Lammas — FWM Wheel of the Year Open Ritual
Details
The Wheel of the Year is the cycle of eight seasonal festivals kept across the Western Mystery Traditions — eight turnings of the year that echo the seasonal rites of our ancestors.
This turning of the Wheel is LAMMAS.
Lammas is the first of the three harvests, and the oldest of the difficult festivals. The grain is cut. What grew all summer is taken down, and the taking down is the whole point of it — the field has to be emptied for anything to be gathered in.
The old English name means the loaf-mass: the first grain of the year milled, baked and eaten. In much older tellings, the corn that falls is a god who consents to fall, so that the people are fed and the land is renewed. It is a festival about the necessary exchange at the heart of any harvest, and it does not pretend that the exchange is free.
Our Lammas rite is a rite of that first cutting: bread broken and shared, an honest reckoning of what this year has actually produced, and the laying down of what has finished growing so the rest can be gathered. It has a seriousness the summer festivals do not, and something generous underneath it — most people find they leave lighter than they arrived.
TICKETS
€15 plus Eventbrite booking fee online in advance (non-refundable), or €20 cash at the door. No cards — the door is cash only.
Book online here
The event and the ritual will be held in English unless otherwise noted. We sometimes have other groups host rituals, and sometimes they work in other languages. If that is the case it will be noted here.
Doors open at 19:30. The ritual talk-through begins around 20:00 and the ritual follows shortly after. Ritual length varies, but the ritual itself should be over between 21:30 and 22:00. Afterwards there is time to stay and talk, so plan to stay longer if you are feeling social and you can — and of course leave whenever you wish. There is a bar on site.
Attire: Street clothes are perfectly fine, but if you can, try to come dressed as much as possible in a single colour — black and white are best. If you have ritual dress (robes and so on) and would like to wear it, please do.
You do not need to have done anything like this before. Everything is explained beforehand — what will happen, what it means, what your part is, and what to do if you would rather simply stand and watch. Newcomers are guided through the ritual as it unfolds, so there is no problem at all coming with no idea what to expect.
Beginners, experienced practitioners and the merely curious are equally welcome. The environment is friendly and unpressured.
The Fellowship of the Western Mysteries is a Vienna community for the Western Mystery Traditions — Wicca, Paganism, Druidry, Ásatrú, Hermeticism and related paths.