Ancient Ways by Pauline Campanelli

Author:Pauline Campanelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: the ancient ways, sabbats, seasons, ritual, pagan, paganism, traditions, wheel of the year
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2014-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

Sand Candles

As the month of July nears its end, there is much to be harvested. Tomatoes come in by the bushel now, to be cut and packed into hot sterilized jars and canned.

A simple ritual to ensure that the jars will seal is to first wipe the top rim of the jar with a hot, clean sponge before placing the lid in position and screwing down the rim. Then with the tip of your finger, inscribe a pentagram on the lid, saying words like:

Lid seal—protect this meal!

The practice of hermetically sealing jars, which is what canning is, actually began as a magickal process. It is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the Greek name for the Egyptian god Thoth (who is reputed to be the founder of alchemy and other occult sciences). In the seventeenth century, or even earlier, the white wine of the Rhine Valley of Germany was placed in stonewear vessels called bellarmines. While bellarmines were presumably named for an early bishop of the new religion, they were typically ornamented with the visage of the god Baal or Bel—or sometimes the foliate mask of a vegetation god—in order to protect and preserve its contents. For this reason, such bottles were frequently used as witch’s bottles—charms of protection which contained the urine and sometimes the blood of the practitioner, and also might include symbolic protective weapons such as pins, thorns, rusty nails, and broken glass. These bottles were then buried upside down in the earth, and their protection would last as long as the bottle and its contents did. Such charms are fairly common archaeological finds in Europe, and one such bottle was discovered in the United States, on Tinnicum Island in the Delaware River just below Philadelphia. (However, this particular charm was contained in a green glass bottle, and not a bellarmine.)

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