Lammas 2025: a harvest-of-the-year tarot spread

Last August I posted a five-card Lammas spread and got more notes about it than any other sabbat spread I have written. The questions all clustered around one thing: can the spread be shorter? People wanted a Lammas reading that fit a half-hour, not an hour. This year's spread answers that — four cards, twenty minutes — and it sits in the same tradition as last year's without being a repeat.

When

August 1, traditionally, but anywhere in the first week of August works. The southern-hemisphere equivalent (the first-harvest sabbat in February) uses the same spread structure.

The four cards

Lay them in a square. Top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right.

1. Top-left: What I am counting. The yield that is in your hands by August. Not the project you launched in spring; the result the project is now producing.
2. Top-right: What it cost. The honest line in the ledger. Time, attention, a relationship deferred, a part of you that gave more than you noticed.
3. Bottom-left: What is still ripening. The thing not yet ready. Worth naming so you don't harvest it too early.
4. Bottom-right: What I carry to Mabon. Mabon is six to eight weeks away. The card asks what quality, lesson, or seed-form intention you carry from this first harvest to the equinox.

Read the cards diagonally — top-left and bottom-right together (what's in, what's coming), then top-right and bottom-left together (what cost, what continues). The diagonals are where the synthesis lives.

A sample

A client pulled this last year.

• Top-left: Ten of Pentacles. A material consolidation she had not been crediting — a financial stability built over the previous eighteen months, finally visible as a settled fact.
• Top-right: Knight of Wands, reversed. The cost was a halted ambition — a side project she had been telling herself would still happen and had, on examination, already been quietly let go.
• Bottom-left: The Empress. Still ripening: a creative practice that was generative but not yet legible as a yield. The card asked her to keep it under cover for another season.
• Bottom-right: The Star. Carry forward hope as evidence. The Ten of Pentacles was the proof; the Star was the form of the intention to keep counting honestly.

The reading took twenty minutes. The diagonal pairs surfaced the real story: the steady material thing was the truth; the loud ambition was the cost; the creative practice was real but not yet visible; the throughline was that honest accounting was what made the rest possible.

What changes from last year

The five-card spread emphasised loss (a dedicated "what was lost" position). This year's four-card spread folds loss into the "cost" position and adds a "still ripening" card that the longer spread didn't have. Different years suit different shapes; if you have done a Lammas spread before, mix this year's with last year's by running both and comparing.

To run either spread with a verified reader, most of our practitioners offer Lammas sessions in the first ten days of August.

Frequently asked questions

Is Lammas the same as Lughnasadh?

Yes. Lammas (Anglo-Saxon "loaf-mass") and Lughnasadh (Celtic, named for the god Lugh) refer to the same August 1 sabbat from two traditions. The seasonal logic is identical: first harvest, first bread, first count of the year's yield.

When is Lammas observed in the southern hemisphere?

The first-harvest sabbat in the southern hemisphere is observed on February 1, which is the wheel-of-the-year's seasonal equivalent of August 1 in the north. Some traditions call the southern-hemisphere observance Imbolc; others call it Lammas with the date shifted; check your local tradition.

What if my year doesn't feel like a harvest year?

The spread is honest about that. The "cost" card and the "still ripening" card together usually surface what is true even when nothing has yielded — the year was building toward something later, or the harvest is small but real, or the cost has been larger than the yield and the spread will say so plainly.

How is this Lammas spread different from a Mabon spread?

Lammas is the first harvest — hot, early, the count of what is just ripe. Mabon (the autumn equinox) is the second harvest — balanced, the count of the middle, the equinox weighing. Samhain is the third — final, the dark, the gathering before winter. Reading all three in the same year is the practice's most useful annual rhythm. See Mabon balance spread.

Should I do this spread alone or with a reader?

Both work. Alone is more intimate; with a reader is more rigorous, particularly for the "cost" card, where most of us are bad at being honest with ourselves. A reader's follow-up questions about the cost card are where the spread's value compounds.