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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in pumpkins

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 Pie Pumpkin Cut in Half Picture | Free Photograph | Photos Public Domain

Of Pumpkins, Perichoresis, and the Triple Goddess

 

Lot o' good eating in a pumpkin, there is.”

(Nanny Ogg)

 

Halfway through the container of squash puree, the rich, velvety texture, the round, meaty flavor, and the simultaneous sense of novelty-familiarity that I'm experiencing suddenly halts my mindless shoveling. This isn't the butternut squash puree that I'd thought it was.

I taste more thoughtfully. I've seen this diva perform before, but only robed in sweeteners, salt, and spices. Now she stands before me in all her skyclad glory, and I'm thoroughly in love.

Turns out, Nanny Ogg was right. She usually is.

 

I'm trying out a new recipe: a Chilean bean, corn, and pumpkin stew.

(New to me, that is. Given its origin and ingredients—the Triple Goddess of New World cookery—this is likely a very old recipe indeed.)

I retrieve a pie pumpkin from cold storage on the back stairs, halve and clean it. Since I need only half the pumpkin for the stew, I oven-roast the remainder, puree it, and put it in the refrigerator to await some unspecified future use.

That's what I've been mindlessly shoveling down: delicious even without benefit of salt.

Move over, butternut squash.

 

Maiden, Mother, Crone. The Triple Goddess has become such a Wicca 101 commonplace that it's sometimes easy to overlook the richness, the depth, the Inner Life, of this abiding Mystery.

Consider, for instance, that in Old Craft lore she is/they are known as the Three Mothers.

Consider, for instance, that in Iroquoian lore she is/they are known as the Three Sisters.

The Triple Goddess is a perichoresis: a dancing-together.

 

Corn, Beans, Squash, the far-famed Three Sisters of the Seven Nations of the Iroquois: Three Sisters who love one other deeply, and flourish best together. Plant a seed of each of the Three in the same mound, and watch them thrive together.

The Corn drinks up the nitrogen that the Beans fix in the soil. The Bean vines spiral-climb the Cornstalk into the Sunlight. Spreading around them, the leaves of the Squash vine shade out competing weeds.

As anyone of the Frances Moore Lappé Diet for a Small Planet generation knows, together, the incomplete proteins of grain and legume combine in our guts to provide us with the complete proteins that our bodies need. The squashes round out the tally of vitamins and minerals which our bodies also need.

 

Cross-pantheon god-on-god correlation is an imprecise science: more an art than a science, perhaps. I'll leave it to you to map the Old and New World Triplicities onto one another.

Rest assured, though, that there is, indeed, a correspondence.

Perichoresis.

 

 

Three Sisters Stew

Porotos Granados

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Ecstatic Pumpkins

 

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Pumpkins...

Don’t just use your pumpkins (or turnips) to carve for decoration because the flesh is yummy as are pumpkin seeds (toasted and sprinkled with salt).

The flesh and seeds are also brilliant for working some Samhain magic…

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Rites of Autumn

I asked a friend what family wisdom he felt he'd inherited from his ancestors.

“Work hard and live frugally,” he said. “And when times are good, set aside a little something for when they're not; for hard times will certainly come.”

Well, it's October in Minnesota, and that means that hard times are certainly on the way.

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Pagan News Beagle: Earthy Thursday, October 22

Google unveils their smart car. Analysts consider the implications of discovering water on Mars. And a pumpkin shortage dampens Halloween spirits. It's Earthy Thursday, our weekly news feed about science and Earth-related news. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

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