PREVIOUS BLOG | MASTER LIST | NEXT BLOG
The next stop on this Lammas BlogHop adventure is Joanna Ash’s bright SunGoddess Tarot blog.
Welcome to the Lammas TarotBlogHop
… where we have this great group of TarotBlogHoppers working, playing, interpreting, and / or dancing the the topic of Tarot coupled with the question, “What can I share from my table to enrich my community?”
First Off, One Expression of Lammas is…
The remembrance of place in the protection of the barn as a symbol of abundant storage with a sacred loaf baked with care and attention from the first harvest, and broken into four with each quarter gifted to each of the barn’s four corners. I tend to play with shapes, so I might need to do that, though sneak-bake another loaf or two to sacredly quarter and gift to the additional corners… Please don’t think Zodiac Barn. ;-)…. errr, and so I don’t allegedly modernize your Lammas rituals or skew the good history of Lammas… well, not right off the bat at least…
Here’s a Bit Of General Lammas info for You from Wikipedia: (that I will so graciously edit in blue in parentheses in context as making bread is a process and needs to be minded. And, though I feel the patient awareness of kneading the dough is wonderful now, it also gives me a chuckle to think back to my Dad’s “breadmaking” when I was young and bring it into now… as I tend to edit the cookbook of life so to speak with how I work though the DAYum discipline of the ritual is fortunately ALWAYS there… where the warm-up is absolutely necessary and as well not part of the baked golden performance of bread when the curtain of the oven opens. [paragraph] Heck, in my book nothing is sacred that you can’t laugh with. There may be Silence in ritual, though ritual is no shhhhh of a library in my house… uh hem… delegating the kneading of the 1st batch of bread to the kiddo. SOMEbody other than me was certainly laughing. Back then the task was SO lost on me… though I certainly had no idle hands. Thankful for that now, the kneading, the incessant kneading which seemed to outlast Sisyphus though somehow served to burn out incessant needing. All alone in the kitchen kneading that first batch my mind would wander while remaining in an intensely focused kneading autopilot. Not too fast. Not too slow. And, we always kneaded together on the second and third batches. On Holidays my Dad made about 25 loaves. Rockin’ Moroccan Anise Bread! Hearty and tasty stuff! I guess the real selflessness was that ANY of it actually left the house. Though, he would drive around with 8 or so loaves each afternoon making rounds over several days with each fresh batch. He would make rounds and socialize gifting fresh, rockin’ Moroccan Anise bread. It’s like the bread went to the four corners of the city… and also to a farm or two beyond the city limits.)
“In some English-speaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere, August 1 is Lammas Day (Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mas, “loaf-mass”), the festival of the wheat harvest, and is the first harvest festival of the year. On this day it was customary to bring to church (I’ll substitute “sacred place of gathering”) a loaf made from the new crop, (remove comma and keep kneading) which began to be harvested at Lammastide. The loaf was blessed, and in Anglo-Saxon England it might be employed afterwards to work magic. (Uhh, awkward transition that at first begs for a new paragraph and then… “Keep kneading kid, it’s good for you. Oh, and think about magic and discipline while you are kneading the dough, and how you can best switch gears and extend your thought with paragraphs to enhance their flow. But, mostly only think about kneading the dough. If you stop, it won’t rise right. We’ll be back shortly and we’ll check your progress. Gotta go out and get some more yeast. You washed your hands, right?” Hmmm, I always wondered why they didn’t fully prepare with enough ingredients beforehand? I smile now at their date-afternoon yeast errands.) A book of Anglo-Saxon charms directed that the lammas bread be broken into four bits, (remove comma… dang my hands are getting tired. WHEN are they going to be back??!)) which were to be placed at the four corners of the barn, (comma, kneading kneading. What do I do when my nose itches?) to protect the garnered grain. (uhhh, left field grinding gears. Use the clutch next time. Don’t knead too fast.) In many parts of England, (no comma after prepositional phrase required. I hope they get back soon as I’ll develop Superman grip if I do this much longer. OH, STRONG HANDS!!!, I am making BREAD OF THE GODS!… uh hem… they’re not back yet. Focus. Knead. Keep kneading) tenants were bound to present freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on or before the first day of August. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is referred to regularly, it is called “the feast of first fruits”. The blessing of first fruits was performed annually in both the Eastern and Western Churches on the first or the sixth of August.”
Welcome now as the chaff of the warm-up and kneading comes off from the wheat of the process in the wind.
Welcome now as the Lammas kneading warm-up leaves, leaves toward loaves, where the warm-up is not part of the performance, and where warm and fresh is just amazing.
Welcome.
Let’s break some sacred bread together for the corners,
each friend themself a corner.
Welcome
to my iteration of the TarotBlogHop Lammas theme:
established, down-to-earth spirit, wisdom, new spirit, activation
I Offer from My Table
I Offer from my table a poem I wrote this year for Lammas
-
- What do you see that everyone else is missing?, stiff competition, challenges, new perspective in the mix
-
- hidden treasure in emotional weather, pensively hanging back, inner turbulence
-
- (C) 2011 Jordan Hoggard. Notice all the little people up and down HieroDood… wisdom, new spirit, activation, down-to-earth spirit
-
- the eye of the storm, the missing middle is teeny and also it is calm and red, residual fossil impressions. Initial, natural thought. Not chaos as that is a concept. This is he wonderfully natural mind. Nature knows no emotions, only weather. How’s your inner weather?
A gift of a poem for you for Lammas.
Tender’s Wisdom
PREVIOUS BLOG | MASTER LIST | NEXT BLOG
The next stop on this Lammas BlogHop adventure is Joanna Ash’s bright SunGoddess Tarot blog.
“Adversity does not build character. It reveals it.” ~ James Lane Allen
“Even in a card with no people, there’s still always one…You look in through the portal.” ~ Jordan Hoggard
(c) 2013 Jordan Hoggard
All images (c) 2010 Jordan Hoggard
Jordan Hoggard
sungoddesstarot
August 1, 2013 at 5:18 pm
what a beautiful poem my bloghop neighbour!
mystereum
August 1, 2013 at 5:20 pm
Thank You, Joanna!
pureblessedtarot
August 1, 2013 at 5:50 pm
I like your blue talk 😀
mystereum
August 1, 2013 at 9:23 pm
Thanks much. It was fun to do. 😀
Sharon Cumming
August 1, 2013 at 5:58 pm
Wow that’s an amazing poem! I love the association of The Hierophant with flour, kneaded dough, and baked crust… talk about the bread of life! 🙂
mystereum
August 1, 2013 at 9:24 pm
Thank You, Sharon! And, glad you resonated with the process the Hierophant’s bread of life! 😀
Alison/Alison's Alembic
August 1, 2013 at 5:58 pm
The blue edits are pure joy to read! Thanks 🙂
mystereum
August 1, 2013 at 9:27 pm
Thanks much, Alison! I had a blast riffing them off rather than creating a whole ‘nother article. Since I had started with the poem It became one of those editing moments of “YOU! Hey YOU. Yeah you, the one writing. One entree per blog, please. Next!” So, I just let the editing be thinking out loud to preface with a short lead-in story. Thanks again. I like how the blue edits bounce around. Happy Lammas!
xaralouise
August 1, 2013 at 6:23 pm
The blue bits were confusing at first, but I can see how they worked together in the second paragraph! I never got to do that with my uncle when he ran his own bread shop. 25 loaves was the first batch of the day. Thank you for the memory of warm, fresh bread 🙂
mystereum
August 1, 2013 at 9:36 pm
You’re welcome for the memory of warm, fresh bread, Louise. And, fully understood about the blue edit portion being confusing at first. I laughed when I stumbled into the sticky fly paper of the Wiki article and figured I would simply try to write myself into and out of it which took a paragraph or so. Thanks for adding the flour to ease the sticky in the dough and get further into where things start happnin’. 😀
xaralouise
August 1, 2013 at 10:08 pm
Oh, now if you’re wanting a flour fight… 😉
mystereum
August 1, 2013 at 10:11 pm
😉 Uh, I have seasonal home kitchen experience. You have bakery experience. I’ll be toast! uhhh, groaner on that one.
xaralouise
August 1, 2013 at 10:23 pm
And what, pray tell, stops us from pooling resources? 😉
mystereum
August 1, 2013 at 10:26 pm
And, the seeds of takeover plans were born.
Vivianne
August 1, 2013 at 8:18 pm
I love the narrative of your poem 🙂
mystereum
August 1, 2013 at 9:36 pm
Thanks, Vivianne! Much appreciated. 😀
Cassandra Santori (@dancingtarot)
August 2, 2013 at 12:52 am
Sweet poem, thanks!
mystereum
August 2, 2013 at 3:52 pm
You’re welcome, Cassandra!, and thanks for the compliment!
JJ
August 2, 2013 at 11:41 am
“…continually baked golden by decades under fire,” Now that’s a good line! I also loved “unflinchingly tender.”
I never understood the appeal of the blog hop thing, but they seem to be popular with tarot people.
mystereum
August 2, 2013 at 3:53 pm
Thanks for the accolades on the two lines that stood out to you, JJ!
Jenna } Queen of Wands Tarot
August 2, 2013 at 1:06 pm
Thank you for the stunning gift of your poem. You have reshaped the Hierophant in a new way for me. I particularly love “Silverback” and the concept of bringing down to earth. You inspire me to write more poetry.
mystereum
August 2, 2013 at 3:56 pm
“reshaped”. Such a great word, Jenna, in the context of bread. Glad to have reshaped the Hierophant in a new way for you. I always imagine he might play the stubborn and unbending traditionalist when he sits there too long without anyone dusting him off to see what he really looks like and acts like. I look forward to seeing your poetry!
Joy Vernon
August 2, 2013 at 3:20 pm
I love your story of baking the bread of the Super Gods!
And your inspired writings also inspired in me a new spread–the four quarters spread. Pull one card, and see that card divided into four equal sections, as if a cross were drawn on it. The lower right quarter is the kneading, the top right corner is the rising, the top left corner is the baking under fire, the lower left corner is the golden crusted loaf.
I’ll do an example using my pre-first edition, hand cut, bark wrapped Postcard Mystereum.
I asked how I can protect my stores for the winter, and pulled Strength.
Divided into four corners, I start with the lower right, kneading. I see blue tendrilling up her arm while her green hand reaches outstretched to receive the incoming flow of red life force as her hand hovers over some phallic lion extensions (??). Kneading is preparing the dough, so to prepare my stores for the winter I need to first receive the stores, and recognize the potency of being filled with life force. I need to receive first, and educated by your story, I know that this is a very hands-on, Sisyphean process–I need to do the steady, tedious work, ask for what I need in order to receive it.
Second quarter, Rising. A primary color rainbow swoops up from her shoulder. The rising of the dough is letting it expand and grow in its own time, left alone. My simple red life force is now expanding out into other colors as I let it sit in darkness. To protect my stores (I’m thinking here of my money and resources; winter can be a slower time for tarot readings), I think planting some small investments that will expand in ways I can’t predict (the red dot that expands into the rainbow). This makes some sense in that a couple things on the drawing board involve what might work out to receiving a lot of clients for not very much money, but this shows me that if I invite them to continue to participate and them let them develop in darkness, they will grow into a rainbow of clients.
Third quarter, baking under fire. A sun on the horizon is the steady heat that triggers the billowing of cumulus rainbow clouds on this quarter, and I see that the bread continues to rise and expand in the heat of the oven. The blue and purple rainbow clouds show me that the clients most interested in healing and spirituality will stay the longest, lingering and expanding as they grow into what they need. I think my responsibility here is to be the steady heat, not too hot, not too cold, just what they need as they develop in their own ways.
Bottom left, the golden crusted loaf. I love that the long-whiskered lion is here, my stores protected through the winter! He is being revived with the life force that she received from the kneading stage as she transforms into the color of him. I also see on this side a paw and a foot. Fully baked, my stores have one foot of the wild beast and one foot of the life-giving woman; he balances her and she revives him. When I look at this, I think of my cats meowing and nudging and purring and loving when they are hungry (or can see the bottom of the bowl!). This brings me full circle as I again think of the simple expedient of asking for what I want and need. And not to forget that the wild beast in me has some simple, practical needs, like dinner on the table and roof overhead; I remember not to get so lost in billowing spirituality that I neglect the pyramid base. When I ask for it to start with, I’ll have it to feed the beast when the time is come.
Anyway, thanks for letting me do a spread in your comments section! 🙂 Enjoy your day!
mystereum
August 2, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Wow Wow and WOW!, Joy. Thanks for enjoying the story! Great spread! The Four Quarters spread is a great spread! I’m honored to have provided the writing-ground and some sun-water for your inspiring spread-seed to open up. SUCH a great spread. Thanks for going through it in detail here!
Your spread of 4 in one quartering the card… that’s a WOW. It pulses with the Sisyphean bread-making process breaking down wheat and putting back together by the mixer and tiring the kneader and rising patience and baking… putting everything back together again. At first “The Quaternal Card” came to mind for your “The Four Quarters” spread — you know me, it’s not disrespect, and quite the contrary, that great ideas rocket launch to go places for me. I laughed with Humpty Dumpty II where he gets put all back together, though then the broken eggs felt to be a metaphor that made that name all wrong… that fed back into your 1-card “The Four Quarters” spread that breaks the bread of a card into a spread when the card is visualized as quartered and nodding to the four quarters and the four directions in the barn. And, then cycling through the quadrants to come back around and not put the egg(s) back together again, but to make something new that through the spread has been kneaded and worked, rested to rise and fill up Self, and tempered as it is baked to golden crust… to quarter 4 its golden crusted deliciousness where it all comes back together though is in no way simply just putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Those broken shells were initial awakenings as preludes to quarter 4 and the card cycling back around within itself to come together in new ways with greater sustenance. Honestly, there feels to be an Urobouros that is not-self-consuming but like the Urobouros is a top view of helical dna spinning like spiral stairs where we get a view that is a traveling, an ascending and descending. The chthonic numinosity of Self is taken whole through your spread, and comes out wholly different on the other side. I’d lend chrysalis to my description, though I never felt in your spread the liquification-dissolution that the caterpillar undergoes in the chrysalis… It was all open and occurred in a heavenly sunny kitchen and waded/waited through the cave of the hell-fire oven. You have quite a sword-making temperance gig gong on in your Four Quarters spread. Honored that you all saw Joy’s “The Four Quarters” spread here first.
And, thanks for the smile of giving me the memory of those handmade mulberry bark paper boxes I made for that pre-edition Major Arcana set back in ’08!
I am more than digging your “The Four Quarters” spread, Joy. It has such a resonant way of utilizing the process of study without playing the linear game of intellectual dissection that kills or disconnects things/ideas with duality. There is a wonderful quality of the non-dual nature of reality where each side is always occurring together and alive in your spread, and your spread feels like it resonates a path from conception to life born anew, inception to conceive… to…reception to believing… in life. inceive (neologism). conceive. receive. believe.
I’m still bouncing around like a Pied Piper playing radial-linear twister cycling through your “Four Quarters” spread… It feels like one of those spreads where sitting down to think is not part of the program. It’s more of a 1-card dna-finder of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ dancing. I don’t know which of each is either in the Strength card as they might trade the lead-follow follow-lead on an upcoming cycle and on a regular basis, and her or whoever is in her role doing everything backwards and in heels…. Great spread, Joy! Great spread!
Joy Vernon
August 4, 2013 at 4:47 am
Thanks 🙂 It was fun playing with it and playing with the imagery in your card. I thought you would get a kick out of breaking the image down. 🙂
mystereum
August 4, 2013 at 9:18 pm
I DID get a kick out of your quadrangling the image! It’s like a Plaza Of One HieroDood quadrangle. 😀
Olivia Destrades
August 2, 2013 at 9:43 pm
Wow, this is a beautiful! Brings out the soul of the Hierophant…..
mystereum
August 2, 2013 at 9:48 pm
Thanks much for your wonderful compliment, Olivia.
Chloe (@ChloeTarot)
August 3, 2013 at 1:38 pm
Ha, the things we get kids to do “for their own good”, which is almost always for the parents “own good” (I can own this, being a parent). And yet, decades on, seems it was for your good after all. And that is a huge part of the Hierophant’s wisdom, I suspect…
mystereum
August 3, 2013 at 6:13 pm
Hey, all for one and one for all… though defer first to keeping the parents sane though on their toes… Of course I say that now… 😉
Arwen
August 3, 2013 at 8:21 pm
Loved the Rockin’ Moroccan Bread tale. And you helped me see the HieroDood in an kinder, gentler light. 😀 That poem is a soaring, diving piece of whoa! 😀
mystereum
August 3, 2013 at 8:25 pm
Thanks, Arwen! Wonderful to be able to open up the HieroDood in a kinder, gentler light. I find the HieroDood to be the higher octave Fred & Ginger (Rogers) way to dust off stodgy and bring the archetype to life mo betta. “That poem is a soaring, diving piece of whoa!” That’s acceptable. 😉 Thanks much. 😀
depepi
August 4, 2013 at 6:39 pm
Lovely poem! <3
mystereum
August 4, 2013 at 9:19 pm
Thank You! 😀
Jordan Hoggard
April 7, 2020 at 12:30 am
I would like to share with you the original Tarot spread that was inspired by this post in 2013. I’ve been radio silent for coming up on 7 years now pretty much. No social media except for Pinterest, and even there I use it as a museum to view pictures and as a rule never respond or comment on anything. Here in 2020 I’m honored to re-discover I inspired Joy’s Tarot spread! This is a wonderful accolade, and Better than that, I’m resonant to share her site and this reading as a gift to you.
“The Four Corners of the Barn” Tarot spread by Joy Vernon is on her website Completely Joyous, With this spread Joy has provided a wonderfully original way to view a single card. And, I’m further thinking, do you have a problem card or cards when they come up in a reading? This spread may show you ways to dive into it, open it up, and bring those problem cards robustly into your fold to enhance your readings. This spread is wonderful on its own for a 1-card reading. I can also see it evaporate the speed bumps of problem cards for you in a larger reading to enhance your fluidity and the value you can provide to your clients.
https://joyvernon.com/blog/the-four-corners-of-the-barn/
I don’t have problem cards as I work from a perspective of being present with a philosophy of “Don’t waste trouble. And, fear is just a cone zone warning on the highway. No reason to allow it to transform into the anxiety of being afraid. That’s wasteful of your energies, talents, and developed abilities. Plus, I’ve almost died on the mountain 3 times, so I also have that going for me. 😉 ” Yes, I DO duck and/or swerve sometimes, though when a card comes up, it certainly already has. It’s there to be responded to, sometimes in Silence. Then again, some safari guides say, “Don’t be afraid of the wild tiger. You just have to make sure to run faster than the slowest person in this group.” 🙂
Enjoy Joy Vernon’s original “The Four Corners of the Barn” Tarot spread. It provides a solid reading method in itself to enhance, reinforce, and strengthen the psycho-spiritual gymnastics of Tarot reading. Triple Lindy anyone?
https://joyvernon.com/blog/the-four-corners-of-the-barn/