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As always, we'll be singing this one just before the dessert course tonight at our Harvest Supper, courtesy of (who else?) those incomparable satirists of British folk idiom, the Kipper Family.

You can sing it to the standard Traffic John Barleycorn tune, but up the tempo some and think “cheerful” instead. And if you happen to have a squeezebox or accordion to accompany it, so much the better.

Joy of the Harvest to you and yours.

Joan Sugarbeet

There was three men come out of the East, their fortunes for to try;

and these three men made a solemn vow: Joan Sugarbeet must die.

They've plowed, they've sown, they've harrowed her in, threw clods upon her head;

and these three men made a solemn vow: Joan Sugarbeet was dead.

They let her lie for a very long time, till the rains from Heaven did fall:

then little Lady Joan sprung up her head, and so amazed them all.

They let her lie till Midwinter, till she looked both flaccid and green:

then little lady Joan, she grew a big bottom, and so became a queen.

 It amuses me to see how trendy cold brewed coffees and teas have become as hedgewitches and wise women have been making this delightful concoction for centuries. It is the same as making Sun Tea, which is gently heated by the warmth of the sun, but is made at night in the light of the moon. Simply take lidded a quart canning jar and fill it with cold, pure spring water and add 4 herbal teabags of your choice or a large tea ball or muslin bag filled with 3 heaping tablespoonfuls of dried herbs. Seal the lid on the canning jar and leave it outside or on your windowsill so it can be exposed to the light of the moon. When you awaken in the morning, you will have cold brewed tea. Do make notes in your Book of Shadows for which brews taste best to you. I can tell you that when the full moon is in the signs for Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Libra and Pisces, the tea is most delicious to me, with my current favorites being ginger peach and cinnamon hibiscus.

I am excited to announce that on October 1, Atheopaganism: An Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science will be published! The book will be available in both print and e-book formats and will be available through the usual channels.

“Goddess temple.”

“Goddess religion.”

“Goddess people.”

After nearly 50 years in the pagan community, I have to admit: these phrases still set my teeth on edge.

It's not the content of any of them that bothers me: it's the delivery.

Goddess (adj.).

The Goddess is the great unstated fact of Western culture. “God” implies “Goddess,” and always will, so long as (and wherever) English is spoken.

The flexibility of English is one of the language's great advantages: nouns regularly change to verbs, verbs to adjectives, and the reverse.

But to my ear, there's something wooden about goddess (adj.), something inelegant. It has the advantages of being practical and comprehensible, but (let's admit it), it's utterly lacking in beauty.

In medieval art, the Green Man is frequently depicted (as here) exhaling vegetation.

I'd always taken this as a symbol of death—someday you'll be dead and plants will grow out of your mouth—but while reading a book about ancient Maya art, I realized that I was missing something important.

In Maya culture, nothing was more valuable than jade. Jade (being green and permanent) = life; when you live in a tropical rain forest, how not? In Classical Mayan art, nobles were frequently represented with a jade bead suspended in the air between their mouths and noses: the breath of life.

That's why the Green Man exhales vegetation: he's the giver of the breath of life. This, of course, is literally true: that incredible reciprocal arrangement that we Red-Bloods have with the Green-Bloods called the Oxygen Cycle.

If we take the Green Man/Green God as the collective embodiment of all the flora on Planet Earth—a reading utterly in consonance with Received Tradition—we may indeed say that from Him comes the Breath of Life.

We might call it kitchen witchery and our Scandinavian friends could say it is how we “get hygge,” which means to get as cozy as humanly possible. This newly trendy lifestyle tradition from the frozen north is not just for lazing about, though we greatly appreciate that aspect; it is also a very healthy way of living with sauna sessions, lots of herbal food and drink but also community, which is an immunity booster on its own.  Tea is a mainstay if you want to be healthy and we feel sure wise women and hedge witches in Northern Europe were the first on the hygge bandwagon, So much of our knowledge about herbal teas and tinctures comes from them.  Herbal tea conjures a very powerful alchemy because when you drink it, you take the magic inside. For an ambrosial brew with the power to calm any storm, add a sliver of ginger root and a pinch each of echinacea and mint to a cup of hot black tea. Before you drink, pray:

Foxy Sunyata, Rainbow in the Void © Lindy Kehoe 2017