A Tarot Spread for Lammas

This tarot spread works well with the spirit of Lammas, the celebration of the First Harvest.  The spread helps us to acknowledge and appreciate the abundance in our lives and gives us glimpses into what we can give, what we need to receive, and the particular skills needed to assure we reap the most from the seeds we have sown.

The layout:

Card positions:

1.  GLOWING What is the most nourishing talent/skill/offering to the world, that you carry right now?
2.  FIRST REAPING What are you harvesting?  What are the fruits of your labor?  This may include overcoming personal obstacles, completed projects, and abundance of all kinds.
3.  SCYTHE  What are the tools, at your disposal, that you use to gather your harvest?  Ideas of tools are your professional or personal skills, your spiritual practice, and your own determination and perseverance.
4.  RIPENING  What needs further time to mature?  What is already ripe?
5.  CHANGING  What is changing within you as the dark of the year waxes?
6.  GIVING  How and in what ways, will you share your abundance?
7.  RECEIVING  What are you most resistant to changing and accepting?  What do you need to receive more of in your life?
8.  DESCENDING  What do you need to focus on between now and the harvest at Mabon,  the Autumnal Equinox?

Of Insight and Feathers

   Today I had the honor of witnessing parent sparrows providing first flight lessons to their young.  I held my breath as the chick stretched its still somewhat fluffy wings and bravely let itself fall from the low maple branch, its parents singing and staying quite close.  Though a bit clumsy in air and having performed a bumpy landing in the tall lake grass, it seemed happy and the adult birds' song changed from songs of encouragement to notes of pride.  They both assisted the chick's ground level take off and the three were quickly back in the safe shelter of the giant leaf maple.  I've heard it said that, "magic is the art of bringing about wanted change".  This was an aspect of natural magic at one of its most potent life points.  

    My experience opened a flood of thoughts regarding my knowledge of birds, feathers, their accompanying metaphysical properties and my relationship with them.  Birds are messengers who grant us amazing gifts.  Insight, warnings, visions and memories that guide, support and protect us can be learned when we stop and listen to these feathered wisdom keepers.  

    After nesting season birds will begin molting their old feathers.  This is the opportune time to be on the lookout for and gather fallen feathers.  While the specific properties of a feather are a combination of the bird it came from and its color, and because the world of birds contains a vast number of species,  I will concentrate on the properties of a feather's color.

Brown - offers stability and respect - when barred with black (like a pheasant) the feather brings balance between your spiritual and physical lives

Yellow - brings cheerfulness, mental alertness and prosperity

Green - brings health, growth and prosperity

Blue - brings protection and increases mental ability, when from a bluebird it brings peace

Red - offers physical vitality, courage, good fortune and protection

Orange - brings energy, new ideas, thwarts loneliness and increases will power

White -  offers hope, protection, peace, and blessings from the moon

Gray - brings relief to doubt, supports neutrality, and promotes anonymity 

Black - represents spiritual initiation, mystical insight, balance and repels negative energy

    Water color artist, Dee McDonald, specializes in the painting of birds.  As she works, she opens herself to the subject bird and requests its knowledge.    In her self-published and illustrated book, "In the Garden of Delight", Dee, through the Great Blue Heron, invites us to, 

"Dialogue with the birds...infuse your Light into their Light".  

    So mote it be! 

Samples of Dee's artwork may be viewed on her website www.deemcdonald.org and via her artist page on facebook at Wings of Art.