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Has anybody else noticed that there's nary a vegetable bouillon cube to be found at the stores?

I know, I know. Vegetable bouillon cubes are outré, taboo to serious cooks. Well, la-dee-da.

Me, I like them. They're quick, they're easy and, when you cook vegetarian, tossing one in can add that extra layer of base flavor that makes the difference between good and really good.

But—dammit—there aren't any to be had.

I ran out just before Thanksgiving. Since then, I've looked for more every single time that I've been at the store.

Ix-nay.

Then I discovered the reason why.

You know all those baby-eating cannibals that the Q-Anon election-deniers are so worried about?

“Never trust a man with horns on his hat.”

(Granny Weatherwax)

Yes, it's true: I did meet Old Hornie in the woods at the age of 16.

And no, I'm not going to tell you about it.

I'm not going to tell you about my most intimate sexual experiences, either.

No: those stories, and that story, is, and are, mine to me, not for other ears. This much I will tell you, though: what happened then changed me forever.

You can always tell a newbie by her eagerness to recount—usually at length—her Expeeeeriences. After you've been around for a while, you learn that everybody has had their own. You also learn that you can distinguish the real ones because they're the ones that people don't talk about.

Now there's a fine paradox for you.

Here's the irony: you don't talk because you don't have to. You've been there, you know it was real, and those In the Know can see the changes that it wrought. The eyes will tell you the truth of it. The changes are the story.

Tap Into Your Own Feline Energy Through Black Cat Art

Have you ever marveled at how cats are able to stare at you, unblinking, for extended periods of time? At times they seem to stare at nothing at all yet stay extremely focused in doing so! Other times, they just appear totally Zen in the moment. They are not asleep– but their eyes are closed, a slight smile playing on their furry lips, totally at peace. They sleep, eat, and certainly play when they need to. They are natural born hunters, in touch with their wild sides. The most wild of all domesticated animals, and the most worshipped and revered pets since the times of ancient Egyptians, cats seem to have it all going for them. They know how to communicate to get what they want (sometimes in the form of naughty early morning meowing for their food). They also know how to show affection. Who doesn’t love a friendly head butt combined with loud purring? Let’s face it– cats are cool. Who wouldn’t want to be one?

Aside from a pact with the Horned One, the secret to good health, long life, and eternal youth is to eat lots and lots of fresh vegetables: hence my decades-long Evil Plot to Get the Pagan Community Eating More Fresh Vegetables.

Not that it's been hard, you understand. Everybody likes good vegetables. In modern paganism's Potluck Culture, the bowl is always empty by the time I bring it home.

I first discovered Purple Pickle years ago while living in the Middle East. Every pickle-seller down at the souk would always have huge, eye-grabbing jars of pickled cabbage and cauliflower that glowed a radioactive neon-purple color.

Gods, I'd think. I don't know what they put in there to make it that color, but I don't think that it's something I want to eat.

More the fool, me. The dye, of course, is all perfectly natural.

Oh, and as for that pact with the Horned: let me recommend it.

Vegetables aside, it sure has worked for me.

Old Warlock's Purple Pickle

One of the reasons we don't call Modern Minoan Paganism (MMP) a reconstructionist tradition is that we don't have any texts from Minoan times that we can read to learn how the people of ancient Crete worshiped. Reference texts are a fundamental part of the reconstruction process in many traditions. Why don't we have that resource for MMP?

The Minoans were a literate people; we just can't read what they wrote.

Dear Moon Muser,
In the darkness a seed is being born.

What is it you need?
beauty
love
solace
protection
a home?

Enter this New Moon Time with me...
and feel Her blessings.

I share with you this chickweed vision and this lefty and mantra from my oracle deck.

Give yourself a moment, a blessing, and love.

May your ancestors guide you, as always.

Luv,
Kathy Crabbe
Channeled at the New Moon in Capricorn on Jan. 12, 2021.

In the pagan world, local custom takes priority. One could regard this as a general principle of pagan social protocol.

If in your valley, you keep Yule in one way, then when I'm visiting you over the Winter Solstice, that's damn well how I'm going to keep Yule too, regardless of how I may celebrate back at home.

Hey, you have the perfect right to be wrong if you want to.

Needless to say, there's a certain amount of tension here with the universal human belief that the Right Way to Do Something Is—of course—the Way That I Do It.

In practice, it's a balancing act. If you tell me that your name is Xfghstk, pronounced “Tom,” I will call you Tom to your face. What I call you behind your back is another matter, and you can't say you weren't asking for it.

To extend this principle of Local Priority, I generally ride with the idea that the local pronunciation is the correct one; still, that horse will take you only so far. When I hear native Midwesterners drawling out Nyaaawlunz, in verbal caricature of some son or daughter of the Crescent City, I cringe. Maybe that's how they say it Down There, boyo, but Up Here at this end of the Mississippi we say New Orleans. That's four syllables, mind you, not three. Dialect is dialect, but affectation, after all, is affectation.

Case in point: Appalachian. North of the Smith and Wesson Line, we say: AppaLAYshun. South of it, AppaLATCHun.

This raises problems for inveterate listeners to National Public Radio such as myself. Unfortunately—NPR being based in DC—this means that the NPR Received Pronunciation is AppaLATCHun.

I confess, I grind my teeth whenever I hear this. (It bothers me in particular when Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring gets deformed into AppaLATCHun Spring. Shudder.) From Southrons, I'll accept that pronunciation, since they have their own customs, and probably don't know any better.

When, however, I hear fellow NPR-listening Northrons parroting that pronunciation, I invariably feel the need to intervene.

“In the part of AppaLAYsha that I come from, we say AppaLAYsha,” I admonish.