Stuffed Pumpkins for Mabon and Samhain

We celebrated Mabon late this year. I stumbled across a recipe for stuffed pumpkins that was an absolute hit. This would also be a great Samhain recipe.

Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good

Ingredients

• 1 pumpkin, about 3 pounds (I tripled this recipe, as you can see from the picture above. This fed seven people with big appetites!)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1/4 pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into 1/2-inch chunks (I used a round of sourdough)
• 1/4 pound cheese, such as Gruyère, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut into 1/2-inch chunks (I used shredded Velveeta. One of the complaints I heard about the original recipe is that the chunks of cheese didn’t melt all the way. The shredded Velveeta was perfect).
• 2-4 garlic cloves (to taste), split, germ removed, and coarsely chopped
• 4 slices bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped (my addition) (I used a lot more bacon than 4 slices…)
• About 1/4 cup snipped fresh chives or sliced scallions
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
• About 1/3 cup heavy cream
• Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (I put my pumpkins on a cookie sheet and stuck them in the oven first to make sure that they would fit and that I wouldn’t have to move my racks around after I had already heated my oven).

Line a cookie sheet with foil and set aside.

Take your pumpkin and remove the cap, just like you would do when you are carving pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns. Make sure you cut a big enough cap that you can work in the pumpkin. Clean out the seeds and strings from both the cap and the pumpkin. (You can get rid of the guts, but I set mine aside to roast pumpkin seeds for later).

Liberally coat the inside of your pumpkin with salt and pepper and then set the pumpkin with cap on your cookie sheet for later.

Take the bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs and toss them all together in a big bowl.The original recipe called for the cream to be poured over the mix after the pumpkins are stuffed, but I went ahead and poured the cream in with the stuffing before stuffing the pumpkins and this worked really well for me. Season with more salt and pepper. When everything was mixed together, I took a taste and adjusted my spices as needed. It was good even before cooking!

Spoon the stuffing into your pumpkins. I packed mine pretty full, but make sure you can put the pumpkin cap back on when you’re done. I had a little stuffing left over, I set it aside to bake in something later.

Cook your pumpkins at 350 for 2 hours. The original recipe suggested checking after 90 minutes. I cooked mine in total for about an hour and forty five minutes and they turned out perfectly. The pumpkins will overflow, so make sure your baking sheet is covered.

Be careful when you pull your cookie sheet out of the oven. The pumpkins will be very full and very wobbly. You can cook them in a casserole dish, but I liked how pretty they looked standing free on the table later.

You can either serve it by scooping the pumpkins out, or do what I did and slice them into quarters and serve the quarters.

Enjoy!

Mabon is Upon Us

Mabon, or the Fall Equinox is today. While I always remind my students that the eight sabbats that Wiccans celebrate in the modern world are estimated and agreed upon dates for the agricultural and hunting cycle of the year, I usually try to pay attention to true solstice and equinox moments.

The last few days I have been wired and restless. For the first time in over a week, I fell asleep and slept deeply all night. Waking up this morning, I realized that the equinox had finally hit and some of that shifting energy had finally settled down upon us.

I’ve had a hard time with Mabon this year. While its a time of bounty and rejoicing, it is also a time of sacrifice. This Mabon feels like the end of an important cycle in my own life and I have been hoping that all of my hard work is about to come to fruition. I have been struggling with what to say, but luckily enough a fellow priestess of the tradition I work in, Blue Star, said it beautifully so that I don’t have to. I thought I would share her words and wisdom here, because it touched me deeply and I think it is the type of thing to pass on and carry with you throughout the rest of the dark time of the year.

—

The Gods have been generous to me in myriad ways, not all of which feel particularly comfortable in the moment. The weeks between the Harvest and New Year are a time of celebrating bounty, but that bounty also requires a reaping. And with a reaping can come a mourning, of sorts, for the things that once were, or could have been but never really bloomed, or are revealed to have grown into something other than what one thought, or intended, or held out hope for, no longer to be consumed in good health or consciousness.

So I meet this holiday in appreciation for the experiences that have nourished me throughout the past year, some anticipated and some pleasantly unexpected. And I tip a nod of farewell to those which have not. Some with sadness, because truth, and some with relief, because honesty.

Regardless, I lay myself before the foot of the Gods in my supplication that l continue to grow to achieve my greatest and most nourished potential with the people and places and experiences that support and contribute to this ultimate end. Which will, in turn, mean that I am divinely positioned to contribute to the greatest and most nourished potential of those people and places and experiences where I am most meant to serve.

You reap the grain. Some makes your bread. Some is released to the wind to grow wherever and feed whomever it’s best meant for.

Blessed Mabon

-the ever beautiful and effervescent Tegan Ashton Cohan

There Was an Old Woman

Casting circle for me is one of most integral parts of a Wiccan ritual. I love sweeping and I love the song we use to sweep, but the chant I was originally taught when I came into my tradition that I have been using for casting was just ho hum and I just don’t like casting a ho hum circle!

This chant was not the first circle casting used by my tradition and it certainly won’t be the last, but this particular one never sat right for me when I used it. There are several versions of it around and none of them felt right either.

And while it was suggested that I could write my own, I am a terrible poet and I have a love/hate relationship with Wiccan rhyming anyway.

So, I’ve been looking for something different for a while and I think that finally found the one that works for me!

This rhyme is an old Morris dance that was adopted in the 1700s as a Mother Goose rhyme. There are several versions of it around, but I like the old Morris one the best:

There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket
Ninety nine miles beyond the moon.
And under one arm she carried a basket
And under the other she carried a broom
Old Woman! Old Woman! Old Woman! cried I!
Oh wither! Oh wither! Oh wither so high!
I’m going to sweep cobwebs beyond the sky
And I’ll be back with you by and by.

Morris dance is a great tradition to draw on for folkloric practices anyway. While we can argue over how old the practice of modern Wicca is, I think that details like this prove the very long actual folkloric practices of particular rituals and actions in Britain. Morris dance is very good proof of just how long these practices and beliefs have existed.

To sweep the cobwebs…
by steeringfornorth

I love the imagery of the old woman being tossed up with her broom into the sky to make sure there are no cobwebs. It works for new moons when the moon is unseen and for full moons when the moon is blazing. And what is more traditional in witchcraft than an old woman doing things that no one else will?

Plus it just makes me want to dance as it rolls off the tongue, and what could be better?

The energy of my circle has picked up quite a bit and it definitely took my coven a few circles to deal with the change in energy. It has been both uplifting and energizing!

This website traces a piece of artwork that is tied to the literary history of this poem and also introduces this other, similar yet much longer version:

THE OLD WOMAN AND HER CAT

There was an old woman, who rode on a broom,
With a high gee ho! gee humble;
And she took her Tom Cat behind for a groom
With a bimble, bamble, bumble.

They travelled along till they came to the sky,
With a high gee ho! gee humble;
But the journey so long made them very hungry,
With a bimble, bamble, bumble.

Says Tom, ‘I can find nothing here to eat,
With a high gee ho! gee humble;
So let us go back again, I entreat,
With a bimble, bamble, bumble.’

The old woman would not go back so soon,
With a high gee ho! gee humble;
For she wanted to visit the man in the moon,
With a bimble, bamble, bumble.

Says Tom, ‘I’ll go back by myself to our house,
With a high gee ho! gee humble;
For there I can catch a good rat or a mouse,
With a bimble, bamble, bumble.’

‘But,’ says the old woman, ‘how will you go?
With a high gee ho! gee humble.’
You shan’t have my nag, I protest and vow,
With a bimble, bamble, bumble.’

‘No, no,’ says old Tom, ‘I’ve a plan of my own,
With a high gee ho! gee humble;
So he slid down the rainbow, and left her alone,
With a bimble, bamble, bumble.

So now if you happen to visit the sky,
With a high gee ho! gee humble;
And want to come back, you Tom’s method may try,
With a bimble, bamble, bumble.

I love the rainbow bridge idea, which of course makes me think of the messenger Goddess Iris and the Norse Bifröst. The rainbow is good example of something that is a boundary between the worlds, which is exactly what one needs to think about while casting a circle. This old children’s rhyme also shows how much magical lore and theory can be found in the rhymes and fairy tales that we grew up with. I keep telling my students that you have to know your fairy tales and children’s rhymes for when you are practicing spell work.

One of my favorite fairy tales is “The Buried Moon.” In this strange story, the moon decides to investigate what sorts of evil creatures come out to haunt the bog when she isn’t shining in the sky and gets captured under a large rock! When the moon disappears, the villagers get worried and are frightened. Eventually a traveler hears her cries and seeks out the village wise women to figure out what the villagers should do to rescue her. The wise women tells the villagers: “Go all of ye, just afore the night gathers, put a stone in your mouth, and take a hazel-twig in your hands, and say never a word till you’re safe home again.” Hazel is a wood associated with knowledge and stones can both ground you and allow you to see the fairy world. Its these types of tidbits that we can certainly still learn from today! If you want to read the full story, it can be found here.

What circle castings do you use and why?

The Cat and the Moon
by Checanty