PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

I sort of spent my twenties fighting against who I really was in oh so many ways. I didn’t want to be a kitchen Witch. I thought that was the least impressive, most Holly Hobby branch of magic there is.

Jow and I were talking about why I fought this yesterday, he said it doesn’t make me lesser. But I said, it does. I’ve just grown not to care and to honor who I am. It makes me LESS formally educated, LESS full of hermetic/goetic/golden dawn occulty goodness, LESS theory based magic, LESS plugged in to having 24/7 chitchats with my gods, LESS inclined to have some kind of formal magic fancy dance, etc., etc.

Cordial Recipes

Many "traditional" cordial recipes don't use simple syrup. I don't like super sweet things, but I have found that if you don't have the simple syrup in your cordials, it's too bitter. I like to be able to drink my cordials with or without a mixer. Champagne or seltzer are good mixers in general for cordials.
Simple Syrup
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water

For those of you unfamiliar, July has become a festival month of sorts for Loki. Sirius, the dog star, is known as Lokabrenna - Loki's torch or brand. Late July/August is when Sirius rises, and so many of us celebrate Himself in the dog days of summer.

Today I'm making Him this: 

Herb Robert - Geranium Robertianum, Homegrown.

When a person sees the world, and his/her own life, as something sacred, the last and first days of a cycle have tremendous symbolic importance. In many Spiritual traditions around the world, whatever is done on the last and the first day of the year, and even in the very moment when one year turns into another, will determine or predict the stronger tendencies in the cycle.

I recently read an online post about Japanese food in which the author’s grandmother advised her to chew her first bite of rice eighty-eight times. The process of taking rice from seed to tongue apparently takes eight-eight steps, including the agricultural growing process, harvesting, processing, cooking, and so forth. Chewing eighty-eight times is a way, then, of showing respect to the rice, the farmers, the cooks, and so forth.

I have long been interested in what author Margaret Visser calls “the rituals of dinner” in the book of the same title. Visser has penned several tomes on the anthropological construction of mealtimes, including the aforementioned Rituals of Dinner and Much Depends on Dinner, and she dives into everything from good table manners (children pack their mouths with food because as infants they had taste sensors in their cheeks, for example) to utensil choice to throwing dinner parties  to deciding to prepare food oneself or to have it prepared (and take the chance that someone might intentionally poison it). Perhaps my favorite chapter in Rituals, however, is “Dinner is Served,” in which she looks at hand-washing, dinner bells, the role of “tasters” (to avoid those pesky poisons), and most importantly, noticing the food, the host or hostess, the other diners, and other atmospheric elements. Such notice, and the natural expressions of appreciation which accompany it, have become the traditions of saying “grace” or “thanks” for the meal before eating.