Long list of Samhain recipes, altar ideas and spells

[Ravencry]

Recipes:

Apple Pumpkin Soup
(I like to hollow out small pumpkins for soup bowls Very Happy)
Ingredients
2 cups finely chopped peeled tart apples
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
4 cups chicken broth
3 cups canned pumpkin
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon each ground cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger
1 cup unsweetened apple juice
1/2 cup half-and-half cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Directions
In a large saucepan, saute apples and onion in butter for 3-5 minutes or until tender. Stir in flour until blended. Gradually whisk in broth. Stir in the pumpkin, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Cool slightly.
In a blender, cover and process soup in batches until smooth. Pour into a bowl; cover and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.
Just before serving, transfer soup to a large saucepan. Cook over medium heat for 5-10 minutes. Stir in the apple juice, cream, salt and pepper; heat through. Yield: 12 servings (about 2 quarts).


Autumn Butter

1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 cup butter, softened

Mix all ingredients until well blended. Spread onto your favorite muffins, quick bread, sweet crackers, or drop a dollop onto morning pancakes


Golden Herb Rolls

2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
1/4 cup water
4 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 package quick-rising yeast
2 teaspoons dried savory leaves, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed, crushed
1 cup canned pumpkin
4 eggs, divided
2 tablespoons sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 20 to 24 muffin cups. Combine milk, butter and water in small saucepan; heat until butter is melted. If necessary, cool to 120º F. to 130º F. Combine 3 cups flour, sugar, yeast, savory, salt, thyme and dill in large mixer bowl. Add milk mixture and pumpkin; beat for 2 minutes. Stir in 3 eggs and remaining flour. Cover; let rise in warm, draft-free place for 10 minutes or until doubled. Spoon into prepared muffin cups, filling 1/2 to 3/4 full. Cover; let rise in warm, draft-free place for 30 to 40 minutes or until doubled. Beat remaining egg and brush on top of rolls; sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until rolls are golden and sound hollow when tapped. Remove from pans; serve warm or cool on wire rack.

Remembrance Cookies
These cookies can be made on Hallow's Eve. They can be shaped like people and the herb rosemary is added to the dough as a symbol of remembrance. Some of the cookies are eaten while telling stories or attributes of special ancestors, reminding us that we still have access to their strengths--or perhaps a predisposition to their weaknesses. The rest of the cookies are left outside by a bonfire as an offering. This can be a solemn ritual, but it need not be.
Ingredients for the cookies:
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 c. butter or margarine (softened)
1 egg
2 t. vanilla
1 t. almond extract
2 1/2 c. all purpose flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. cream of tartar
1 1/2 T. chopped rosemary
Heat oven 375 degrees. In a large bowl, beat sugar, butter, egg, vanilla, almond extract, and rosemary until creamy. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar. Fold flour mixture into sugar mixture. Beat until dough forms and refrigerate for three hours. Divide dough into halves. Roll out one portion to 3/16 of an inch on a floured surface. Cut out with gingerbread women or men cutters and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat rolling and cutting with second portion. Bake for 5-7 minutes.


Howling Jack: Honey Pumpkin Mead
by Aurora
This mead is the color of a ripe peach and smells like autumn leaves - perfect for a Harvest party or sabbath.
1 sound, hard-rind pumpkin (approx. 2 quart capacity)
Paraffin wax
1 1/2 quarts of water
4 lbs. honey
2 each oranges and lemons
1 pkt. wine yeast
1 tea bag (black tea)
Prepare yeast starter.
Sterilize honey and water by boiling for 10 minutes, skimming the froth as it rises.
Remove from heat; stir in sliced citrus fruits, including skins.
Cool to room temperature; pitch yeast.
Allow to sit over night.
Prepare pumpkin by cutting off the top with a sharp knife. The top must "mate" with the bottom so cut carefully. Clean out the seeds, strings, and membranes of the pumpkin. Rinse out with water.
Pour the must into the pumpking, leaving an inch of air space between the liquid and the rim of the opening. Replace the top.
Prepare the paraffin/water bath: Fill a plastic bucket with hot water, melt the paraffin wax and float it on the water.
Dip the pumpkin, bottom first, into the warm paraffin until it is coated up to its lid. Once the paraffin begins to harden on the pumpkin skin, seal the lid by carefully pouring paraffin over the top, making sure to coat the seam.
Set the pumpkin in the middle of a shallow dishpaaan full of water to keep and thirsty pickle worms at bay and place it in a dark, quiet spot.
Allow to sit for two months, then siphon off and bottle.
Note: It is probably a good idea to rack the mead into a glass fermenter, fitted with an air lock, for evaluation prior to bottling. If the fermentation is not complete and you bottle prematurely, the corks and glass may blow.

Decorations:

Foods from the harvest, photographs of your loved ones who have departed this world, a statue or figurine of the Goddess in her Crone aspect, pumpkins & Jack-o'-lanterns, balefires, besom, masks, cauldron &, the Waning Moon.


Fun traditions:

Make resolutions, write them on a small piece of parchment, and burn in a candle flame, preferably a black votive candle within a cauldron on the altar.

Wear costumes that reflect what you hope or wish for in the upcoming year.

Carve a jack-o-lantern and place a candle in it.

Symbolically extinguish the "hearthfire" of your home and then re-light it from the Samhain Sabbat Fire or cauldron.

During ritual invite departed friends and family into the circle and tell them of all that had happened in your life since their departure. You may wish to set a place for them at your dinner table and use this time to contact them. This is a good time to talk to them of any unresolved issues that you may have had with them and to let them go.

Drink apple cider spiced with cinnamon to honour the dead.

Bury an apple or pomegranate in the garden for spirits passing by on their way to being reborn.

Leave food outside as an offering to the dead.

Do divination for the next year using whatever form of divination appeals to you.

Make a besom, or witches broom.

Go for a walk in a local woods and find a magick wand of oak, holly, ash, rowan, birch, hazel, elm, hawthorn or willow.

Let this be the traditional time that you make candles for the coming year, infusing them with colour, power, herbs, and scent depending on the magickal purpose.

Look at old family photo albums or scrapbooks. Try to tell stories about each person in the pictures Honour the dead, remember those you loved who have passed on-perhaps by putting their pictures or something they gave you on your altar during your ritual.

Carve faces in to apples and pumpkin

Have a dumb supper (this is where you place a plate of food for a deceased loved one and invite them to join you, toast them, and speak of all the good things that they have done)

Samhain spells:

The Apple and the Mirror: Before the stroke of midnight, sit in front of a mirror in a room lit only by one candle or the moon. Go into the silence, and ask a question. Cut the apple into nine pieces. With your back to the mirror, eat eight of the pieces, then throw the ninth over your left shoulder. Turn your head to look over the same shoulder, and you will see and in image or symbol in the mirror that will tell you your answer.

(When you look in the mirror, let your focus go "soft," and allow the patterns made by the moon or candlelight and shadows to suggest forms, symbols and other dreamlike images that speak to your intuition.)

Prayer:

On this night of Samhain I mark your passing,

O Sun King, through the sunset into the Land of the Young.

I mark also the passing of all who have gone before, and all who will go after.

O Gracious Goddess, Eternal Mother, You who gives birth to the fallen,

teach me to know that in the time of the greatest darkness there is

the greatest light.



(this is from the eutm main site)
Sending a Message to a Departed Love
Spell to Contact the Dead
1. ink made of soot and pink wine
2. two black candles
3. place paper between the two black candles


Write at the top of the letter:


"Thou who are mourned, see now the nature of this mourning: As thou knowest now my sorrow, so on this paper I affirm it. I write thee my heart here, for thy sight and that we may be bound by such silent words even better than when our words were spoken. Receive this letter, a sign of my commitment not to forget thee nor to cease mourning for thee until my own life shall be ended"


4. Now write your feelings, emotions, devotion, memories, love, etc.
5. Fold the paper three times
6. Seal with herbs
7. Burn in a fire.

Samhain Incense Powder:
1 part each of the following herbs: (one part=2 tbsp)

Nettles, Bayleaf, Calendula, Sage, Tarragon, Oak Leaf

4 drops Frankincense and 4 drops Myrrh oil
Grind the powders in your mortar until fine, then add oils
Use a thurible or stone burner with 1 inch of sand
Use a self-burning charcoal tablet, and sprinkle powder in small amounts to burn as smudging incense. Do not use briquettes in confined spaces, as these burn toxic.

Oil Preparation:

The following oil is a special preparation for use during scrying, tarot reading, any divination, soul-retrieval, and astral travel. This magic oil is a wonderful psychic enhancement, and will increase prophetic dreams. It enhances your creative powers, and is a very strong protective formula to use during rituals. You would use this to anoint yourself after ritual bathing, and it can also be used to anoint candles for Samhain. This is a subtle scent, but very powerful, it is used sparingly. Save any remainder for your next full moon ritual and tool blessing.

Create during the new moon before Samhain and also on Samhain, when the veil between the worlds of the physical and spiritual is most thin.

Sixth Sense Magical Oil: (use 2 oz base almond oil)
1 teaspoon each of powder, or 2 drops each of essential oil (add oils last):
Lemongrass, mugwort, eye-bright, rue, mistletoe, jasmine flowers, mullien, wormwood, yarrow, bay, mace, star-anise, mistletoe, Solomon's seal, cinque-foil
Put powders in cheesecloth tied with a black string. Steep in the base oil for 3-5 day, left on an east window in sunlight. Squeeze to strain oil from cheesecloth, add other essential oils now. Shake he container and let it sit overnight outside. The preparation is ready for use.

[Wiccan Z]

that's amazing. ill be putting that in my BOS

[ScarlettRose]

Oh! I didn't see this one before when I was looking. I love them (:
Ohhh Halloween is amazing! hehe

[Serendipity]

Most awsome Ravencry!

Thanks for sharing!

(Now let me see, what recipe do I want to do first?) hehehe

[Ravencry]

I'm super excited to make the Apple Pumpkin soup I can't wait for Samhain :DDD

[ScarlettRose]

I'm super excited to make the Apple Pumpkin soup I can't wait for Samhain :DDD

I really want to make that((:

[ScarlettRose]

Just finished making the Apple Pumpkin Soup! Now just 8 more hours!!
It has an amazing taste!

[reikihealer83]

Thank you for posting this Ravencry. I am looking forward to tomorrow night. I have picked some fresh grapes and I am putting together some herbs for putting around our fire circle and stuff. It is going to be fun and the fact that I am working with my friends upstairs it is even better. I am even doing something with burning all the "contracts" that have held me back this year. I am thinking biscuits tomorrow too. Happy Samhain all!