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Dear Boss Warlock:

I wanted to make some chutney, so I bought some rhubarb at a store, even though as a native Midwesterner I understood that in doing so, I was breaking a major local taboo.

Now I'm afraid of the resultant Curse: that for the rest of the year, I'll be snowed under with gifts of rhubarb from everyone that I know.

Help! Is there any way to escape the Great Midwestern Rhubarb Curse?

Wincing in Winona

Dear Wince,

Whichever gods you honor, my friend, you now owe them big-time. Since the Great Midwestern Rhubarb Curse is a strictly regional phenomenon, there is a way out of your conundrum.

Here's your “Get Out of Hell Free” card, Wince: Local taboos only apply locally.

Before you make your chutney, first cast a circle and, for the duration, declare the entire kitchen to be somewhere else, somewhere that the Curse does not apply—say, California, or Florida.

Good luck, my friend. Let me add that, chutney made, it might very well be politic to send Boss Warlock his own jar by way of thanks for having bailed your sorry Midwestern butt out of this mess in the first place. As it happens, Boss Warlock just loves rhubarb chutney.

My address will be arriving shortly by psychic post.

Boss Warlock

A Note to Readers:

Joy is sacred, too, you know.

Those of us who grew up surrounded by the fundamentalist Christian concept that humor, laughter, and fun are somehow inherently evil - that the only way it's possible to worship or show reverence is by being deadly serious - sometimes have trouble with the idea that it's OK to laugh as part of our spiritual practice.

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?

 A Guest Blog by Rudd Rayfield

Ohmigods!

He's turning blue!

Ohmigods!

He's playing a flute!

Ohmigods!

He's surrounded by cows!

(sings)

The Archdruid was dying.

From all over Gaul, druids gathered to his bedside to ease his passage from this world to the next. As they stood around him chanting, a novice brought him a bowl of fresh milk, but the Archdruid refused it.

The novice took the milk to the hearth, warmed it, and stirred in some honey. As he poured the milk back into the bowl, he spied a jar of apple brandy that had been a gift from the local chieftain, and added a goodly amount to the warmed milk-and-honey.

He held the bowl to the lips of the Archdruid, who drank it down to the last drop.

“Old Father, do you have any final words of wisdom to guide us after you have gone Behind the Sunset?” asked a senior druid.

With difficulty, the Archdruid raised himself on his elbow. An otherwordly light shone from his eyes.

From the liner notes of my 2005 spoken word album, Radio Paganistan: Folktales of the Urban Witches. 

Really, one has to wonder just who the speaker is.

Good Samhain, all!

I'll Be Home for Sam Hane

I'll be home for Sam Hane,

you can count on me.

Pumpkins glow on dancing bones

beneath the naked trees.

Hallows Eve will find me

where the hearth-fire's red:

AP: Minneapolis MN

You may have heard that the word “witch” originally meant “wise one,” or “bender [of reality]”, or “waker [of the dead].”

But if Stefano Pozzo, Doctor of Philology at the University of Paganistan is correct, the word derives instead from an Anglo-Saxon adjective meaning “too busy.”

“Students of Old English, the parent language of Modern English spoken more than 1000 years ago, have long suspected the existence of an I-stem adjective wicca” said Pozzo, who pronounces the word WITCH-ah, “but until recently we had no manuscript evidence to prove it. Newly-available palimpsest studies, however, make it clear, not only that the word existed, but that its original meaning, as we had long suspected, was 'too busy.'”

Surviving Old English texts, he explained, were largely written on parchment, which at the time was a valuable resource, far too valuable simply to throw away. It was common practice to reuse old parchment by scraping off the original ink and writing a new text on the erased surface.

Pozzo noted that new computer technology has now made it possible to read erased texts, known as palimpsests, which had heretofore been inaccessible to scholars.

In a recent article, Hebrew University's Dr. Tzemakh Posner amplifies Pozzo's contention.