From The Pagan Family by Ceisiwr Serith
This is a time for the giving of your gains. Sometime during the harvest, between now and Samhain, give your major charity donation. Also leave out grain and bread for the wild animals in your area (even if these are just pigeons and sparrows).
Set the table with your best settings. Prepare all the food except that which will come from your own garden. This is the time for all harvests to be celebrated, so include anything you have produced since last Lammas – art, writing, crafts, music, money; any symbol of your work.
If you have a garden or farm, start the ritual there. In fact, if you have enough space and privacy, hold the entire ritual there, on a picnic table or even on the ground. If you do not grow food, include some grown in the local area, especially early apples. Most areas have farms where you can pick your own produce. Take your children to them and they will see that food is not grown in supermarkets.
Bake a loaf of bread in the shape of a man. The simplest way to do this is to take the dough after it has finished its last rise and cut five slits in it. Spread the two that are opposite each other to form arms and spread the two bottom pieces apart to form legs. Round out the head part and bake.
This bread will serve as the emblem of the God who has been given birth to by the Earth Mother and whose seeds now stand in the field. Some of the seeds will be eaten, and some will be used to impregnate the Earth again in the spring.
When the table is set and the food ready, with the bread as the centerpiece, go out to your garden. The father holds a sickle. While everybody harvests something, the father says:
“Harvest is beginning
Gold Sun, bright days,
Gold wheat, bright bread.”
He uses the sickle to harvest something himself. (If you do not have a garden, these words can be said indoors.)
Then go in and gather around your table. The father lifts up the bread, holding the sickle in his other hand. He turns slowly around, presenting them to all directions, and then says:
“Harvest is beginning,
now in the height of summer.
Cold will have its turn.
But today it is warm.
It is the feast of first fruits.
The hot time of the year
while cold waits to creep in.
Watch for the signs of fall:
The fruits
The berries
The seeds
They are coming.
Soon the nights will be cold
but now the days are hot.”
He holds out the bread to the mother, who holds her hands over it and says:
“Our God is here, in the bread we eat.”
The father put down the sickle and passes the bread around. Each person touches it in blessing and says:
“We bless the bread,
the bread blesses us.”
When the bread returns to the father, he blesses it and says:
“We have all blessed the bread,
and now it will bless us.”
He cuts the head from the bread with the sickle and passes the bread around again. (He reserves the head.) This time everyone breaks off a piece of it. When everyone has a piece, all say:
“The grain dies
and we eat it and live.
It blesses us
And we thank it.”
Everyone eats a bit of it and the rest is served with the dinner. Any bread left over is left out as an offering. The head is either used as an offering or buried in the garden.