Chelanya/First Harvest

 Dear Reader,

Yesterday was the holiday of Chelanya, the Golden Festival of grain and nature's bounty. The holy mystery of it, for the Filianic and Déanic communities, is the death and resurrection of the Daughter. In some ways, the cycle of mysteries associated with the harvest season mirror those of the Eastre cycle. In the Eastre cycle, we celebrate the life of the Daughter and her taking on of Fate (and mortality), we follow her journey into the Netherworld, and mourn her death before celebrating her arising from the abyss of absolute death by virtue of her Mother's tears and love.

In the harvest season, we approach the death of the Daughter with holy awe for she has arisen from the abyss of death like the grain springs up from the earth. We celebrate the bounty of the earth, more specifically the grain's bounty, as a reminder of the perpetual life that we find in union with Our Lady and her Mother after we have passed through the gates of death ourselves. This is the celebration of Chelanya.

The next harvest celebration, Cuivanya, comes and we celebrate the fertile earth and it's bounty in all things. It is a day of joyful abudance and embracing the life we have in this world by way of the benevolent gifts of the Bright Mother. The third harvest celebration corresponds with Tamala. With this third harvest celebration, we honor the Dark Mother, who is the ground of all being, and the one whom all souls return to in union at the end of days.

First Harvest is also celebrated within the Wiccan community as Lammas, the celebration of the bounty of the grain and the holy mysteries of the death of the god of the grain. It is, in many ways, like the celebration of the holy mysteries of the death of Freyr within Heathenry. The first harvest marks the beginning of the season where all produce is gathered in and prepared for the long winter.

Freyr, as the grain-lord and patron of the harvest, dies in ritual sacrifice so that the earth remains fertile and he arises a new in the spring with the sprouting grain to the joy of Gerða, his wife. He spend the winter within the halls of Helheim, just as the winter wheat planted at the end of the season spends the earth in fallow ground. When the snows of winter gives way and the season warms, the winter wheat springs up and Freyr returns. This is much like the story of the grain god of the Wiccan belief system. (There are some who theorize that the God of Wicca is a folk memory of the god Freyr of the Anglo-Saxons.)

In either way, First Harvest is a holy day. In my personal practice, First Harvest is a day dedicated to work. I wanted to spend time in meditation but life persisted in refocusing me on work that needed done. I dedicated my efforts to the High Ones and did my best to give thanks for the bounty in my life.