Pachamama Raymi

Pachamama Day, also called Pachamama Raymi, is celebrated annually on August 1 in Quechua and Aymara communities in the Andes of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru in honor of the Andean divinity Pachamama or Mother Earth.

This celebration began in pre-Hispanic times. According to Inca legend, Pachamama is an ever-present and independent deity who controls fertility, presides over planting and harvesting, and causes earthquakes. She alone has the creative power to sustain life on earth and take it away. We celebrate Pachamama to remind us that taking too much from nature leads to pain. People work so hard on developing a close relationship with nature and the land, their August ritual to give back to Earth what it has given them is of great spiritual and cultural significance.

It is held from May 7 to 9. In Ecuador, the festival is celebrated in the province of Zamora-Chinchipe. In Peru, it is held in the Ccatca District of the Cuzco Region, province of Quispicanchis. In the rest of the world, it coincides with the feast of Lugnasad.

Lugnasad or Lughnasadh is a Gaelic holiday celebrated on August 1, during the ripening season of the local berry harvest, or during the second full moon after the Midsummer Solstice which is the one near the midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox.