July 2026
Welcome to July, beautiful soul. I am so grateful to have you here.
🌾The First Harvest: Walking Towards Lughnasadh
There is a particular quality to July that I find both exhilarating and quietly tender. The world is golden, the days still long and warm, and yet — if you pay close attention — you can feel the very first whisper of the turning. The light begins to soften almost imperceptibly in the evenings. The gardens are tumbling with abundance. And somewhere in the land beneath our feet, the earth is gathering its gifts, ready to offer them up.
We are walking, this month, toward one of the great Celtic festivals of the year: Lughnasadh (pronounced LOO-nuh-sah), also known as Lammas, which falls on 1st August. This is the first of the three harvest festivals on the Wheel of the Year — the moment when the earth begins to yield her abundance and we are invited to receive it with open arms and grateful hearts.
Named for the ancient Irish sun god Lugh — a deity of skill, light, and craftsmanship — Lughnasadh is a celebration of first fruits, of the rewards of effort, and of the bittersweet beauty of things ripening and beginning to be gathered in. It is a festival that asks a beautiful question: what have you worked for, and what is now ready to be received?
🌿The Spirit of the First Harvest
In the ancient agricultural world, Lughnasadh was the festival of grain and bread. Communities would gather together to cut the first sheaves of wheat, bake the first loaves, and give thanks — often with games, feasting, and great ceremony — for the return of the harvest after the long lean months of winter and spring.
The tradition of baking bread from the first wheat of the season is one of the most beautiful of all harvest customs. There is something deeply sacred about that act: the grain grown from seed, tended through the seasons, brought to full golden ripeness, ground and transformed by hands and heat into nourishment. It is the full arc of growth made tangible. You can hold it. You can taste it.
Even in modern life, Lughnasadh carries this energy of completion and gratitude. July, with its warmth and abundance, invites us to pause and ask:
- What seeds did I plant in the cold months of the year that are now bearing fruit?
- What effort has quietly, steadily been rewarded?
- What am I ready to receive, with grace and with thankfulness?
- And what might I share with others from my own abundance?
✨Lughnasadh and Holistic Wellbeing
1. Honour What You Have Created
One of the most healing things we can do this month is to stop and truly acknowledge how far we have come. We so rarely do this — we are already onto the next goal, the next task, the next intention. But Lughnasadh asks us to pause and stand in the field of what we have grown. What is there? What is ripe? Let yourself feel genuinely proud.
2. Nourish Deeply
July is a month of extraordinary abundance in the kitchen. Tomatoes ripening on the vine, courgettes, broad beans, fresh herbs, sweet corn, blackcurrants, the first blackberries appearing in the hedgerows. Eating seasonally and with gratitude — even saying a quiet thank you before a meal — is a simple, profound act of alignment with the earth’s gifts.
3. Rest in the Warmth
The sun is still high and generous in July, and yet the body often begins to ask for rest after the peak energy of Litha. Allow yourself to lie in the garden, to swim slowly, to linger over long summer evenings. Rest is not laziness — it is the wisdom of a field lying fallow, gathering its strength.
🌾Simple Ways to Honour the First Harvest
You don’t have to wait until August 1st to begin working with Lughnasadh’s energy. All of July is a slow, golden approach to the threshold of the harvest:
- Bake a loaf of bread, even a simple one. Do it slowly and with intention. As you knead, think of everything you have worked for this year. As it rises, let yourself feel the warmth of that effort.
- Visit a farm shop, a market stall, or a pick-your-own farm. Hold the seasonal produce in your hands and feel the astonishing abundance the earth offers.
- Sit in your garden or a local park at dusk and notice the quality of the light. That softening golden hour in July is one of nature’s most exquisite gifts.
- Create a small harvest altar with seasonal items: sunflowers, ears of wheat or barley if you can find them, a piece of fruit, a candle in gold or amber.
- Write a harvest list — not a to-do list, but a ‘have done’ list. All that you have grown, created, offered, and achieved since January. Be generous with yourself.
“The harvest does not happen all at once. It is gathered slowly, tenderly, with gratitude for every single grain.”
Love always, Janine xx
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🌟 Self-Care at Home: A Golden Hour Body Oil
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July is a month to celebrate the body — to feel the sun on your skin, to move through the warm air with pleasure, to inhabit yourself with ease and joy. This month I am sharing one of my favourite summer self-care rituals: a warming, golden body oil infused with the aromatherapy scents of midsummer and the early harvest. It is beautiful applied after a bath or shower, luxurious as a self-massage before bed, or used as a grounding ritual on warm July mornings.
🌟 The Lughnasadh Body Oil: Sun-Warmed & Golden
🌟What You Will Need
- 50ml of a carrier oil — sweet almond or sunflower oil are perfect for summer, both light and nourishing and beautifully in keeping with the harvest energy of the season
- 3 drops of Frankincense (grounding, sacred, deeply nourishing to the skin and soul)
- 3 drops of Sweet Orange (warmth, joy, the distilled essence of sunshine)
- 2 drops of Vetiver (earthy, rooting, deeply calming — the scent of warm soil and harvest fields)
- 2 drops of Ginger (warming, invigorating, honouring the fire of the season)
- A small glass bottle or jar with a lid
🌟 How to Make It
Blend your essential oils into the carrier oil gently, swirling rather than shaking to preserve their delicate aromatic integrity. Hold the bottle in both hands for a moment before you begin, and set your intention: something like ‘I receive the abundance of this season with gratitude’ or simply ‘I am warm, I am nourished, I am enough.’
Store in a cool, dark place and use within six weeks. A little goes a long way — apply to the skin in slow, circular movements, working from the feet upward. This upward movement encourages lymphatic flow and brings a sense of drawing nourishment up through the whole body.
🌟The Practice
For a truly beautiful ritual, set aside twenty minutes. Light a candle in gold or amber. Play music that feels like summer to you. And then, slowly, mindfully, anoint your whole body with this oil. Feel the warmth of it on your skin, the golden richness of the sweet almond, the grounding earthiness of vetiver beneath the brightness of orange and ginger.
This is not merely skincare — it is a practice of self-honouring. You are saying to your body: I see you. I tend to you. I am grateful for all that you carry me through.
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🌿 Aromatherapy Notes for July
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- Frankincense — one of the most sacred of all aromatic resins, used in ritual and healing for thousands of years. Deeply calming to the nervous system, exquisitely nourishing for the skin, and carrying a quality of stillness and presence that makes it perfect for any meditative practice.
- Sweet Orange — pressed from the rind, this oil is pure golden warmth. Uplifting, anti-anxious, and immediately evocative of sun-drenched summer. It brings a particular quality of uncomplicated joy.
- Vetiver — distilled from the roots of a grass grown in tropical soils, this is one of the most grounding oils in the aromatherapy palette. Where other oils lift and brighten, vetiver anchors and earths. It smells of dark, warm soil, of something ancient and deeply safe.
- Ginger — warming, stimulating, and wonderfully encouraging to sluggish circulation. It brings energy and momentum — the fire of Lugh himself — into any blend.
As always, if you’d love a professional aromatherapy massage this July, I’d be so happy to create a bespoke blend for you and your body’s particular needs. 🌿
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🌕 Moon Musings: July 2026
July’s lunar cycle mirrors the golden fullness of the season beautifully. We move from the quiet, intention-setting darkness of the New Moon in the first half of the month, through the waxing light, to the glorious fullness of the Buck Moon rising warm and high at the end of July — just as the earth is reaching its own fullness before the harvest. It is a month of growing, ripening, and arriving.
🌑 New Moon — A New Beginning — 14th July, 10:45 BST
The New Moon arrives mid-month, bringing her quiet invitation to go inward, to rest, and to plant the seeds of intention for the weeks ahead. This is the dark of the moon — not frightening, but soft and spacious, like the earth before seeds are sown. It is a time of potentiality: everything is possible, nothing yet fixed.
This July New Moon falls with the energy of the early harvest building all around us. What a beautiful time to set intentions around gratitude and abundance — not striving for more, but truly opening to receive what is already here, already ripening.
To work with this New Moon:
- Spend the evening of the 14th in stillness. Turn off screens, light a candle, and sit quietly with your journal. Ask: what do I wish to welcome in? What am I ready to receive?
- Write your New Moon intentions not as demands or goals, but as gentle invitations: ‘I am open to…’ or ‘I welcome…’ There is something in this softer language that feels particularly aligned with the harvest energy of Lughnasadh.
- Plant something — even if it is just a pot of herbs on a windowsill. Let the act be symbolic as well as literal.
- Go to bed early. The new moon is genuinely a time for the body to restore. Sleep is not wasted time; it is the earth lying fallow, gathering its strength.
🌕 Buck Moon — Full Moon — 29th July, 15:36 BST
The Buck Moon rises on the 29th July in the full warmth of the afternoon, glowing golden as she lifts herself above the horizon in the long summer evening. She takes her name from the male deer — the bucks — whose antlers are growing rapidly at this time of year, pushing outward with extraordinary vitality and speed. It is a moon of growth made visible, of strength emerging, of life expressing itself in full.
There is something deeply joyful about this full moon. She rises at the height of summer, just two days before Lughnasadh, weaving her light into the gathering energy of the first harvest. She is a moon of completion and pride — the pride not of ego, but of the craftsperson who has tended their work with love and now sees it whole and beautiful before them.
This is a moon for:
- Celebrating. Not quietly and privately, but genuinely, warmly, with people you love. The full moon has always been a time of gathering — let July’s Buck Moon be an invitation to bring your favourite people together, to share food and laughter under the summer sky.
- Releasing what is no longer ripe. Not everything that grows is meant to be kept. Are there habits, worries, or stories about yourself that have run their course? Offer them to the moon with tenderness.
- Moon-gazing. The Buck Moon in late July rises beautifully against the still-warm sky. If you can, step outside at dusk and watch her rise. Feel the extraordinary privilege of being alive under such a sky.
- Gratitude practice. Write or speak aloud ten things you are genuinely grateful for. Be specific, be generous, be moved. Gratitude at the full moon has a particular potency.
🌿 The Summer Sky in July
July evenings in the UK are still wonderfully long, the sky only fully darkening past ten o’clock. This is one of the most generous gifts of the British summer — those long, slow dusks that seem to hold the warmth of the day for just a little longer. Make the most of them this month.
As the Buck Moon waxes toward fullness in the final days of July, you may notice the quality of the light shifting — that very first, barely perceptible softening that tells you autumn is not yet here, but the wheel is turning. It is not a sad thing. It is the most natural and beautiful thing in the world. And there is something deeply settling about feeling yourself held within that great turning, season after season, year after year.
✨ May this July bring you golden light, ripe abundance, and the deep pleasure of a summer evening well lived. 🌾🔥
Love always, Janine xx
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