Pagan Godspell - "To Make Sacred the Summer Night"

As we approach the upcoming Sabbat of Lammas or Lughnasadh, I found this interesting reflection from the Pagan Godspell blog:

"The hills are heavy with sweetness, and the sky blushes weekly with steel gray clouds that shatter in the night. Roasted sweet corn is the hallmark of the season here, delicious even as its industrial cousins, bred not for delight but for fattening feedlot cattle for inhumane slaughter or producing industrial “food” products, rustle bright with fireflies and despair at dusk. Lammas is nigh.

And as my thoughts turn to the mysteries of bread and feast, community and play and work, they turn also to ponderings on the nature of sacrifice. Lammas is, after all, in addition to all those wonderful other things, a feast of sacrifice. The grain is cut and threshed – John Barleycorn must die to feed the people. We pause in our playing and in the glory of the first harvest to think heavy thoughts about the fall of the Beloved*, to wonder at the sacrament of death and service, of what we might also give in our eternal exchange with the Mama, the Powers and the Spirits. On what we make sacred in our actions and our words."  ...(Cont.)...

                                                Traffic - John Barleycorn
John Renbourn Group - John Barleycorn

"John Barleycorn" - Steeleye Span

John Barleycorn - Fairport Convention
Oysterband - John Barleycorn
Jethro Tull- John Barleycorn  
The Young Tradition - John Barleycorn
The Imagined Village - John Barleycorn - Wychwood 2008
The Wild Oats: John Barleycorn
John Barleycorn - OBOD Lughnasadh camp 2008