Established on the occasion of portents from icons of the Saviour, the Holy Mother and the Venerable Cross at the time of a battle between the holy Prince Andrei Bogoliubsky and the Volgan Bulgars in 1164.
Bron Trograin; Lughnasadh Festival; (Celtic/Gaelic)
The celebration of the harvest to come, with feasting, horse racing and
the time for bridegrooms-to-be to claim, and pay for their brides. Also
called Bron Trograin meaning ‘the Sorrows
of Bron’.
Hlafmass; Lughnasadh; Lunasa (Teutonic)
The Saxon Festival of Loaves or harvest festival, marking the shortening
of the days and the corn crops’ readiness to be harvested. The corn
king is sacrificed and mourning begins for the death of the sun god.
Domnach Chrom Dubh (Celtic/Gaelic)
The first Sunday of August, commemorating the Irish sacrificial god, who
like John Barleycorn is connected to the festival of Lammas.
Scotland: August Holiday
Festival of thanksgiving for the first of the grain harvest, meaning ‘loaf-mass’, celebrated by offering prayers and the first fruits of the grain harvest.
Memory of the holy Hieromartyr Cyprian (Orthodox)
Cyprian, a Syrian pagan philosopher and magi, burned all his magic books
when he became convinced of the treachery of the demon. He converted to
Christianity, received holy baptism and was consecrated bishop, after
which he was martyred and beheaded by the Emperor Diocletian around the
year 304.
Putrefaction Day
In search of the Sangrail, The Alchemist celebrates the vital, ‘black’
rebirth stage of the Great Work. “Bear no green when seeking gold.”
Tisha Be'Av (Hebrew)
Remembering the day when five national calamities occurred: the decree
forbidding the Jews from entering the Land of Israel in 1312 BC; Nebuchadnezzar’s
Babylonians destroyed the first Temple and 100,000 Jews were slaughtered
in 586 BC; the second Temple was destroyed by Titus and the Romans, and
two million Jews died, in 70 AD; The Bar Kochba revolt was crushed by
Roman Emperor Hadrian, killing over 100,000 Jews in 135 AD; the Temple
area was cleared by the Roman general Turnus Rufus and Jerusalem rebuilt
as a pagan city, forbidden to the Jews.
In veneration of their great king who fought to restore Christianity to Northumbria, defeating Cadwalla near Hexham in 634 and dying in battle at Maserfield in 642, where he was dismembered.
• Black Shuck Massacre
The phantom demon-dog of East Anglia, in 1577, killed three townsfolk, three churchgoers and demolished Blythburg church steeple.
Celtic tree Month of Holly ends.
7th c., pious King of Northumbria, renowned for his benevolence, whose generous hand was blessed by St Aiden. His severed arm was recovered from the battlefield where he was slain in 642, and kept miraculously unspoiled for over a thousand years.
• Clipping the Church
At Guiseley in Yorkshire, at St Oswald’s, parishioners hold hands
and encircle the church in dancing.
Celtic Tree Month of Hazel (Coll) begins.
• Grasmere Rushbearing Festival
The most famous of these ancient ceremonies,
held on the nearest Saturday to St Oswald’s Day (5th Aug). A brass-band
procession around the village takes place carrying home-made rush-offerings
such as a serpent-on-a-pole, St Oswald’s hand, and crowns, etc,
before the service at the church.
• All Souls Fair
A busy all-day/night fair held over the first
weekend (Fri, Sat) of every August in Chalisbury; traditionally attended
by a host of exotic, itinerant spirits from the past, from traders and
showmen to clairvoyants and courtesans, and including the flamboyant and
ever-present Chalisbury Chandler. Legend has it that if you travel to
the fair, a welcoming notice will greet you displayed on the city gates,
bearing your name.
Commemorating the biblical event when Christ is changed in appearance on the mountain.
Tan Hill festival (Celtic)
Festival in honour of the sacred fire, called Teinne or Tan, from which the worshipers light their bonfires for the ceremonies of purification and sacrifice.
Festival of Thoth (Egyptian)
Thoth, ‘Lord of Books and Learning’, director of the planets and seasons, scribe of the gods, was identified with the Greek Hermes. Thoth was called ‘Lord of Holy Words’ for inventing hieroglyphs and numbers and ‘The Elder’ as the first and greatest of magicians and inventor of the Four Laws of Magick.
• Auctor’s Canon
Avaricious and ostentatious 16th century alchemist, Denis Zachair noted
in his journal that on this day in 1531, he had completed the First Operation
in the Magnum Opus. Zachair’s dubious career soon crumbled and his
body was found, strangled.
Personal thanks and celebrations are given up to the Aether to coincide with the lifting of a single curse. The curse however will decend upon the afflicted once again after a period of no more than two weeks. Traditionally celebrations take place in the form of Cockney dancing.
• Birthday of Bernard of Treves
1406; German alchemist reputed to be the author of De
Secretissimo Opera Chemico, (On the Secret Chemical Work of the
Philosophers).
• The Great Worm of Shervage Wood
A dragon who’s girth was greater than three oak trees terrorised
Shervage Wood in Somerset, England. A woodcutter was surprised when the
great log upon which he rested to take his cider and bread, began to squirm
about. He jumped up and chopped it in two with his axe and the severed
ends bled. One half slithered off towards Kingston St Mary and the other
to Bilbrook, and since the two ends were unable to meet up, the great
worm died.
In 1102, Asqualon the Seer, the visionary princess from Damascus, foretold of the advent of the warrior-prophet Modus Quintus, who would intervene over an impending disaster presaged by the ambitions of the crusading Tancred.
Bake cornbread loaves and prepare for the next day’s fairs.
Anglo-Saxon, Celtic harvest festival. Consecrate the first loaves made with the new grain.
Light of Isis (Egyptian)
As High Priestess, Isis was a powerful magician and goddess of many
things including marriage, the moon, fertility, magic, reincarnation,
success, healing, divination, the arts, and protection, and patroness
of priestesses.
A day on which the Greeks and then the Romans venerated the dark goddess of sorcery and the moon. As Goddess of the Storm, they would leave her offerings of honey and cakes, in the centre of a crossroads, to placate her into not bringing any violent storms which might kill their crops.
The river of hate, which flows nine times around the Underworld, the infernal regions, and separates the living from the dead. A little known legend tells of Charon the ferryman, accepting 7 gold coins to take the undead body of Axia, secret lover of Hermes, to Elysium, the abode of the blessed.
Feast commemorating the translation of the Virgin Mary into heaven and the short sojourn of her body in the tomb, three days after her death.
Dormition
of the Theotokos (Orthodox)
The ‘going to sleep of the mother of God’; a sacred feast
marking the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of the Virgin Mary’s
body into heaven.
(Old) Vigil of St. Oswald
Anglo-Saxon Christian warrior-king.
This 14th century plague doctor should be invoked against the epidemic Black Death (and all infectious diseases). The customary antidote against pestilence is a handful each of sage, feverfew and yarrow, the victim to pass water in to the herbs, strain and then drink.1
Nine-day Viking observance for Odin who hung on Yggdrasil, the world tree, for nine days and nights, the final day being the festival of the discovery of the runes, when Odin fell screaming from the tree, having gained the knowledge.
• Johan Valentin Andreä’s Birthday
The founding member of the Rosicrucians was born on in1586 in Herrenberg,
Würtenberg.
Born around AD 250, daughter of Britain’s Old King Cole and mother of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, Helen was the woman who found and recovered the True Cross (see 3rd May).
• St Helen’s Well
Rag-well at Walton, North Yorkshire, offering magical eye-cures to those who pin-up rags that have touched their affected eyes, for the ailment should decline with the decomposing scrap.
• Brome’s Head
In 1670, in Chilton Cantelo, Somerset, Theophilus Brome died, and following his insistent last request, his head was removed before burial and saved at Higher Chilton Farm. Later residents tried to bury the head, but it bellowed at them and they left it alone. A sextant made another attempt but broke his spade while digging, and so the head was left in peace. In 1826 the remaining skull was used as a drinking cup, which by tradition would restore health and prolong life.
These Rites, which came with the flooding of the Nile, consisted of magnificent pageants and majestic and festive spectacles at the temples for this Spiritual Union, or wedding of Twin Souls.
In 1612, ten women from Pendle Forest were hanged at Lancaster for ‘devilish practices.’
• Saddleworth Rushbearing Festival
A two-tonne cartload of rushes is manhandled around the parish with a
rider on top, carrying a copper kettle that must be filled with ale and
drunk at each inn passed. Any girl who touches the rush-cart will become
pregnant in the year.
In 1387, King Sigismund Ist of Hungary established the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric religious order for the defence of the Cross, the protection of Catholics and to crusade against the infidel Turks. Its symbol was a ‘dracul’, or dragon, also meaning in Romanian, ‘devil’.
Feast of the Furies (Greek)
Three-day festival honouring the Erinyes, the Furies who purify the
Earth of all murderers and oppressors, one of several annual cleansing
rites in preparation for September’s Greater Eleusinian Mysteries.
• Jacob Boehme
1575-1624; Born near Golitz, Prussia, a shoemaker enlightened by the
theories of Paracelsus who enshrined alchemical language and ideas into
a theological system, published as Aurora
in 1612, inspiring the radical Boehmist movement.
Bartlemas; St. Bartholomew’s Day
St. Bartholomew, martyred in the first century by being skinned alive. A principal day for the medieval Autumn fairs.
Feast of Osiris (Egyptian)
Osiris, god of the dead, was the son of the earth god, Geb and the sky goddess, Nut. He was murdered and cut into pieces by his brother Seth, and later reassembled and resurrected by his sister and lover, Isis.
• Murder of Sweet Fanny Adams
The pretty seven-year-old was abducted by legal clerk Fredrick Baker,
on a sunny day in Alton in 1867 and her dismembered body found the same
day by horrified villagers. He was found ‘red-handed’, with
his penknife and tried and found guilty five days later and hanged at
8 a.m. on Christmas Eve.
Expunction of Hermes
Sub Rosa adepts commemorate the day that the alchemical
texts were burned and alchemists expelled from Egypt by the decree of
the totalitarian Emperor Diocletian in 292 AD.
The Witton Feast
Takes place on the nearest Saturday
to Bartlemas, though formally on St. Bartholomew’s Day, and includes
Burning the Bartle,
a giant effigy that is carried around the village to chanted rhymes,
then thrown on a bonfire.
• Roman Invasion of Britain
55 B.C. Julius Caesar lands in Celtic Britain, which becomes the northern-most
Roman province. They remain for over 400 years and Romano-British culture
becomes endemic.
One of the many observances to the consort and lover of Osiris, mother of Horus and patron of wives, mothers, healers and academics. The protection of Isis against the dragon, Typhon is often sought.
• Typhon
In Greek-Egyptian myth, the cruel one hundred-headed dragon pursues
Helios, god of the sun and attacks the celestial virgin Thuesis, or
Isis, while protecting her son. Stunned by Zeus’s thunderbolt,
Typhon was eventually buried under Mount Aetna.
Said to have been responsible for abolishing Ophiuchus, the thirteenth constellation from the Zodiac, for its unholy number.
St John’s Eve
Herb garlands are made-up to ward-off evil spirits, chiefly using the
powerful charm, St John’s Wort, a yellow flower that covers itself
in red spots in memory of the beheading of its namesake.
Cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary, John preached and foretold of the Messiah’s coming, later baptising Christ himself. In c. 30, Salome, the daughter of King Herod’s incestuous consort, Herodias, beguilingly demanded the head of the imprisoned John, who was summarily executed in prison and his head presented to her.
• Whittingham Fair
a lively annual event, formally held on this day in Northumberland, when St John’s head models were sold. A popular folk song was written about it, which Martin Carthy made famous after the name Whittingham was changed to ‘Scarborough’.
Feast of Christ the King
(Protestant)
• Plague Memorial Service
In memory to the martyrs of Eyam, Derbyshire, who in 1665, sacrificed
themselves by voluntarily quarantine to their parish for thirteen months
during a fierce outbreak of the plague, thereby suffering the death
of five out of seven in their village of three hundred and fifty people.
• Death of Cagliostro
The renowned magician supposedly died in 1795, in the solitary castle
of San Leo near Montefeltro, one of the strongest in Europe, though
reports were not believed throughout Europe.
UK: Late Summer
Holiday
C 7th Irish monk and patron saint of pewterers.
Festival
Of Lucynius
Lost daughter of Aphrodite and goddess of children in love.
• The Sceptical Chymist
In 1661 Robert Boyle published his pioneering book The
Sceptical Chymist, in which he dismissed Paracelsus’s ‘tria
prima’ principles and propounded his new, modern theories
of rational chemistry.
Died in 641; first Bishop of Lindisfarne, Northumberland, and notable miracle worker.
St Aiden’s Well in Tamlaghtard, Ireland is an ancient rag-well, where scraps of cloth from a sick person are tied and a cure could miraculously take place.
• Beacon Hill Ghost
The spirit of murderer, Thomas Nicholson, who was hanged here on a gibbet
today, and his remains left to decay, has haunted the site ever since.
• Hayfield Assension
The mortal remains of the churchyard’s mass community-grave of flood
victims in Derbyshire were witnessed to rise to the heavens, singing psalms,
today in 1745.
Harvest Season
Around the end of August and beginning of September, according to the weather and the crop conditions, the hay, wheat, barley and other seasonal crops are harvested to go into store for the winter.
Wakes Week
In England, especially the industrial north, around the end of August
or beginning of September there was a one-week holiday for all working
folk to leave their ordinary occupations in the towns to help with the
harvesting. It is the time for the ‘wakes’; feasting, dancing,
racing and games, when bull-baiting and travelling fairs with sideshows
and rides, bring the towns alive.
Harvest End
At the completion of the harvest come the local fairs and end of harvest
celebrations. These include Mother Earth rituals such as “Crying
the Neck” or cutting the last sheaf, which are made into Corn Dollies
for good luck, followed by the Harvest Home celebrations.
Harvest Home Festival
Harvest blessings and festivals take place at the close of the harvest.
Landowners put on Harvest Supper banquets for all the farm workers and
Harvest Festival church services are held on the Sundays following the
harvest.
