Mabon is coming: A collection of preparations

As I sit here in my little terraced house in Britain writing this, I can see the cloudy grey sky out of my window and I feel the summer ending. I can feel the leaves turning crunchy and everyone’s back to school photos, and with a little twinge of excitement, I can sense the pumpkin spice lattes waking and stretching their little caffeinated arms. Without a doubt, this is the end of summer.  

Which means that Mabon is coming, and it means that it’s been a whole year (!) since I started fully practising on Pagan holidays. Over the year, I’ve been refining my skills, bought far too many books and qualified in various different aspects of witchcraft and Pagan culture. 

Anyway, with Mabon coming up, I’ve put together a couple of things that you can do if you’re struggling for ideas – especially if you’re in self isolation or local lockdown (like I am, sigh).  

It wouldn’t be a Frank post if there wasn’t some reference to food, and so I’ll start with a bit of kitchen witchery. I got this recipe from The Almanac by Lia Leendertz – an absolute must have for anyone wanting to connect more to the earth and its ways. This recipe was tweaked from another book called Cattern Cakes and Lace. As with any of my kitchen witchcraft posts, you can add or remove spices from this as you see fit, and use spices that you feel are connected to Mabon! I would use woody spices, like nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves.  

Suffolk Fourses Cakes (Mabon Spice Bread) 

675g strong white flour 

1 ½ teaspoons of instant dried yeast 

½ tsp salt 

2 teaspoons mixed ground spice (or mixed Mabon spices) 

2 teaspoons sugar 

175g softened butter 

450ml warm water 

175g currants (optional) 

Sift all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, then add the butter and rub in until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the water and mix until it becomes a dough, then tip it out on a floured surface and knead it for 10 minutes. Put it in another bowl, cover with a teatowel and leave it somewhere warm to rise for 1 to 2 hours (until it’s doubled in size).  

Tip it out and knead in the currants (if using), then divide it into two pieces. Shape them into two loaves and put each in a loaf tin. Leave them to double in size again. 

Preheat the oven to 200C, and when the loaves have risen enough, brush them with milk (to make them shiny) and bake them for 45 minutes. Leave them to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then cool them on a wire rack.  

Enjoy as part of your Mabon feast or leave as an offering! 

Easy Mabon spell bags 

I love spell bags. They’re easy to make, and my home is full of them! A neat trick with certain spell bags (ones containing cloves or other whole spices) is to put a bit of water in the top of a wax burner, and ‘boil’ the bags with the tealight underneath. You can take them out, dry them and then use them again and again! You can make them out of cheesecloth and twine: just put the spices/flowers in your cheesecloth, wrap them up like a parcel with twine and make a little string to dangle them if you want to! I have protective ones in my front window which I hang off the window handles.  

NB: if you do this, be careful of the bag dripping when you take it out! My carpet is a bit stained from the clove syrup dripping off the bag 🙁   

As I mentioned in the recipe, I associate Mabon with falling leaves and woody earthy smells/atmospheres, so for my spell bags, I put in whole cloves, two cinnamon sticks and a ‘stone’ (unsure of the word!) of nutmeg. Hang them around, or use the wax/oil burner trick to make your home smell like Autumn.  

Summon a demon 

Joking! Joking! Please don’t do this – we have enough issues in the world already. 

Thank Mother Earth for the circle of the seasons 

Feel free to ignore this one if you don’t believe in prayer, as I will probably post some poetry at some point. I am by no means more qualified to lead a ritual than anyone else, but I have edited this ritual prayer so the solitary practitioner can read and sit in contemplation, or read to a group of practitioners. This prayer is from Seasonal Occult Rituals by William Gray, and this section is The Rite of Autumn.  

May the light of sunset shine resplendently on us this Autumn equinox. 

Blessed be the sun of Autumn bringing heavenly beauty to the edges of this earth.  

Blessed be light so wonderfully shown to us upon its path of power. 

We stand between the light and shade 

Upon the middle path we made 

Where day and night divide, 

As we have lived and worked and prayed.  

Fire and water bring to birth 

With air, the outcome of this earth.  

So bless the earth on which we stand 

For harvests of the sea and land. 

Roots below, fruits above, ripe and ready for our reaping. Blessed be the earth suppoorting life, and air that brings the breath of life to earth. Let us keep our feet well grounded on our earth however high we hold our heads to the sky. So shall we live as upright souls between both ends of our existence.   

Make a Cerridwen brew 

By artist Adrienne Rozzi

Cerridwen is the Welsh goddess of transformation, so you could probably brew this at any changing of the seasons. This recipe is toxic and so should not be consumed. Instead, you can sit and absorb the vapours as it boils.  

This recipe is from The Complete Book of Incense, Oils & Brews by Scott Cunningham.  

Boil: 

• Water 
• Acorns 
• Barley 
• Honey 
• Ivy 
• Hellebore (you can substitute this with rosemary) 
• Bay 

I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you would like me to write one for each corner of the year (ie. Yule, Ostara, Litha and Mabon 2021), please like, share and comment! 

‘There’s no place like home’ security spell/Recipe

Remember those family roast dinners when you were a kid? The smell of the potatoes, that faint warmth from the vegetables cooking? I thought about this whilst creating this spell, and the safe, secure feeling it brought me.

With this in mind, I created some side dishes, each with their own correspondences – but if you don’t like any of these vegetables or herbs, feel free to omit them!

Mixed dish

Pick three or four of these vegetables:

• Carrots
• Turnips
• Swede
• Celeriac
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Peas
• Parsnip
• Yams

Boil with rosemary (home, purity, psychic protection) and thyme (protection, healing). The steam from this will give you your air correspondence. Serve with a sprig of fresh basil for a hit of good luck.

Buttered corn

Sweetcorn is associated with home protection, therefore is perfect for this spell. Cook as normal,drain, then stir through a knob of butter, and a little bit of chopped garlic (to break hexes, banish negative energy and give security, earth correspondence). The amount of garlic you use depends on how much corn you’re making, so for my recipe for two people, I use about half a teaspoon for about 200g (1 cup) of corn.

Sautéed greens

You can use any greens for this recipe, but I prefer to use variations of:

• Thinly sliced Savoy cabbage
• Spring/mixed greens
• Bok choi
• Chopped leeks
• Spinach
• Kale
• Thinly sliced red cabbage

Leeks are also associated with home protection so are a good choice, and cabbage can represent our roots with the earth.

Heat up a frying pan and put a good amount of butter in – you might need to keep adding butter to make sure it doesn’t dry up. Add sea salt (water correspondence, protection) and black pepper/peppercorns (banishing, justice, strength, fire correspondence) to taste.

Serve with your roast, and know that all four elements have been respected and used to protect your home.

Healing happiness carrots

Honey roasted carrots are SO GOOD and with a la’al bit o’ witchin’ they can be beneficial too. I originally tried my hand at these for Yule 2018 but I wasn’t using my intuition then and instead found a terrible Pinterest recipe that failed on Every. Single. Level. Needless to say they didn’t make it into the Yule feast and went in the bin! What a waste 😦 

Anyway, here’s my intuitive kitchen craft recipe for these carrots (I’m going to eventually try experimenting with other root vegetables but the flavours of this go so well I don’t want to risk it!)

You will need: 

• Carrots, peeled and cut lengthways
• Olive oil (or vegetable oil)
• A few sprigs of rosemary
• Sea salt
• Runny honey
• Roasting pan
• Tin foil

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C (i used a fan oven so i’m not sure what this would be for non-fan!)
2. Line your roasting tray with foil, and drizzle some oil over it, then put it in the oven while it preheats – this makes your carrots extra crispy bc hot oil, man
3. Boil your carrots in a saucepan for 15/20 minutes, until they’re quite soft
4. By the time they’ve finished your oven should have preheated and the oil will be hot
5. Drain the carrots and put them back into the pan, then drizzle over oil, a few shakes of salt, and a squeeze or teaspoon of runny honey
6. Mix that all together
7. Take your roasting pan out of the oven, and lay the carrots on the foil – most of the time they’ll sizzle a bit, this is a good sign!
8. Add your sprigs of rosemary onto the top of them, and drizzle over the remaining mixture from the pan
9. Bake in your oven for 40 minutes
10. Take out and lay on some kitchen towel to absorb the excess oil
11. Serve!

Pick-me-up Prosperity Biscuits

Let’s be honest: we’re all in a bit of a funk right now. So I thought it might be time to dig up an old bit of kitchen witchin’ to make some pick-me-up food for whatever energy you need.

I originally posted this on my strictly-cooking-only blog – back when I was a bit nervous to tell the world about my beliefs etc, so if you feel like you’ve seen this recipe before, you might have done! I’ve done a few versions for you to bake, depending on the kind of energy you need right now.

I had a dream about some biscuits of a certain shape, then the next morning saw a picture of them, so I figured it was a sign to use the recipe from my dream in my spells.

This version is for wealth and abundance.

You will need:

• 2 cups of plain flour (plus extra for rolling the dough)
• 1 cup of butter
• ¾ cup of caster sugar
• ¼ cup of granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• Lemon juice
• Runny honey
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• 1 basil leaf (or dried)
• Mixing bowl
• Wooden spoon
• An oven heated to 160 degrees C
• Greaseproof paper on a baking tray

Method:

1. Put 1 cup of the flour and all of the sugar into the mixing bowl

2. Add the butter, and beat with the wooden spoon until the mixture is flaky and there are no blobs of butter left (this’ll probably feel like it takes ages, but it will happen- try smushing the butter up against the side of the bowl to separate it)

3. Visualise your work beating the mixture as the hard work you have put into developing yourself and your career prospects

4. Add just the yolk of one egg, and beat this into the mixture, then add the whole other egg, mix together

5. Add a pinch of cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, a pinch of basil (if using dried), or if you’re using a leaf, tear it up so it is fine pieces, then squeeze in the lemon and 1 tsp of the honey

6. As you add these spices/herbs/extras, see them as the little extra help you will get from the universe to achieve your true potentials

7. Add the rest of the flour (another cup) and mix through, the mixture should form a fairly thick dough

8. This is where your energy work really comes in: pick up the dough, and on a floured surface, knead the mixture. Then use a rolling pin to flatten it out

9. Cut out the biscuits with a cookie cutter, or alternatively (like I did), use a cookie cutter to get the right amount of dough, shape it into a ball, and flatten it onto the paper with your fingers- I prefer this as it feels like a more organic way! But you do you ❤

10. Bake for 20 minutes at 160 degrees C

11. Cool and eat! You should feel the energy flowing through you after one of these – I sure did! Plus they’re delicious ❤

For self-love spells:

1 rose petal to replace the basil leaf, and lavender instead of the cinnamon

For spirituality:

Keep the basil, and add rosemary and marjoram to replace the cinnamon and nutmeg

NB: feel free to use your own intuition to tweak these ! I am only using what feels right to me personally !