Pagan Sisters

Shrek4

It was a very "charged" experience. It felt like the air around me was crackling with energy, and at the same time everything was very quiet, except for the now and then rustling of leaves and night birds song. I stayed there for a while after everything was done, on the grass, and my dogs came to me and laid down like little sphinxes one on each side of me. And we stood there for a while, watching the yard in the moonlight and the Goddess tree swaying in the night breeze.

bluedahlia

Thank you Day.  Your words painted a lovely picture.

Shrek4

I hope you both felt when I did the part for you. Might not hurt to go and pour a little bit of wine at the root of a tree to thank the Mother too.

I hope she will give you all that has been asked for. Big hugs for both of you and thank you for letting your spirits be with me tonight.

konakat

Thank-you Day. 

Shrek4

*hugs*

Shrek4

and here's from the Spring Equinox (Ostara) today.

Here's the ritual bread, fresh from the oven

And here's the plate for the Gods - the ritual bread, eggs and pods for new beginnings and new harvest, a willow branch for guarding from bad weather, and two eggs with symbols for charging as talismans throughout the year. 

Maya2

Day, it's beautiful! And looks delicious.

bluedahlia

Looks delightful!  Did you colour the eggs?

Shrek4

One (the one with more colors) was painted by me and the other by my Maiden. We didn't have this year the wax and special tool, so we used plain art ink-pens.

Anonymous

Day

Inspiring - thank you so much for sharing it with us - thank you.

flannelette

Day - just checked out this thread for the first time and I so loved the pictures of your bread. Now all this is very interesting to me as I am of Urainian origin, and that bread looks so much like the one my Mother baked for Easter - easter/spring solstice? my Mom's was round, an egg-bread, braided on top, but it was baked in a bundt pan with a hole in the centre, into which she would put the first spring bulbs - maybe siberian squills. and 3 candles. (Ukrainian Greek Catholic).

No here's what I really want to know - about Xmas - our first dish is kutya - and I learned it from my grandmother and mother - whole wheat berries cooked into a porridgy sort of pudding flavoured with buckwheat honey and finely ground poppy seeds, with walnuts and a bit of butter. delish! when we eat it I realize we are eating something pagan/pre-Xian and I have always wondered about it. My Mom and grandma long dead but they live on in me partly through the incredible foods I learned to coof from them.  Info on wheat, poppy seeds, honey, please?

AND, interstingly enough, I have a bottle of oil of frankinsense I've beenusing every day, to freshen the air. I've been living in kitchen/family room while recovering from foot surgery & in a cast, and - well - I hope this is not sacreligious - I use a few drops of it in the commode! the air smells so fresh and..herbal.

So glad to have stumbled onto you and your wealth of knowledge.ps that's not me in the pic! my partner with our then 4 week old kitten, for whom we were foster parents for our local Humane shelter

Shrek4

The dish you describe is very similar to the one made in the southern part of Eastern Europe - the "bread of the dead". It's not a bread per se, but it's made out of wheat berries, boiled with honey and grated walnuts and (optional) seasoned with cinnamon. It's shared as an "offering to the dead" in certain days during the year - and one of the days is right before Christmas (the winter solstice). the wheat berries are boiled toghether with the other ingredients, and then shaped like a cake on a plate then decorated.

The significance of it is - the wheat was a very important plant for the European civilizations since the neolithic. Wheat is regarded as the primordial element of death/resurrection. Generally, at the beginning of the "time outside of time" (that was leter named by Christianity "the 12 days of Christmas") a "crown bread" would be made, as well as the "bread of the dead". Walnut is just another seed. So is poppy - but in the case of poppy, it has some apotropaic (repelling evil) elements. Normally the bread I made was supposed to be a circle as well, it was just the fact that I was too close to the surgery and I didn't manage to make it perfectly how it's supposed to be, but I made the braided crown on top of it. Also, the full circle is required only for the solstice celebrations, not necessarily for the equinoxes.

This is how the bread is, normally:

And here's the "bread of the dead"

 

Frankinsence is a resin. It is one of the "evil banishing" methods used not just by pagans, but by the Eastern Orthodox Church to cleanse a space from dark energies and from evil, generally.

flannelette

Thanks for all your info, Day - it does not seem to me that the Kutya I make has much in common with the Bread of the Dead, though, as the kutya is definitely a porridgy kind of thing eaten chilled, from small bowls, with no decorations on top - ie not presented as a single decorated "dish''. but it interesting to me that we only eat it on xmas eve - a winter solstice event, it seems. The poppy seeds are very bitter but the dish is saved by the sweetness of the buckwheat honey. the walnuts are just a few, for a bit of crunch here & there.Aloso, my grandparents were from near Poland, not southerly slavic.

Very intersting to me that you say specific elements of paganism have managed to stay alive to this day. My mom used to tell us stories of her childhood in Manitoba (circa 1914 - my grandparents had immigrated in 1907) where my grandmother's cow Daily was always the leader of the cows going out to meadow in the morning and returning at night, and no matter what the other cows were going through she always produced the most milk. Neighbours must have feared my grandmother had put a hex on their cows - or some such belief - and my grandmother found a pitchfork burned in her barn. My grandmother was the sweetest most loving person on earth, who taught me to make sensational rhubarb pie--- - I love to think she was perceived  as a witch! although I'm sure there were no "hexes" - she had wished to be a nun rather than be married - she just knew how to look after her cow!

ps sometimes pagan sisters post on the atheist thread, which is under the "Just diagnosed" topic. oddly enough.

I'm fascinated by this topic, as I love my Ukrainian heritage, but don't speak Ukrainian, so have never found anyone to talk to about it. Warm hugs - slavic hugs LOL 

Arlene

Shrek4

Lol, the "bread of the dead" we make IS porridgy,  only that it's very thick and easy to shape like that. I didnt' say it was identical, I said it was similar. And I'd presume that as you go farther from the ancient Thracian territory, the Days of the Ancestors are rarer and fewer, so it doesn't strike me as uncommon that in Poland would be only once a year.

Banba

Greetings Day,

OF COURSE there are other pagans here! I have just finished reading this thread, some serious aggressions here, huh. Some of it made me laugh, some of it not so much. Just ignore it I say, or get a mirror(even a small works but you probably know this) and send it back. Nah, don't want that piece of crap thank you for asking. Works a treat. Not so 'nice' maybe but hey, it belongs to you, you keep it.

I am very interested on hearing more about your coven and the pagan sites you mentioned. PM me maybe?

Posted on the buddhist link before, structured practice has been good for me but in my heart and hearts belong to the Goddess. And we both know it.

--Solitary greeting from a sister in the Cold White North