Lammas

Lammas, or Lughnasadh, is the First Harvest Festival of the year; the astrological date is fifteen degrees Leo, which occurs right about...well, right about today!

Lammas is one of the four Cross Quarter Days, or Greater Sabbats; it is one of the four original Celtic festivals. It also marks the beginning of the Season of Autumn on the Wiccan calendar. It is typically celebrated as the grain or fruit harvest, but it isn't the time of plenty that some people think (that comes later in the year at Mabon). If you grow your own vegetables, even just a few tomato plants, you know that things are only just starting to ripen on the vine this month. A few hundred years ago, we would still be eating off of the last of last year's harvest... yep, year old food would be the fare today, plus whatever was starting to come in and whatever meat could be had, either from hunting or fishing, or possibly slaughtering a bull or two. By today we would have some idea of what the harvest was going to look like... and hopefully it would be looking good, because what was coming in over the next couple of months would have to sustain us and our families for an entire year.

Here's what else is going on astrologically today, compliments of astro.com :

Sun in Leo
Moon in Cancer
Mercury in Virgo
Venus in Libra
Mars in Libra
Jupiter in Aries
Saturn in Libra
Uranus in Libra
Neptune in Capricorn
Pluto in Capricorn

The position of the Moon tells us a great deal about how people are generally going to be feeling on any given day, and boy, when it's in Cancer, is feeling the right word! Cancer is all about emotion. Now, that can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing. If you're generally feeling positive about Life, the Universe, and Everything, a day when the Moon in Cancer will most likely bring about all the best that Cancer has to offer. If things aren't roses and sunshine, a day when the Moon is in Cancer is likely to "inspire" you to change things (particularly if you have a lot of Water in your natal chart to begin with or tend to be easily swayed by Water issues anyway. But even those of us who aren't so Watery--my Moon and Sun are both in Capricorn, right along with my Psyche and Sappho--need to be a little cautious of those "Water inspired" moments today if we don't want to end up all wet! Besides, my Venus is in Pisces; Venus rules the heart and Pisces is a very emotional sign, so despite all that Earth I've got to keep me grounded, I'm still an emotional creature, it just doesn't always show.)

Cancer is a Water sign (and the Moon is also not only a Water "planet", but it is the ruler of Cancer, so being in Cancer today the Moon is very "comfortable"--it's going to do all the things it does easily for us. Isn't that swell? Well, it can be...)

Water is all about nurturing and healing; it is also the element of the subconscious mind, the psyche and our Inner Child. Water can be very transformitive, particularly the kind or transformation that starts from deep within, the kind that is fueled by those Watery-emotions (which are usually pretty positive. Water is love and compassion, after all.) Generally Water's transformitive process is more gentle than Fire's, but recall that Water isn't all soft rains and crystal pools. Water is tidal waves and whirlpools and flash floods.

Remember when I was talking about the Moon Card in the Tarot? (The Moon Card isn't actually associated with the Moon in the sky according to the Golden Dawn, Pisces and Neptune are associated with the Moon Card; the GD associates the Moon in the sky with the Priestess Card which does make sense, but, really, how can the Moon not be associated with the Moon? At any rate...) When the Moon Tarot Card comes up in a reading, you can expect a lot of tumultuousness in your life (remember when I was talking about my tarot and I described my favorite Moon card ever, the kraken dragging the pirate ship down to Davy Jones' locker? Yeah, that kind of tumultuousness.)

(If you don't know already, the other Water signs are Scorpio and Pisces--if you've got Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces featured heavily or "stragegically placed"--like me and my Venus, which is another Water planet, by the way--in your chart, you can expect Water to weigh in on your life heavily today.)

Cancer is one of the Cardinal Signs (the others are Libra, Aries and Capricorn.)
Cardinal signs don't generally beat around the bush (of course in a person, other factors in the chart, like me and my Venus/Pisces, come into play, but here we're talking about what's going on in the sky today, not in any one person's birth chart). Cardinal signs resourceful. Moreover, they motivated to make things happen--and they're usually pretty good at making the (sometimes tough) decisions necessary, too. In other words, if they don't like what's going on, they're going to change it (remember that tumultous change we were talking about just a moment ago?) So when a Cardinal sign is prominant in a day's horoscope (yes, days have horoscopes just like people), change may very well be in the air... and today of all days, when the Wheel is turning, when are shifting from the Season of Fire (Summer) into the Season of Water (Autumn), I think we're going to see some changes... hopefully they'll all be for the better (or more to the point, we'll still think they're for the better when we wake up tomorrow after eating, drinking and being merry tonight!)


“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Neil Gaiman