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Here is a delightfully easy recipe that will produce a flavorful homemade liqueur that smells as good as it tastes. If you are interested in making a hassle-free bottle of special spirits, apples are a wonderful way to start. Start with these ingredients:
We know our gods are getting mainstream attention when I find an Ullr brand schnapps in a big normal store with a prayer to Ullr printed right on the bottle. Of course it had to come home with me and be used for a sumbel toast. In this photo I'm pouring the Ullr peppermint cinnamon schnapps into mugs of hot cocoa.
Also on the altar are two candles. The blue one I found in Tom's house, where the ritual was held. As a former Strega practitioner, he has a lot of candles, which I'm trying to incorporate into our heathen rituals. He also has a lot of oils, but fewer of them now because we did a soap making workshop too and used a bunch of them up. The white candle is a souvenir from Pagan Spirit Gathering in 2010. Blue and white are winter themed colors, which is why I selected those two.
...Every year I've made the Northern Lights Goddesses Brew, I've added something to the recipe to honor additional goddesses. This year I added something for Hel and something for Sunna. This year's batch is going to taste similar to last year's, but sweeter. I think. I can never be sure how it will come out until I taste it. This is a story about the internal mental process by which I arrived at the ingredient to add for Hel (also called Hela.)
So there I was in my kitchen. I had all the usual ingredients out on the counter, ready to start this year's batch of brew. I had not decided on an ingredient to add for Hel yet. I usually like to plan ahead, but I had an hour of time to myself when I was not likely to be interrupted, and no more pressing task to accomplish, so I had decided it was time to get the brew going. I needed to figure out what to put in to honor Hel, and started considering and rejecting various ingredients. Nothing seemed quite right.
...
There's an Old English riddle from the Exeter Book that is part of a long tradition about the abuses of alcohol through the ages. While there is much to celebrate in the joy of drinking, there is a dark side, too, that many have fallen prey to over the years. The poem goes like this:
Biþ foldan dæl fægre gegierwed
mid þy heardestan ⁊ mid þy scearpestan
⁊ mid þy grymmestan gumena ge streona ·
corfen sworfen cyrred þyrred
bunden wunden blæced wæced
frætwed geatwed feorran læded
to durum dryhta dream bið in innan
cwicra wihta clengeð lengeð
þara þe ær lifgende longe hwile
wilna bruceð ⁊ no wið spriceð
⁊ þōn æfter deaþe deman onginneð
meldan mislice micel is to hycganne
wisfæstum menn hwæt seo wiht sy.
My Northern Lights Goddesses Brew debuted at Yule 2016, but it can be used for any occasion when one wishes to honor the heathen goddesses. It's an extract of herbs in grain alcohol. Because it uses fresh lavender, I can only make it when lavender is blooming in my garden. The grain in the grain alcohol honors Sif, goddess of wheat and corn. The herbs honor other goddesses, as listed below. I first extract and then strain the fresh lavender, which takes between one to three weeks, and then extract the other herbs from commercial tea, which takes about a week.
Grain for Sif
...
The EPA and religious groups join forces to prevent food waste. Five planets become at once visible for view in the skies of the northern hemisphere. And a study refutes claims of health issues related to Gardasil. It's Earthy Thursday, our weekly segment on science and Earth-related news! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!
