This post is an update regarding my Lughnasadh/Lammas/August 1st ritual and what I did for it, what I did during Pagan Pride Day and some of the resulting bullshit (and cool crystals), and de-paleoizing my Pagan practice. The section on Lughnasadh talks about binge eating disorder at length.
Lughnasadh
This year I've been doing pretty good at actually acknowledging all the Sabbats (which I went through a long period not doing), although I have been shit at remembering Esbats exist. This year's personal ritual I used to try encouraging me to better live the way I want to... I have been binge-eating a lot, and have been trying to reorient myself to a different way of eating.
My binge eating has always been bad but it got worse when I was a vegetarian, so when I left vegetarianism I went the opposite direction and went paleo instead. This was a great idea at the time because it helped me understand my place in nature again, but it also required wrapping my Pagan practice around a dietary philosophy that doesn't quite fit it... a lot of Pagan observances are grain-based. In the last few years I've changed to more of a rewilding/ancestral viewpoint which isn't so strict on grain as a thing and is more focused on things like what kind of grain I eat and how I prepare it. Since Lughnasadh is a big grain holiday I took it as an opportunity to break out the ancient wheat varietals and homemade hard cider and did a ritual around that. I also started a levain (sourdough starter) so I can start making real bread again. I'm going to focus on making really traditional breads (think stuff like the Natufian breads they keep finding that result in all those insufferable "haha bread is paleo" articles, traditional flatbreads, heavily fermented sourdoughs) and focus on making them for Pagan observances moreso than an everyday thing. I'd like to look into stuff like ancient Egyptian beer, too. If I really like it, I may grow some more ancient grains than just maize, although it may be too difficult to be worth it.
The climax of the ritual actually involved sacrificially burning a processed snack cake, which I had been binging on for a while at that point. This part of the ritual... it didn't backfire, but it wound up too specific: I've still been eating pretty poorly, but looking at my one remaining snack cake I kind of want to gag. Ah well, it's a start I guess.
Pagan Pride Day
So I found out recently that I don't need to hoard vacation to make up for the elimination period week for my short term disability coming up. It was like two days away from Pagan Pride Day so I threw a request out there to see if anybody could cover for me, and luckily somebody did, so I got to go for a big portion of it.
Pagan Pride Day is generally something made for non-Pagans to learn about Pagans... which is honestly kind of crap. Pagan Pride should be for Pagans. When Gay Pride events try to pull that straight-centered shit I complain about it, but since our own Pagan Pride events have wound up attracting basically zero non-Pagans anyway I never had a need to. Anyway, ours broke from the idea entirely starting I think last year and just said, nope, this is for us.
They made it a music festival full of vendors and with workshops. I went to a workshop on chakras that I'm mulling a bit and got a few rocks I didn't have before as I do a lot of personal crystal healing.
I did find out from a friend there that her husband's workshop was actually crashed by a group of Christians handing out leaflets. It was a Laughter Yoga workshop and they were in the last portions where they're just sitting their laughing their asses off, the Christians rudely barged into the workshop space to hand out their bullshit, and it made the participants laugh even louder so in essence I guess it all worked out: The Christians left feeling like they'd done good, the participants got a punch to their laughter yoga workout.
