To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day (26 page)

It was a celebration not so much of grain, but of the bread

that can be made from grain. Fruits and vegetables can be

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picked and eaten as they come off the plants, but the fact is

that much of our food has to be
made
. Butter, cheese, bread, wine and jam do not grow on trees. Even the foods that do

not need to be made, foods that come ready to eat right off

of the vine, often need to be preserved in some way. Vege-

table crops do not deliver their goods in precise, meal-sized

proportions; the vegetables ripen all at once over a relative-

ly short period of time. As I write this, my kitchen counter is piled with zucchini and yellow squash which will have to be

preserved to prevent it from rotting.

By making and preserving food, you can connect with

your Paleo-Pagan ancestors and develop a deeper apprecia-

tion for the miracle of the sustenance we receive from the

soil beneath our feet. For Pagan people, activities like this

become even more meaningful when they are sacralized and

incorporated into our ritual calendars.

Traditionally, in northern Europe, bread was baked with a

combination of grains; but wheat flour was always included

to supply gluten to the dough, and wheat was harvested ear-

lier than the “poorer sorts” of grain (Hartley, pp. 184–185).

Wheat is typically ready to harvest around the summer sol-

stice, although the exact time depends on the weather con-

ditions in any given year. But ripened wheat is not ready to

be consumed. Once it was harvested, the wheat was allowed

to dry. The wheat was then threshed to separate the grains

from the chaff, and then winnowed to actually remove the

chaff, and finally ground between stones to produce a use-

able flour.

All of this took time in pre-industrial societies. When the

wheat corns had finally become wheat flour, people were

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ready to celebrate Lammas, or Calan Awst or whatever late

summer holiday was observed in their respective cultures.

I am not suggesting that you reenact this entire process

from planting the wheat to baking the bread, although you

certainly could if you were so inspired. Two Pagans in Mis-

souri, a brother and sister, do just this. The brother (with the support of his lovely wife) plants the wheat and harvests it,

and the sister grinds some of the harvested wheat and bakes

it into loaves of bread. Through each annual cycle of sow-

ing and reaping these two siblings and their families experi-

ence, hands on, the Earth Mother’s divine mysteries of death

and rebirth. Together they intentionally follow a Hal Sidu; a

holistic tradition.

EASY-PEASY LAMMAS LOAVES

For most Americans today, taking wheat on its journey from

seed to loaf would be quite an adventure. For many, just

transforming flour to bread is a challenge. But in our mod-

ern world of conveniences you can still celebrate a “loaf fes-

tival” even if you have no idea how to bake bread and less

desire to learn. In the freezer section at most supermarkets

you can find pre-made, unbaked frozen bread dough. This is

portioned into “loaves” so even the most unskilled cook can

place a loaf in a pan, put it in the oven at the prescribed temperature and remove a beautiful, fresh loaf of bread twenty

to thirty minutes later. But you are not going to follow the

directions; at least not exactly as given on the package.

When Lammas approaches—near the end of July for

those of us in the northern hemisphere, or the end of Jan-

uary south of the equator—purchase enough frozen bread

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dough for your entire coven or kindred, keeping in mind that

a little dough will rise into a surprising amount of bread. Set the dough in your refrigerator the night before your people

will gather for their late summer celebration.

By the following day the dough should be thawed. Now

the fun begins. You can cut a “loaf ” in half or in thirds, or twist two together to create a super-sized loaf. You are not

going to bake your Lammas loaves in standard bread pans,

so the sizes and shapes are almost limitless. Try slicing a loaf into three equal sized strips and braiding them together.

Shape a loaf to resemble a person or some kind of animal.

(Hint: When molding human and animal shapes, make them

very skinny. The bread bodies will thicken considerably as

the dough rises.) Your loaves can take the shape of suns, cres-

cent moons or spirals—whatever you are inspired to fashion.

Furthermore, your Lammas loaves do not need to be

plain wheat bread. Before shaping a loaf you can knead in

chopped nuts, or cinnamon or raisins. Here again you are

limited only by your imagination.

Instead of using bread pans, bake your Lammas loaves on

cookie sheets. Spray or wipe the cookie sheet with oil before

putting the dough on it. I find it is easier to prepare and shape the dough before placing it on the cookie sheet.

Now you will need to wait for the dough to rise. Since

it has already thawed, this should take no more than two or

three hours. Pre-heat your oven to the temperature given

on the package. When the loaves stop rising, put the cookie

sheets in the oven. The time given on the package presumes

you are baking pre-portioned loaves of dough. If you have

created larger or smaller loaves you will need to adjust the

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time accordingly. Check the baking loaves frequently after

the first fifteen minutes. When the outside of a loaf is brown

and crusty, it is done.

You can bake these easy Lammas loaves yourself, but this

is an activity that everyone in your kindred will enjoy. Even

children can join in the fun making small Lammas loaves in

an array of shapes and flavors. Have a contest to see who can

create the most interesting or attractive loaf. The results of

your labor can be part of a Lammas feast, or given as offer-

ings to your gods, or both.

FROM FLOUR TO LOAF:

A SIMPLE QUICK BREAD

If you want the experience of making bread from “scratch”

but have little or no baking experience, try a quick bread.

This is bread that rises as it bakes without using yeast. Com-

pared to yeast bread, a quick bread is very easy to make.

You will need self-rising flour, sugar and a twelve ounce

can of beer. Be sure you have
self-rising
flour; it will be described this way on the packaging. As for the beer, any

variety will do, but a full flavored beer will result in tastier bread. For making quick bread, avoid any beer with the word

“Lite” in its name.

Pre-heat your oven to three hundred and fifty degrees.

While the oven is heating, sift together three cups of self-rising flour with one eighth cup of sugar. Open the can of beer

and pour it into the dry ingredients, stirring it in thoroughly.

(There is no reason you cannot use bottled beer. What mat-

ters is the quantity; twelve liquid ounces, no more, no less.)

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Put the mixture in a bread pan or on a cookie sheet and bake

for thirty five minutes.

That is all there is to it. Quick breads are so easy; you

might wonder why anyone would resort to using frozen

dough for their Lammas loaves. There are two reasons. Not

everyone likes quick bread. It is considerably heavier than

yeast bread. The second reason is that it cannot be readily

shaped the way frozen dough (after it is thawed) can. Nev-

ertheless there is a satisfaction of baking your own loaf of

bread from scratch, even when the recipe is as simple as a

quick bread.

Eventually you may even want to try your hand at bak-

ing yeast breads. For the novice, learning how to make bread

can seem like the equivalent of earning a four year college

degree, but it really is not all that difficult after you have had a little practice.

*

Lammas seems the most obvious time to bake bread as an

expression of your spirituality but, depending on your path,

there may be other seasons where this can be equally or even

more meaningful. I also bake at least one loaf at the oppo-

site season of the year; during the late winter festival known

variously as Imbolc, Candlemas or Ewemeolc. The early Sax-

ons offered “sol-cakes”, or mud-cakes. The cakes themselves

were not made of mud, of course; they were buried or tilled

into the muddy earth as offerings. I usually make a quick

bread using oatmeal for my sol-cake offering. (
Sol
is an Old English word meaning mud or wet sand. Since early English

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scribes were Christian the Latin word “sol”, meaning sun,

often appears in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. In the context

of sol-cakes, however, it is much more likely that the early

English people would have used their native word
sunne
if they had thought of these offerings as “sun-cakes”.)

SOL-CAKES

We do not know how the early Pagan Saxons made their sol-

cakes, and the following recipe is obviously quite modern.

After all, the early English people had neither quick cooking

oats nor brown sugar! This is also more complicated than the

previous quick bread recipe, but the combination of oatmeal

and wheat flour may more closely approximate the multi-

grain breads of pre-Christian Europe.

You will need the following ingredients:

1 cup milk

1¼ cups quick cooking oats (uncooked)

2 eggs, beaten

1 stick butter, melted

½ cup light brown sugar

2 cups all purpose flour

2¼ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease a bread pan.

Combine the milk and one cup oats in a large bowl, stirring

these together thoroughly. Add the beaten eggs, melted but-

ter and brown sugar. In a separate bowl combine the flour,

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baking powder and salt. Add this dry mixture to the first

bowl and mix well.

Pour the resulting batter into the prepared bread pan.

Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup of oats over the top of the bat-

ter. Bake for one hour.

This cake can be used as an offering by people who follow

almost any Pagan path. Wiccans can use it as a delicious sab-

bat cake.

PUTTING FOOD BY

If you have produced a portion of your own food in even

a moderate vegetable garden, you have already developed

an awareness of a challenge that our Paleo-Pagan ancestors

were continually confronted with. The Earth Mother does

not deliver her bounty in daily portions. At the beginning

of this chapter I mentioned the pile of zucchini and yellow

squash in my kitchen. In one afternoon I chopped and froze

twenty quarts, and then went outside to bring in almost as

many new squash. Baskets of corn have also come in from

the garden, and there is a limit to how much corn I can eat at

one meal. Now we are waiting for the tomatoes.

How much simpler it would be if a head of lettuce, two

tomatoes, a zucchini and two ears of corn—and nothing

more—would be ready to pick on a given day! Alas, if we

are to have an intimate connection with the earth, we must

accept that we are only one small part in the grand scheme

of life. Mother Earth is not our servant. Her bounty is deliv-

ered to us in its own time, and it is up to us to preserve what we cannot consume. Otherwise we can only watch helplessly

as the excess rots away.

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Even if you do not have the time or desire to grow your

own vegetables, preserving food is a useful tool for nurturing

your connection with the earth. Farmers offer locally grown

produce throughout the summer months at farmers’ mar-

kets and roadside stands across most of the United States.

When you eat locally grown food, you literally become a

part of your environment by taking the bounty of the land

around you into your body. On a less esoteric level, you also

support your local economy! The only problem is the same

that confronts Pagans who are growing food in their own

backyards; any given food becomes ripe and available all at

once at the same time of year.

When shopping at a farmers’ market, do not assume that

the produce is locally grown. Ask questions, and be specific

in phrasing those questions. “Fresh” is a vague term. For that

matter, so is “local”. Where exactly was the produce grown?

When was it picked? Educate yourself so that you are aware

of when specific crops are in season in your region. The peo-

ple who sell produce at farmers’ markets are like any other

businessmen; some are highly ethical, others not so much.

To some extent you will need to trust the seller, but it is good to know something about the vegetables you intend to purchase.

There are also no ethical prerequisites for operating a

roadside stand, but you can generally assume that the veg-