Sunday 13 January 2013

Holy Supper Challenge 2012:

Ever since I first started dabbling in the world of On line Witchcraft and Blogging about my personal practice, I have held something of a torch for the magna mater of down and dirty, brutalist agrarian derived and orthodox inspired witchcraft that is the magnanimous Mrs. Graveyard Dirt. So as soon as she put out the call for folks to take part in her Holy Supper Challenge I was of course, champing at the bit to join in the noisy-as-fuck revelry.




Sadly, it took me two years to actually get my shit together and to host my own Finnish Influenced Holy Supper.

Even then, I have to say that the event was a pale shadow of the frankly awe-inspiring feast that Dirty and Italics throw. There are reasons (aren’t there always) for why my supper went down without the desired bang and instead with something of a limp-dicked whimper: But I am not going to bore you with those. What I will say is that the little ember of Holy Supper revelry has been enkindled in yours truly, and from here on out I am pledging to show not only the Holy Supper, but indeed all the Holy Days, their due respect and pomp and circumstance!

I am a fucking Kitchen Witch!!! This is my fucking bread and butter!

So how did the 2012 Holy Supper throw down in Stepford Australia?





The day started at midnight with silent prayers of welcome whispered out the back door to the ancestor spirits of the family lines of both the boyfriend and myself and to the genus loci, inviting them to the following evenings feast, promising them traditional Finnish fare and homemade booze.

Then I slept until midday after staying up late reading Fan Fiction and conducting arcane rituals in Skyrim...

I showered, dressed, and then went shopping for fresh ingredients for the meal I would make. I started out with making a black plum and cardamom calfoutis for dessert, and while that baked in the oven with sticky blood-red syrup dribbling down the sides of the pan, I started on the main course. I chose pork as a traditional Finnish Christmas food, and it was cooked simply rubbed with butter, salt and a selection of herbs picked fresh from my potted garden. I also made hasselback potatoes in the same manner, which again are not specifically Finnish, but are something my family have always made on special occasions. Finally, rounding out the main course, I made a traditional Finnish cabbage salad heavy with pumpkin seeds and slivers of red onion



Throughout the entire process of preparing the feast a Mead scented candle burned in my little kitchen altar beside a tiny shrine to the Blessed Lady of Lourdes. I purchased the candle specifically with Ancestor worship in mind, and I fell the cloying honeyed scent was particularly apt for the theme of the day.

Once the meal was prepared I carved the pork and served the Ancestors first, then my boyfriend, and then myself. The food smelled amazing, if I do say so myself, and the flavours of salted pork fat, fresh herbs and acidic vinegar dressing were both delicious and familiar. The boyfriend and I sat on the couch and watched a documentary on Viking Europe (fitting, if I do say so myself), and then once dinner was finished I cleared our plates and dished up the dessert, again serving the Ancestors first. Finally I poured two shot glasses of my home made salted liquorice hooch, and then carried the ancestral plate and the hooch out into the yard where I had erected a (very) makeshift altar watched over by Catholic Saints. I set the meal out and prayed to my ancestors and those of my boyfriend, asking them to partake of our food at their leisure, and to visit us in dreams our thoughts should they desire to do so.


I sipped at my own glass of hooch, listened to the rain falling in the garden, and waited to keep those spirits present company.

All in all my ritual feast was a much quieter, meeker Holy Supper, but it was virginal in execution, and merely a taste of things to come while I come into my own as a hearth witch having an honest-to-god hearth for the first time in nine fucking years, and learning to worship properly as I gain confidence outside of the sneaky world of share house witchcraft I had grown accustomed to.





Lammas looms ahead of us here in the Southern Hemisphere, and I have already started planning the feast of the first Harvest.

By the time Holy supper 2013/14 rolls round, you won't even recognise this humble little ritual as my own in the face of the booze-drenched hell-bound Finnish Fuckery I'll be enacting.

Xx The Witch of Stepford.



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