropriately enough for Hermes, a little tricky:

Shut up. Pay attention.

There was a LOT to hear.

Suddenly, I was mute.

I didn’t write anything for months. I couldn’t even find my favorite journaling pen, which, for me, is serious business.

As Lammas approached, however, the message changed:

Now it is time. What did you hear?

Suddenly, the obsessive fervor to write returned. I wanted to craft, teach, make art, and fully engage every skill at my disposal. Hail, Lugh! I threw myself into preparing my upcoming workshops, and FIRE took over. For three weeks, I have been driven like a madwoman.

When my personal Will catches fire like that—when the work before me feels simultaneously demanding, terrifying, exhilarating, and deeply right—I recognize the alignment between my own Will and what I understand as my highest Divine Will.

Because it feeeeels goooood.

For me, Witchcraft has never been merely an identity I can put on when convenient and set aside when I grow bored. The Work demands to be done. There is no rest within my soul until I find my way back to those inner crossroads, my own Axis Mundi, commune with my Gods, and accept whatever sacred mission waits there.

To the Crossroads I Go

So, to the crossroads I go.

“OK. What’s next?”

That’s when I received the invitation to write this column on Agora.

WITCHCRAFT, I tell you!

I just love it when that happens.

Talk about a harvest.

Furthermore, my first out-of-state teaching gig is next week at TempleFest in New Hampshire. Huzzah for travel! It is the Lammas festival hosted by the Temple of Witchcraft, and I make my debut on the night of the Blue Moon, no less.

Divination: Art XIV, Queen of Wands, Knight of Disks. Thoth Tarot, by Crowley and Harris. Photo credit: Heron Michelle

So I posed these prayerful questions to myself and sent them out into the Universe:

Do I have the courage to do the Work of Divine Will and accept this sacred mission to become Their public voice, even when doing so terrifies me? Am I prepared to truly become Their priestess?

I asked my squishy, empathic, Piscean self whether I could take the heat.

Nay—

Could I become the fire that catalyzes the world around me?

Am I willing to make the sacrifice?

Then I drew the cards:

Art XIV. Queen of Wands. Knight of Disks.

“Yes,” I answered. “I accept the sacred mission.”

Then I asked my patrons one more question:

“What should I name the column?”

Witch on Fire, They answered, over and over again.

Alrighty, then. So mote it be!

Blessed Lammastides!

~Heron

About Heron Michelle

Heron Michelle is a Witch, author, artist, shopkeeper, and priestess whose work explores the intersection of Modern Witchcraft, Hermetic philosophy, devotional practice, and personal sovereignty. She is the author of Elemental Witchcraft: A Guide to Living a Magickal Life Through the Elements (Llewellyn, 2021) and the forthcoming Lunar Witchcraft (Llewellyn, 2027). Since 2009, she has owned The Sojourner Whole Earth Provisions, a metaphysical shop in Greenville, North Carolina. Contact her through HeronMichelle.com, and subscribe to her continuing work at HeronMichelle.Substack.com. You can read more about the author here.

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