Many witches often feel burdened and overwhelmed by learning and practicing witchcraft or celebrating the Sabbats. You might feel like you have to spend a fortune on special tools or that rituals and spells should consume hours of your time. Fortunately, this is not the case! So today, here are more than 30 quick, simple, budget friendly ways to celebrate Lughnasadh on a shoestring budget.
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Lughnasadh (loo-nah-sah) is the first of three Celtic harvest festivals that will occur between August and October. It marks the time that falls directly between the summer solstice (Litha) and the fall equinox (Mabon).
Sometimes also called Lammas, meaning loaf mass, Lughnasadh is celebrated from July 31st to August 1st in the northern hemisphere and from January 31st to February 1st in the southern hemisphere.. However, the date of celebration can vary between groups and cultures.
Lughnasadh celebrates potential and the excitement of the beginning harvest season, but it also honors endings. Summer is almost over, and it’s time to start planning for the coming winter. Lughnasadh is a time for harvesting and celebrating, but also for planning and preparation. If there’s anything you wish to set in motion for the remainder of the year, now is the time to act on it!
You can learn even more about the themes of Lughnasadh in this recent post.
For all my busy witchy mamas and busy witchy college students, Lughnasadh also typically marks the impending start of another school year. Those first weeks of school tend to be stressful, expensive, and riddled with illness causing germs. The wisest among us know that now is not the time to empty out the savings account. We need ways to honor the sabbat without spending all the money.
Take a Nature Walk
A major element of observing Lughnasadh is observing that transitional energy as we move out of the height of summer and into the darker and cooler autumn months. It’s still fiery hot outside, but the daylight hours are slowly waning. Grasses and flowers have started to succumb to the blistering heat, making way for the next wave of autumn plants. Gardeners are prepping their planting areas for the final harvests of fresh produce and preserving their bounties. The good news is that summers not finished yet! Take some time in these final weeks to enjoy it.
- Take a solo hike. If you can, get out into nature on your own. While you’re unlikely to find much quiet this time of year, take notice of how your environment is changing. How do those changes relate to the themes of Lughnasadh and the themes of your own season in life? This is a great way to slow down just a little bit and tap into your inner voice and awareness.
- Walk with a friend. If a solo trek isn’t safe, feel free to bring a friend and enjoy your walk together. Personal safety always comes before any benefits of meditative activities.
- Go out with the little witchlings. If you’ve got little ones, those solo adventures can seem impossible. Take your witchlings with you! Kids love getting out into nature, exploring, and observing those changes. They can even collect treasures along the way. Bring their collection home to investigate, craft with, or set up their own seasonal sacred space.
Head for the Water
While this won’t work for everybody, a huge percentage of our population lives near bodies of water. Many of us have access to beaches, lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, creeks, or even swimming pools for free.
Head out to your local watering hole, and soak up the sun with your friends and family before you have to go back to regular life again. Want to make your trip more magical?
- Collect shells to add to your altar and spell work as symbols of abundance and protection.
- Draw sigils in the sand(or mud), and let the water carry your intentions as they wash the sigil away.
- Submerge yourself in the water as a ritual act of cleansing to wash away any unwanted lingering energies still hanging around. Prepare to spend the next few months manifesting your final goals for the year unhindered by these energies before the season of rest begins.
- Soak up the sun. The energy of sunlight is powerful, abundant, and passionate. Take advantage of this energy by brewing up some solar charged water to get you through the long, dark months of winter.
Work with the Harvest
Lughnasadh is a harvest festival. Specifically, it centers around the harvest of wheat and corn that tend to be ready in the month of August. Celebrate this season of abundance by enjoying some of your favorite grains and produce.
- Bake all the breads, cakes, and treats. A nice Lammas loaf is traditional, but do your own thing. Bake up your favorite sweet or savory breads, cakes, cookies, brownies, and corn breads. If you’re not a baker, store bought works just as well. Put your own energy of abundance into what you make or purchase before sharing with family and eating it all up.
- Explore grain casting divination. You might be familiar with bone or rune casting, but have you tried grain casting? Hit up Google to find a printable casting mat for free or cheap. If you’re crafty, check out this youtube video that shows you how to make your own casting mat using paint and a canvas.
- Start brewing your herbal infusions for flu season. Lughnasadh marks the point in the year where we start prepping for the final months of the year. Flue season is right around the corner, and a good medicinal herbal infusion steeps for 6-8 weeks at least. If, like me, you’re an herb hoarder or you have a prolific herb garden, you can begin brewing herbal oils, infusions, and tinctures that will be ready before the cold weather gets here.
- Work on your kitchen witchery and learn the magical properties of the foods you already cook every week. Then, you can practice infusing your meals with corresponding energy for some frugal kitchen magic.
Practice Some Money Magic
The greatest hope of our ancestors this time of year was an abundant and fruitful harvest. Without it, your odds of surviving the winter weren’t very good.
Nowadays, abundance usually means money. Love it or hate it, very few of us can thrive and live a comfortable, healthy life without any money. We might at well take advantage of the energy of abundance by casting some money workings
There are limitless ways you can do this, but here are a few ideas to get you started.
- Craft a money bowl using common household foods and spices. This handy little piece of folk magic helps you manifest prosperity and abundance any time of year. Learn how to make one here.
- Charge up your morning coffee with a pinch of cinnamon and the intention to draw money your way. Both coffee and cinnamon are associated with quick luck and wealth.
- Spice up your wallet by adding some money herbs to a cloth pouch, and placing it in your wallet to draw in money. Good herbs for this include bay, basil, thyme, mint, cinnamon, patchouli, allspice, clove, and orange peel.
- Start the month off with abundance. There are lots of abundance rituals you can perform on August 1st that are said to draw money to you. Blow some cinnamon into your front door to draw wealth in. You can also clean or spray your front door with some cinnamon infused water to bring money to your home. If you’re already cleaning that day, add a drop of cinnamon oil or a whole cinnamon stick to your mop water. Mop all your floors to allow money to flow through your home.
- Use money to draw money. Charge up a silver coin by the light of the full moon to attract money to you. Keep the coin in your wallet or purse.
Connect with Your Community
Lughnasadh isn’t just about harvest and abundance. It’s also a celebration of sacrifice. All that life giving grain has to be cut down to make a tasty loaf of bread. It sacrifices its life to become food.
Harvest season is also a time for families and communities to come together and support each other. Growing all the food you need to survive and stay healthy isn’t a one-man job. It quite literally takes a village.
This time of year, you can honor the themes of sacrifice and community by giving back to your community. You can do this in about a million different ways.
- Donate food, money, or time to your local food pantry.
- Make a trip to the blood bank and make a life saving blood or plasma donation.
- Declutter your home, and donate your unwanted clothing and toys to a local homeless or battered women’s shelter. They’re more likely to be used and appreciated there than at the thrift store.
- Pick up extra school supplies while you’re doing your Back to School shopping for your child’s teacher. As an educator who spends way too much money on supplies for my students, I know that those extra folders or packs of pencils really do make a difference.
- Visit a lonely neighbor or retirement home. I know it feels like a drain, but if you have an hour or two to give, sacrifice that time to make someone in your community feel less alone.
- Host a potluck for friends and family. Harvest festivals are all about the food and communal celebration. Invite over your friends and family. Ask everyone to bring their favorite dish with them, and share the cost of the feast.
Honor Your Ancestry
While many of us associate honoring our ancestors with Samhain time, Lughnasadh is another in-between time where the veil between the realms of the living and the dead begins to thin.
Don’t wait until October to connect with the spirits of your beloved dead. Start that process now, and you’ll be well practiced and have established those relationships by the time Samhain rolls around.
- Create your ancestor altar with pictures of your loved ones, family heirlooms, and offerings to the dead. Try to spend a little time each week connecting to those spirits and freshening up the space.
- Learn about your ancestry. You can find a shocking amount of information about where you came from with a free ancestry.com account. They even have a database now where you can search for ancestors who were killed in witch hunts of Scotland.
- Reflect on your ancestor’s experiences. What would it have been like for your ancestors to be entirely reliant on all their needs? What might they have felt during a bountiful harvest? A failed harvest? Connect to them by channeling the power and energy behind those feelings.
- Watch a documentary about the ancient history of the people you came from. This is a super helpful way to reflect and connect if you are a visual learner or no-so-good at visualization.
- Listen to the stories of your elders. If you have a healthy relationship with your parents, grandparents, or older relatives, they might have some harvest stories of their own. Most of us are only 2-3 generations removed from relatives who grew most of their own food or experienced an economic depression that made food scarce.
Refresh Your Protective Workings
We’ve spent a lot of time out of the home – traveling, visiting family, enjoying summer activities. Now it’s time to move back into the home. We’re coming home from vacations, getting ready to return to work or school, preserving our harvests, and prepping for colder weather.
Take some time now to refresh any protective magic you have in place. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then it’s time to learn about protective magic! Good spiritual hygiene now will save you a world of hurt later.
- Perform home cleansing and blessing work.
- Refresh your house wards and make sure home guardians are happy.
- Cast fresh protection spells on your property.
- Make protection charms for your family in preparation for returning to school.
- Learn how to cast a protective spell without any magical tools. This is my favorite simple protection spell that works no matter where you are.
What Are Your Best Budget Friendly Lughnasadh Ideas?
Celebrating Lughnasadh doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. You can still carve out a few moments to observe the themes and seasonal changes of Lughnasadh while spending next to nothing!
So, what are your favorite low cost ways to celebrate Lughnasadh, busy witches? Drop me a comment with your favorite free or cheap ideas.
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