July 11–August 7
Tenth Lunation, July/August
Ogham: Muin (muhn), M: 
Keywords: Harvest, fruits of one’s labor, prophecy, the clan or community, the results of the sacred marriage, gratitude and celebration
Totems: Lion, the fairies, sylphs, nymphs, elves
Guides and Deities: The sun god, Lugh; the mother aspect of the Goddess; the Green Man; Modron, the Mother of All; Madron, the white horned, red-eared cow goddess in Britain; the Deae Matronae; the Triple Goddess; Sun Goddesses—Greine (Scotland), Griane (Ireland), Ker, the grain Goddess (Britain)
Practical Guidance: Speak up. You have a voice. Now is the time.
Muin/Vine Month Ceremony
Holiday
Lammas is August 1.
Purpose
Honoring the mother, fertility, and abundance. To celebrate the portal of the Vine. To encourage you to be yourself boldly, receive recognition, and celebrate yourself as the god or goddess that you truly are.
Preparation
Gather vines and brambles for your altar, and prepare bowls of grapes, blackberries, and raspberries for your group to sample.
Welcome and Greetings
Welcome to our Vine month ceremony. Introduce yourself and go around the circle having each participant share their name and why they came to the circle. Have them close their eyes and share a moment of silence to prepare for the ceremony.
Call the Directions
Call in the directions and invoke the energies of the Vine (harvest, fruits of one’s labor, prophecy, the clan or community, the completion, gratitude, and celebration) and her totems, guides, and deities (lions, the Green Man, Lugh, the fairies). Call forward the representatives of the mother. For example, “We call Gaia, Mother Mary, Isis (Egypt), Kuan Yin (China), Tara (Tibet), and other such figures.” Go around the circle and have each participant say their own name including their maiden name. For instance, “My name is Sharlyn [middle, maiden, married name].” Then have each participant state their mother’s full name as well.
Teachings
With the Vine portal we celebrate the first fruits and grains harvested from the growing season. We celebrate. We celebrate summer and we celebrate our families and children. We celebrate all that we have created. This is a portal in which we give our gratitude to Gaia for all that she provides for us. We celebrate the full sun.
We also honor our own magnificence and choose to view ourselves as the gods or goddesses that we truly are. We honor our power and the gift of our will and intention to create our reality. We review why we are here, what gifts we have been given, and what it is that we are destined to do in this lifetime. The Vine asks us to be ourselves boldly in the world. Once we sacrifice our smaller ego-interested self in favor of our larger loving, unlimited, and wise spiritual self, we are truly unstoppable.
Read
Today we honor you as king/god or queen/goddess for a day. It is your day to be yourself boldly. And it is a day to receive praise, applause, and recognition.
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine yourself as a queen or king sitting on a throne with a lion, leopard, jaguar, or cougar companion. These large felines represent the power to use your own will to go after your dreams and desires. Merge with your lion friend and feel that determination and ferocity. Claim these as your own. Imagine the power of the full summer sun running through your veins. Imagine that in the true Leo fashion you accept your powers and your dominion over your realm. Be willing to drop any judgment about this. Simply claim your throne. (Long pause)
(Invite them to open their eyes.)
It is said that we are indeed gods and goddesses housed in physical bodies and that we hail from the stars. For a moment imagine that you are indeed a shining star and that you embody all potential and possibility. It is said that it is a privilege to be born into this dimension and that once we wake up to the fact that we can cocreate with spirit, we can claim our own amazing power and potential as living kings and queens, gods and goddesses. Once we claim this spiritual power we are less interested in meeting the needs of our ego selves, and more interested in helping others and raising consciousness and awareness. We claim our true purpose, which is to be responsible stewards of our planet and to turn our base essence into gold. It is from this higher perspective and potential that we can create miracles.
Activity: Self-Recognition
Pass the talking stick around and ask each participant to “brag” about themselves. This is an opportunity to stand in the limelight and receive. This can be about inner work, outer accomplishment, or anything they are proud of themselves about. One can also claim their own special gifts. I might brag about my artwork, my writing, the class I taught, or that special dinner I made. I might mention my creativity and ability to dream. When each person is finished, the group says together:
We honor you and recognize you for all you are and all you do.
We see that you are the king or queen of your own life.
We honor the god or goddess that you are.
Then they are celebrated with a round of applause. Give each person a moment to receive this recognition.
Sing
Choose songs that celebrate the sun and community.
Chant
What is the teaching of the Vine? Speak your truth.
Our freedom comes from understanding our magnificence.
Behold! We are gods and goddesses
And we are free to become shining stars.
We seek our birthright and give our gratitude to our star ancestors.
What is the teaching of the Vine? Claim your power.
Guided Meditation
Close your eyes and place your attention on your breath. Take some long, slow, and deep breaths. Allow yourself to slow down and enter a moment of silence. Focus on your heart and send yourself a blast of love and care. Find a moment of peace here as we enter our journey … (pause)
Imagine yourself standing on a green, grassy hill. It is summer and below you a vast valley stretches out as far as the eye can see. You allow the heat of the sun to enter every cell of your being. You absorb the heat and luxuriate in the calm, bright summer day. You take in the view of the valley of grapevine fields below you. Each vine is carefully resting upon its own tau-cross, which supports its growth. You smell the sweetness of the grapes ripening on the vines.
Wine is said to be the drink of the gods and goddesses. It is said to bring truth. It is the nectar of ecstasy. You notice that you hold in your hand a cup of the loveliest wine. If you don’t like alcohol, notice that your cup holds grape juice. This nectar is ambrosia to you and it is magical. You can smell its sweet bouquet and imagine its citric flavors and spices.
Take a sip of the beautiful, smooth, and crisp drink and feel it as it moves down your throat. Allow it to transform your perspective. You see all the bounty upon the earth and you feel such incredible gratitude for all the amazing gifts of Gaia.
You understand too that as a member of the human species you can move around, unlike the plant kingdom. The plant world often needs you to care for it. This is part of our stewardship. You can see the many people on earth that work carefully to plant and produce food. Feel your gratitude.
You also feel the gratitude that you have for your own bounty and abundance. You too are a flower that has so much to offer the world. You can feel the appreciation for the blessings that life has in store for you. You are totally supported as you blossom and share your gifts with the world. Take that in for a moment. Really allow it in. Vine’s message to you today is that you are already a god or goddess, and that you are a part of the cornucopia of magnificence.
As you look about the valley of abundance, you understand just how much you are a part of nature, and just how valuable you are. You are the fruit of your parents and you hold the aspirations of your ancestors. This is a day of great celebration. This is a day to celebrate you and to take your own aspirations and ambitions seriously. No second guessing, no putting yourself down, and no excuses. See yourself as the god or goddess that you are and see the sun’s light filling you with all the energy and knowing that you need to accomplish your own goals … (long pause)
Give your gratitude to the drink of truth, to the grapevines, to the valley of abundance and to the paradise that you live in. Feel the grace of being such an important species and think of how you can help to take care of the mother. Mostly she would love gratitude and appreciation, so send her your energy and shine your light upon her. Give gratitude to the Vine for her teachings.
As you return from the journey, take a moment to ground and center. Take a moment to become very quiet and still and pay attention to your breath. Allow yourself to slow down, to drop down, to slow your breath, and to take deep breaths. Just be with that for a moment. When you are ready, open your eyes and record your experience in your journal.
Sharing
Allow the group time to share their experiences with Vine. Pass around the talking stick and have each participant share what they are most grateful for. Also have them share what they are bringing into fruition, and their aspirations.
Sing
Choose songs that honor the mother aspect of the Goddess or simply drum and tone together. You will find that when you open yourself up the energies that flow through you express the abundance of this time of year. Have fun and lose yourself in the music.
Activity: Laughter, Dancing, Silence, and Toasting
If people have funny stories or jokes to share this is a great time to laugh together. Put on some lively music and dance together, or if someone knows a folk dance have them teach the dance to your group. Hold hands and dance in a circle.
When this portion of the ritual is complete, take a moment of silence together. Pass out a small glass of wine or juice to your participants and make a toast to the mother aspect of the Goddess and to her fertility. Toast all her helpers—especially the fairies and the nymphs of the forest. Toast your gratitude to the abundant cornucopia of the fruits, vegetables, and grains of the season. Toast the sun for its life-giving rays and energy. Finally, toast each person in the group and recognize them as the gods and goddesses that they truly are.
Ending
Give your gratitude to the Vine, and to the totems, guides, and deities. With gratitude, release the directions and open the circle.
A Vine Story: Communications
from My Parents on the Other Side
I was conceived on August 1, 1946—my parents’ wedding anniversary. This date was written upon the back of a photo of my parents; my mom was twenty-eight and my dad was thirty-two. They sat on the grass in front of a rustic fishing lodge. They were on a summer getaway, to have some time for themselves and to have a break from parenting their three children. My mom was draped in a bear skin. Little did she know that she was soon to become the mother bear of her fourth child.
It seems appropriate that I celebrate this date. I am sure that they had no idea about the significance of this date for Pagans. Lammas, or August 1, is the holiday that celebrates the sacred marriage and the insemination of the seed that is carried in the womb of the Great Mother—so that new life can burst forth in the springtime of the next year’s cycle. And I am one of those May babies! This is the good news. I am the fruit of my parents’ union!
Unfortunately, August is also the time of year that I am reminded of my mom’s death. She died in 1985, just a couple of days before her forty-fifth wedding anniversary. She died of an accidental drowning.
After my mother’s death, I had a series of dreams and synchronicities in which I felt that my mother was contacting me. There is one dream about my mother that particularly haunted me. In the dream I find my mother’s large wooden Chinese chest with the carvings of dragons and cherry trees that had belonged to my grandmother. It was in an antique store in Bellingham, Washington. As I opened the top of the chest there were many of her things still there in the shallow, large drawer that sat upon the other contents of clothing underneath … it held jewelry, little trinkets, little purses, rings in special boxes, and keys.
I was surprised, within the dream, to see these same little things that I used to look at when I was a child and Mom wasn’t home, although they were in a little dressing table’s drawer, not her Chinese chest. I used to love to look at these and wonder what they meant to her. Being that my mom was somewhat distant, this was one way that I connected with her and wondered about her past and why she treasured these little mementos. The dream brought me close to my mother in a most familiar way.
And then within a few days I experienced another synchronicity. I went to the Quaker’s Friend Center here in Seattle. When I walked into the bathroom there was a dressing table/desk there just like the one my mom used to have. In fact, it was my mom’s! It was the one in which all her personal little mementos were stored. The same momentos I saw in the dream, and the same ones I used to look at when I was a child!
As for the dressing table, everything was the same, down to the nail holes that she used in the little arms to make them move out to the right and left so she could get to the drawers to open them up. It had also once held fabric that skirted in front of the desk when the arms closed. There was a glass top and a little slanted board for one’s feet at the bottom. The burn marks on the back of the desk from a heater were there. My mom must have given this table to Goodwill or some other charitable organization and it eventually made its way to the Center.
There was something powerful and satisfying in touching the little table. It was like contacting my mom. I could distinctly remember the many little keepsakes once nestled in its drawers. It was the strangest coincidence and I had such a powerful feeling of déjà vu. While standing there remembering my mom, my mind went to how my mom died—her accidental drowning.
The thought of her death made me sad. I miss her. I wished I could honor her and thank her for being my mother. And I wished I could feel, in the real-life way, her presence, with all her weaknesses and failings, and all her strengths, gifts, and talents. And I wondered about these synchronistic experiences with my dream and then finding her actual dressing table. I knew there was a communication going on—even though her spirit was no longer embodied.
A couple of years later another strange thing happened regarding this original dream and my mom. My friend Barbara called me and told me that she had picked up two of my mother’s paintings at a Salvation Army store in Everett, which is about an hour north of Seattle. Barb restores old paintings and she’s forever browsing in secondhand stores. Now she shouldn’t have known that these were my mom’s paintings except that she and her husband had come to an open house of mine just the weekend before and she had seen some of my mom’s other paintings. The frames are quite unique because my mom made them.
It was all such a weird coincidence. One painting was a portrait of a Hawaiian woman and the other was of my sister sitting and reading in a rocking chair when she was about thirteen. What made this so poignant was that my mother created a matching pair of paintings on a series of rainy summer days at our beach cabin—one of me facing to the left while sitting in one of our rocking chairs, and one of my sister, facing right, sitting in the other. I think I was around eight. Mom always displayed these paintings together. When she died, I got mine, and my sister got hers plus the Hawaiian painting. My sister must have given them away when she moved from Washington to California. Now I display them both together. Apparently Mom wanted these to stay in the family!
The interesting thing is that just last year my niece, Karin, told me that Mom has become her spirit guide. Karin had come to this while working with a healer. I was sort of surprised because I thought Mom might not be such a great guide. Karin told me that Mom expected that response, but asked Karin to pass on to me the message that she is no longer in the state of limitation she was in when she was incarnated as my mother.
So, although Mom isn’t in a body, she does seem to be very connected to me and Karin. She has been able to communicate with me through synchronicities and dreams and other people and the many secondhand stores in the area! I am glad for her love.
I would be remiss if I left out the communication I received from my father. He died of esophageal cancer in 1995. I had a rather startling visitation from him when I was in Egypt in 2014, and my brother was with me. We were in the Valley of the Kings in the tomb of Siptah where we usually have some private time. Here we honor our ancestors and our loved ones who have passed on. The tomb is full of the ancient artwork that describes the death process the ancient Egyptians seemed to understand. They saw death as an opening to greater light. One feels uplifted and reassured there.
We had a lovely and moving ceremony, and as we were leaving I heard a clear message from my father. He said, “Tell your brother that he did nothing wrong. Tell him that he took care of my dying and my pain with exquisite sensitivity and I am grateful.” As soon as we ducked out of the entrance back into the light I told my brother and we both just burst into tears.
Although my brother knew that he had done the right thing, he had felt some guilt, as our stepmother had accused him of killing my dad—which was never true. She was just in that crazed grief place. My brother, as a physician’s assistant, had assisted my father with his pain during the last stages of cancer.
That is the last thing I would have imagined happening—in a tomb, in the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt, and with my brother. Our dead do want to communicate with us! I am glad that in such a place, where the veil is indeed thin, my father was able to communicate to my brother how grateful he was. That was a most healing experience.
So, the Muin month always reminds me to give my gratitude for my parents’ union. I think of my conception and her death in August. I am happy to hold on to her paintings, although I have given a few to my nieces, Karin and Sarah. The painting of the Hawaiian woman’s face went to my daughter, Rianna. These girls are the continuing fruit of my family and I honor them, especially at this time. We indeed are the fruits of our ancestors and I am glad to honor my ancestors by passing their things down to the next generation in my family. And I will take this opportunity to give my love and gratitude to my mom, Marjorie, and my dad, William Ross.
Our dead loved ones, our ancestors, our lineages, and our places on earth are all part of the mystery that lead us to valuable change, forgiveness, and healing. Keep an open mind and an open heart. You can receive loving messages as well.
This portal of the Muin/Vine is a wonderful time to write down your memories of your loved ones that have passed on. It is a great time for family reunions and sharing stories of our ancestors and loved ones. This will draw them close. You too may be visited by a loved one who has passed on to the other side. They hear us and care about us. It is worth thinking about them and remembering the good times. They stay alive when we honor them. They appreciate our remembering them. They do try to contact us, and they do offer us love and support if we are open.
Think about what you are creating that you are leaving to the younger generation. It is a time of gratitude and remembering. Take the opportunity during this period to stop and reflect and count your own blessings, and the blessings of those who have gone before you. You are carried on their shoulders; their mistakes as well as their triumphs move through you in your dreams and aspirations. Vine reminds us that we are indeed the fruits of our ancestors. We are asked to live to our fullest potential and also to support and encourage those who come after us.