Mystic Repast (Cakes and Ale)

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Welcome to the Mabon Tarot Blog Hop. Regular readers will remember that the the Tarot Blog Hop is an online blogging event where members of the TBH come together, all writing about the same subject, and linking to each other's blogs in a big circle. Regular readers will also remember that I quite often don't exactly blog about the topic in the manner that one would expect.

We were given two possible choices this blog hop: Tarot characters and sacred cooking (feasts), or Tarot characters and beauty products.

Given that I often walk around for hours in the morning before glancing at a mirror (useful for greeting Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and other door-to-door sales types), it is obvious that I am going to give beauty products a pass, and focus on sacred cooking instead.

The task for those of us who chose the food option was to imagine what some Tarot characters would cook, and how they would cook, what ingredients they would use for a sacred meal.

I decided to tell a story about the Fool and the High Priestess (or is it the Empress), and how the High Priestess would whack the Fool with her wooden spoon that doubled as a wand because the Fool's idea of a Sacred Meal was a roasted chicken from the local deli and a bag of Doritos, and...

...that is as far as I got.

Then I thought about the time I accidentally made bluish-purple pancakes (it is what happens when you use frozen blueberries)...which would be the Eight of Pentacles, and obviously the Star Trek engineer would do something...

...and that is as far as I got on that one.

Then my mind turned to the Mystic Repast as done in Golden Dawn, and its Wiccan counterpart, Cakes and Ale. And I got stuck there...

For those who are unfamiliar with Golden Dawn, the Mystic Repast is a sacred meal that is part of the end ritual of the Neophyte Grade (0=0) which is the first level of membership and study in the tradition. It is administered by the Hierophant of a lodge (think gaggle of students led by someone making up answers to the student's questions as they go along...or maybe that was just my experience).

It consists of a Rose (East), a Red Lamp (South), a loaf of bread and a bit of salt (North), and a chalice of wine (West); all placed on the black double-cube altar along with the Mystic Triangle and Red Cross.

The officers of the lodge partake first (except for the Kerux--announcing officer--who goes last); then by the students of the lodge based first on their Grade in the system, and secondly by their date of entry.

The Hierophant says, "I invite you to smell with me the perfume of this Rose, sacred symbol of the element of Air. I invite you to feel the heat of this Lamp, emblem of sacred Fire. I invite you to eat with me this bread and salt, symbols of Earth. And finally drink with me this wine [or juice pretending to be wine] as emblem of the element of Water."

In one of the instructional documents of the tradition, the Mystic Repast is referred to as The Formula of the Justified One. "For Osiris-On-Nophris, who is found perfect before the Gods, hath said: These are the Elements of my Body, Perfected through suffering, Glorified through Trial. For the scent of the Dying Rose is as the repressed sigh of my suffering: And the flame-red Fire as the energy of mine Undaunted Will: And the Cup of Wine is the pouring out of the Blood of my Heart, Sacrificed unto Regeneration, unto the Newer Life: And the Bread and Salt are as the Foundations of my Body, which I destroy in order that they be renewed. For I am Osiris Triumphant, even Osiris-On-Nophris, the Justified One: I am He who is clothed in the Body of Flesh, Yet in whom is the Spirit of the Great Gods: I am the Lord of life, triumphant over Death. He who partaketh with me shall arise with me. I am the Manifestor in Matter of Those Whose Abode is the Invisible: I am purified: I stand upon the Universe: I am its Reconciler with the Eternal Gods: I am the Perfector of Matter: And without me, the Universe is not."

There is more to the Mystic Repast than just this, but this should be enough information for the reader to follow the rest of this post.

The symbols of the Four Elements given as the Mystic Repast.

And when I say I got stuck there--I mean that I kept thinking about different layers of this part of the Neophyte ritual. 

For instance, the obvious Tarot card that is serving the Mystic Repast is the Hierophant; after all, the officer that is administering the Repast is the Hierophant. Except that only the outer appearance of the Hierophant is associated with the Tarot card of that name. When the Floor Officers (those officers who do not remain sitting on the Dais during the Neophyte ritual) are associated with Tarot cards on the planetary layer, the Hierophant cannot be the Hierophant card, for the simple reason that the Hierophant card is a zodiac card, and not a planet card. 

If your eyes glazed over at any point during the preceding paragraph, feel free to skip this section and resume reading below the next picture in this post. 

For those brave souls who stuck around, and still have no clue what I am going on about, just bear in mind that I was initiated into the Neophyte Grade of a Golden Dawn group twenty-five years ago, and into its Inner Order a couple of years later, and have been active more or less constantly practicing its style of magic since then; and therefore, have spent more time tinkering with the system than a most sane people have spent trying to figure out how the latest phone works. 

Again, I suggest that you run for the hills and skip to below the next picture. 

So looking at this from the viewpoint of the planetary cards, I know that the Hierophant represents the Sun, and therefore is more proper to be the Sun card itself. But viewing the ritual as the basis of magic, the Hierophant could also be the Magician (Mercury). There are also the view that the High Priestess is involved here (Moon), and there is the influence of the Universe card (Saturn). And...

...at some point, I came to the conclusion that from a viewpoint of magical operations that each of the planetary associated cards could be administering the Mystic Repast during an operation dealing with their respective planets. This also could be true of the Neophyte ritual itself which is considered to be a summary and overview of the entire Golden Dawn tradition; and therefore, shows the influence of the planets working on the newly minted member of the system (this is especially true if one was forced to serve in each of the six other Floor Officer positions before being allowed to serve as Hierophant--the Hierophant would be informed and shaped by those offices, their duties, and their associated energies--they have partaken of all the planets.)

Plus if one extends the symbolism of the Mystic Repast to include its mythical story lines, one ends up with other Tarot cards also being represented in part by the Mystic Repast: Osiris was torn asunder by Set (Devil card), put back together by Anubis and Isis (Moon card), the Elements themselves (the Four Aces), etc. 

Eventually if one thinks and mediates hard enough on the Mystic Repast, one sees echoes of the entire universe, and the kabbalah that describes it, in the Elements being served. 

At this point, I must admit that I might have gone a little mad.  But that is ok, for everyone in Golden Dawn is a little mad.

The seven planetary Major Arcana according to the Golden Dawn Tradition.

Ok, we are all back together now--those who attempted to understand what I was going on about, and those who just smiled and wondered if the madman would go away if one offered him a cookie. 

One of the reasons that so much time is spent thinking about the aspects of the Neophyte ritual is that the ritual is the basis of much of the magical operations that a Golden Dawn magician performs. It also colors much of the magic that one does outside of the system, as well as adding a layer to whatever religion (if any) that the member observes. For instance, it colors my experience of Cakes and Ale, the Wiccan version of the sacred meal. 

Now, we were to ask what a Tarot character would serve at a sacred feast, and how they would cook it, etc. For me, this is actually a real life game. 

I do a lot of ritual, including an annual open Wiccanish ritual. Near the end of designing of every ritual, the question comes up--"What are we going to use for Cakes and Ale?" The obvious answer--Cakes and Ale--often needs to be adjusted. For instance, I know several people who have a non-gluten requirement...what bloody Tarot card would one associate with non-gluten food...the Devil...yeah, the Devil...I think. As for Ale, it along with Wine, are not suitable for public rituals, so it is grape juice, or apple juice, or water (as one of the other members of Denver Open Full Moon community uses).  

In private rituals, I often include a pomegranate in my Cakes and Ale (Universe and High Priestess cards). Other things I have used: chocolate and honey (Empress), gold foil chocolate coins (Wheel of Fortune), fortune cookies (Magician), handwritten poetic fortunes (Magician--trickster), beef jerky and Twinkies (Death and Last Judgement...one of my honored dead I associate with those foods).   

And so it goes. 

In closing, I would like to tell a joke:

Strength says to their furkids, "Yes, I see that you are not happy with tonight's meal. This is what I am offering. Eat or starve. You have four types of dry food in your bowls. I am not going to the grocery store, just to get you something else to turn your nose up at."

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Hot dog surprise (Tarot Blog Hop)

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The theme of this Tarot Blog Hop is the foodie Tarot! Therefore, it is time to regale you with a tale from my childhood, known as Hot Dog Surprise!

(It was with some horror that one night I was cooking dinner, and thinking about this blog post, and suddenly found myself wondering...)

What Tarot card would Hot Dog Surprise be associated with?

Now, my regular readers, if I have any at all, know that I am the oldest of eight kids, and that my father lost everything when his produce business went under (the house, all of our savings [including money set aside for my college], all of his assets outside a junker of a car), landing us in a house that was the worst I have ever lived in, forcing me to go to high school in a small town (losing all my friends that I had before this point in time) where being slightly odd was almost a criminal offense.

No, I am not bitter at all. And either was my mother who took the misfortune out on all of us.

Now, there are good things to say about my mother....but when it comes to her cooking, I can't think of anything polite to say (she hated to cook--the proof of which is that my sisters were stuck with the job as soon as they were old enough to do so--I only escaped that fate because I was a boy). Basically, one just scrapped the worst of the blackness off whatever dish it was, and wolfed it down (and we were so poor that sometimes we never tasted what we were eating...which probably helped us to survive).

[Ok, there were the home-made jams and jellies...but I am not sure that it offsets the Hot Dog Surprise.]

As an adult, I have also been poor....but never poor enough to make Hot Dog Surprise.

(In my household, I actually do all the cooking because my wife hates cooking, and well, I work from home--mainly I stare at the ceiling while trying to create the perfect sentence--and I don't mind cooking. In fact, I actually like to cook...which is a sin because I am a boy--or so, my mother would say.)

Now, my wife is a picky eater with a gluten problem and a dislike of vegetables and things you can't identify--to say that she was horrified when she heard about Hot Dog Surprise is a slight understatement--she forbid me from ever making the dish, no matter how tight the food budget gets.

So what the hell is Hot Dog Surprise? And where can you get some?

Hot Dog Surprise is hot dogs and sliced bell peppers done in a savory sauce and poured over noodles.

And the secret ingredient? Well, it is not the hotdogs. It is actually Catalina salad dressing. That's right--the secret savory sauce was a bottle of salad dressing.

This is one of those times where you might think that I am making stuff up, but no, like all good comedy, it is the god-honest truth. It was hot dogs and bell peppers cooked in salad dressing and poured over noodles. One can understand my wife's "You are never going to make that ever--I will file for divorce before eating that--I will murder you in your sleep before eating that--pigs will fly before I eat that--the sun will consume the earth before I would eat that." (You know, I think that she might have a problem handling Hot Dog Surprise.)

So what Tarot card would Hot Dog Surprise be? The Death card comes to mind, but that promises some form of change in one's taste buds, food budget, or earthly existence. One could argue the Hanged Man because your world view would have to be upside down to think that Hot Dog Surprise was a good idea. (Except for one of my sisters that still makes it...because if you eat it often enough as a kid, you think that it is normal--I swear I love you sis, but I can't wrap my mind around anyone willing making this if they are not trying to poison people.) The Fool card is a good candidate...because (drumroll please) only a fool would eat this (or a straving dog...but then again, maybe the dog is trying to push the fool off the cliff because of Hot Dog Surprise).

In the end, I decided that Hot Dog Surprise is the Ten of Swords, not so much because my wife will stab me with ten swords if I make it, but rather because of the life circumstances that lead to Hot Dog Surprise being a good food budget option (and yes, the business loss was that bad).

I would have drawn a picture of it (because I am forbidden to actually cook it), but I think that you can imagine a plate of noodles covered in a reddish salad dressing with bits of bell pepper and hotdogs in it...though you might not want to imagine it (the only thing worse than imagining Hot Dog Surprise is actually eating it).

Ain't you glad that you came by to read my blog post this Tarot Blog Hop? I imagine that this post turned out to be a wonderful weight loss plan after reading about all the yummy foods that the other bloggers wrote about. (One assumes that the rest of the bloggers wrote about yummy food...but considering that I am writing this before I read any of the other blog posts, it might be possible that everyone [all fourteen, I think, of us] wrote about Hot Dog Surprise--in which case, welcome to the Drop Two Stone in a Week Because You Read About Hot Dog Surprise More Than Once Diet Plan!)

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Happy Thanksgiving!

No matter how hard you try, you'll never top this.

This Thanksgiving, let's us bow our heads in thanks for the greatest invention by the druids of old: the bacon wrapped twinkle stonehedge.

And if you are serious about trying something like this, check out the video I posted over on Loki's Wisdom on how to actually make bacon-stuffed deep fried twinkles. Your heart will not thank you.

And if you haven't already, check out the Thanksgiving themed article I did for the November 2011 Hearthstone Community Church's newsletter, included in Four Cornerstones (available for free on Smashwords).

Eating and drinking with Crowley

Last week, one of my sisters sent me a link to Aleister Crowley's rice recipe. Now, I know that some have expressed surprise that Crowley was a foodie; but for me, it makes perfect sense that he was. After all, this is the same man that liked good drinks, good drugs, and good cigars. It is only natural that he would also like good food. And being the picky bastard that he was---of course, he is going to have recipes.

I don't remember the book that it is in (someone will put the title in the comment section), but I remember a story about Crowley casting a money spell and then spending the last of the money he had on a big dinner. It takes guts to do that. And yes, his spell worked. Aleister understood the principles of focusing on your desired outcome, rather than wallowing in your fears (something that I find that many magicians, myself included, and Law of Attraction users have difficulties coping with [knock the Law of Attraction all you want, but remember that there is a grain of occult truth in it]).

Despite being a complete a**, I honestly think that Crowley would have been a fine person to sit down and have dinner with. I would attempt to have a conversation with the man, but I fear my intellect is a little sub-par (ain't all of us sub-par in the intellect department when compared to Aleister?). I would not dare take my wife along---Uncle Al would say mock her food allergies. Then again, if me and Crowley started to talk about politics, her eyes would glaze over.

So yes, I would consider have a meal with Aleister Crowley (can you say that you wouldn't be attempted?), though I would draw a line and not consider drinking tea out of his head (have you seen the Crowley teapot?). That is not foodie behavior; that is just bizzare.