There’s an old expression, “Eventually some rain will fall on everyone’s parade.” Grief is an inescapable part of life. The sun rises and it also sets. Grief is not confined to one day or even a particular season, nor is grief limited to physical death either. Folks grieve for lost animal companions, open spaces turned into shopping malls, the ending of covens or magickal traditions, community betrayals, and relationships that ended too soon or never really quite got started. Grief has no expiration date, no matter what the bereavement policy is where you work. Grief is simply a part of life, and, as with many parts of this incredible whirl around the planet, one must dance with grief at some point.
There are many flavours of Paganism, and generally speaking there’s a built-in orthopraxy to honour grief and death. Samhain is a well-known holy day. Samhain is most often celebrated on October 31, but depending on the magickal traditions you’ve engaged with, Samhain may fall on the full moon in November. My practice acknowledges Samhain-tide as a season stretching from October to December, ending on the night of the Winter Solstice. Samhain practices are often marked with remembrances of the recently departed, the Beloved Dead, as they are frequently referred to. Ancestors of bloodlines and magickal lineages are called upon as special guests at meals and rituals. Pioneers of the Craft are remembered for their contributions to modern Paganism.
It’s my belief that modern Paganism and modern witchcraft prepare adherents for dealing with grief and death in all its forms, better than most other practices do. Not because Paganism has a monopoly on wisdom concerning the afterlife, reincarnation, or the lack thereof, but because many of our practices celebrate life, the turning of the seasons, and the eventual passing of all things. Generally speaking, Paganism is more concerned with this lifetime rather than focusing on the next lifetime, and because of that there’s a shift in perspective. Death and grief are part of what happens in this world and must be dealt with, or, at the very least, paid attention to. And as with every other part of life, grief and death have their own food rituals.
A Place at the Table
Let’s start with grief. Just looking at the dictionary definition of grief is likely to cause you more grief. Grief is defined as deep sorrow. Sorrow itself is no picnic either. Sorrow is the deep distress caused by disappointment, misfortune, or loss. Grief and sorrow aren’t particularly treatable, from a medical perspective anyway. The lessening of grief and sorrow have more to do with time than with treatment. There’s an old axiom that says you don’t get past grief and sorrow, you get through them and learn to live life with them.
Grief and sorrow tend to have physical symptoms too, one of which is a lack of appetite, which can lead to weight loss and decreased energy. It makes sense, right? If your stomach, brain, and heart are all tied up in knots over a loss, you’re unlikely to want to fill your body with food.
One thing I’ve found that helps to manage grief (and notice I said manage grief, not cure it completely or make it go away) is to set a place for grief at the table. It’s a fairly common practice to set altars for spells, to mark the seasons, or to remember loved ones. It’s less common to create altars specifically for our grief. Part of setting up an altar for grief or making space for grief at the dinner table is to give grief a place to go that isn’t in the body. Giving grief a place to go beyond your body can help remind you that grief is happening to you, with you even, but it doesn’t make up the entirety of who you are. If grief has come to visit you, purposely and intentionally invite grief to dinner. Here’s what I do. See if this might work for you too.
Figure out what you most want to eat right now. If you’re experiencing grief, this could be a giant bowl of ice cream, cheese and crackers, dry toast (my go-to grief food), or a big heaping plate full of “nothin’ sounds good. I don’t want anything. I guess I’ll have cereal.” Whatever it is, do what you can to prepare it or have someone help you prepare it. Go to the kitchen cupboard and pull out two plates or bowls, knives, forks, glasses, and whatever you need to serve the food you’re going to eat. Enlist a housemate, friend, or family member to do this for you if you’re just not up to it.
Set the table for you and for grief. If you have beloveds that are also experiencing grief, have everyone participate in this process. One person can grab the plates, another can start cooking (or scooping out ice cream), and someone else can set the table.
Have a conversation over a meal, with grief. A conversation can take many forms. Perhaps you sit in silence and acknowledge that grief is there with you. Maybe you tell grief what’s going on for you in this exact moment. Crying might be involved; so might laughing. Expressions of grief show up in lots of ways. And then, when your dinner with grief is just about done, announce that the meal is over. Tell grief that you’re going to clear the table, do the dishes, scrape the leftovers into the compost bin, and put everything away. Invite grief to leave.
Repeat this ritual as often as you need to until the day that grief forgets to show up or just pops by for coffee but doesn’t stay too long.
Riding the Food Train
Grief, sorrow, loss, and death aren’t easy to deal with for anyone. Doing much of anything while you’re experiencing any of these things quite often feels completely impossible and not worth the effort anyway. You’re not alone. Most everyone feels this way; even the person that fills their every moment doing a million things to avoid grief and sorrow will eventually run out of distractions, plop down on the sofa, and realise that loss has been sitting in the living room just waiting for them to show up.
Food keeps us alive. Food connects us to the land of the living. Food is often the last thing someone thinks about when sorrow and death show up at the front door. Making sure that food is available to sustain those in the throes of grief, sorrow, loss, and death is critical and, maybe more importantly, it’s an act of compassionate service. Which means it is time to ride the food train.
A food train is nothing more than a group of people providing meals for folks in need until they get back on their feet and can manage by themselves again. I agree to cook/bring dinner on Monday night. You agree to cook/bring dinner on Tuesday. Another person cooks/brings dinner on Wednesday and so on and so on. The folks in crisis get fed and the workload is spread out over several people, so no one person must do it all. Once upon a time, food trains were called “everyone else in the village doing their part and taking care of each other.” The reality today is that most people live fractured lives, away from family, friends, and meaningful, supportive community. Close-knit covens and other magickal communities can be a great place to find respite and resources in times of need. Before a crisis happens,41 it’s not a bad idea to put a food train plan into place. Here are a couple of tips and tricks for setting up a great food train.
Tip #1: It needs to be more than just you. Yes, I’m talking directly to you. You’re very generous, I’m sure, and a wonderful cook to boot, but food trains work best when other people share the load.
Tip #2: Reread tip # 1 and then enlist coven mates, friends that love to cook, and members of your local Pagan community that can be counted on in a pinch.
Tip #3: Food trains can be really simple. Keep a list of phone numbers and email addresses handy and share the list with at least one other person. Alternatively, there are lots of online food train resources out there that have done the hard work of setting up schedules and spreadsheets for you.
Tip #4: Spread the word throughout your community that a food train exists. Invite people to join the cooking team and let folks know how to contact you if they are the ones in need.
Tip #5: Practice. This is my favourite step. Even if there’s no crisis at the moment, test how the food train works by selecting one person in your group and providing them a week’s worth of meals. It’s a nice thing to do anyway. It’s fun to share food with friends, but it also gives you an idea of whether your food train is working. Your friend Helen might like lasagna, but she might not like it seven days in a row. A test run will sort that stuff out.
Tip #6: Once a need does arise, check in with the person you’re providing for or with someone close to them and find out if there are dietary, health, or religious restrictions to the foods they can eat. Showing up with five pounds of pulled pork isn’t going to go over well at your vegan friend’s house. Seriously though, ask questions about restrictions, favourites, meals the kids love, anything that makes eating easier for the person on the receiving end of your generosity.
Tip #7: Heat-and-serve or ready-to-go meals are best. Your community member is dealing with a lot. Remember, they don’t have the time or the energy to read complicated instructions or cook for themselves. Help them out by making meals that just need heating or putting on the plate. Give them any basic instructions, like “microwave for 2 minutes” or “put in the oven at 350° for 20 minutes” or “the salad dressing is in the jar marked with an V for vinaigrette.”
Tip #8: Don’t stay unless you’re invited. I know it’s super tempting to hang out, check in, and see if there’s anything else you can do. Of course you should ask, but be prepared for a no or even a non-answer. Remember, you’re there to make things easier, and talking about the situation isn’t always as helpful in the moment as you might think. Drop off the food. Say hi and skedaddle out of there toot sweet.
Tip #9: Do magick. Stir in your compassion. Dice up vegetables with care and attention. Boil pasta for the recipient’s highest good. Call on deities of tranquility as you transfer a favourite casserole dish from the oven to your car. It all helps.
A Meal to Heal and Say Goodbye
Many years ago, I was invited to a meal. I was asked to wear red clothing and encouraged to bring a dish of red foods. The evening was equal parts celebration of life, an acknowledgment of sickness and disease, and a memorial for those that had died. Every course that was served featured red sauces, red vegetables, red drinks. As the meal progressed it became evident that the purpose of serving red foods was to represent our blood. Don’t panic! This wasn’t some super-secret, occult, vampire-impersonating gathering. We were asked to imagine the red foods, the blood-red foods, as representing everyone’s healthy, disease-free blood.
This dinner was not a singular event. Many such meals have happened since the early 1990s, and they continue in some form or other today. A common toast, repeated often throughout the meal is “Hail to the red dragon! Hail to our red, living blood.” What a beautiful piece of magick this is. What made this gathering so impactful for me when I first attended, and why it continues to be impactful today, is that the folks gathered know that one day toasts may be made for their good health and healing or to remember them after they’ve died. While sobering to think about, it’s also incredibly comforting to know that there are communities working magick for healing and life all over the world, at any given time.
Now, while it’s true that a bowl full of borscht or a platter of pickled red peppers isn’t going to cure you of everything that ails you, planning meals with community, however you define that, certainly adds to your mental well-being. Meals designed around a specific intention (and healing is a great intention) have health benefits beyond the vitamins and nutrients in the dishes served. Healing meals reduce stress in sick and dying people, not because of the food but because there’s a strong association of eating with loved ones, being honoured, feeling taken care of and supported.
There comes a point when healing the physical body is no longer an option. Meals, especially community and family meals, give us the sad and necessary opportunity to say goodbye. The dying person participates in the act of eating, which is an activity the dead do not need. Eating reminds everyone at the table that we’re not dead yet. Mealtime is a good time to recount stories of a life well lived. Tales of how the dying person’s actions have positively impacted the lives of their friends, family, or coven members can be shared. Engaging in storytelling is often left to obituaries and eulogies, but there’s tremendous value in honouring a person’s life while they’re still alive to hear it. The dying person may have stories to tell as well, and they may wish to give advice or share wisdom of the situation they find themselves in now.
Of course, a life full of regrets and unfinished business is pretty common too. Gathering and dining together can be a time to foster apologies and offer forgiveness. Hospice and palliative care workers offer this advice to the dying and those they leave behind. They strongly suggest saying five things to each other: Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. And goodbye.
And while Samhain night is a perfect time to reconnect with those that have already passed through the veil, having such conversations before someone crosses has a particular healing magick all its own, for everyone involved.
Ancestor Dinners
Much like setting a place at the table for grief, we can make a place at our tables for those that have died. If you are new to the idea of ancestor work or ancestor veneration, it can seem a bit daunting at first. Where do you start? Who are your ancestors? What does veneration mean to you or them? Think about the typical scene from your favourite holiday movie or Hallmark commercial when the whole family gathers in the dining room around a beautifully set table and has a jolly time telling stories from the family’s past. Now imagine that scene with a lot more black clothing. Instead of Great-Aunt Maude sitting over there at the head of the table with Great-Uncle Tom by her side, there’s an urn with their ashes, lovingly placed next to a picture of them in happier times. That’s how I do ancestor dinners. Lots of great food. Toasting the dead. Remembering their names and telling their stories.
The word ancestors could have several meanings for you. There are actual relatives, with whom we share DNA, who have passed through the veil and into history. Our Beloved Dead, those we’ve known personally that have preceded us in shuffling off their mortal coils. And our Mighty Dead, those of the Craft that have influenced us, taught us, continue to teach us, and work with us from another place. These powers combined represent all our ancestors: those of blood and bone, of breath and spirit, of lineage and cause. My beloved grandmother, Lillian, died in 2003. I was with her almost to the very end. In our final conversations, she asked to be remembered. She loved lavender. I have lavender around me always, in the form of oil, the plant itself, or incense. She also wanted a simple honouring at family gatherings or special dinners, a toast to “absent friends.” That’s a promise and practice I’ve kept ever since. I’ve expanded that practice to include other family members, friends, mentors, teachers, and witches that have helped shape my life and understanding of the world.
I’m lucky in the sense that I can trace my family lineage back many, many generations. Being from England helps. Our little island is well known for keeping all sorts of records, mundane and otherwise. For the vast sweep of history, my family has been toilers and tailors, mill workers and land workers. There’s a strain of travelers and entertainers. There are the privateers and pirates. As far as I can tell, I am not the direct descendant of King Harold or Charles Dickens.
I am proud and tickled pink at some of the characters my family has produced over the centuries, and I wonder about those that were involved in colonialism and empire-building. There is no known family member that single-handedly started imperialism or thought that it would be a good idea to export slaves. But surely my family members worked in the foundries that made the munitions that fueled an empire and built ships that carried people away from their homelands.
A practice I’m developing involves learning as much as I can about the life and times of my ancestors of blood and asking them questions about what they might see as the result of their time on the planet. This is difficult, raw, and experimental magick for me, but it seems like it is serving some of the work I do (or want to do) in the world today. My ancestors of blood have been as much rowdy as gentile, artistic as bawdy. If we were all present in one place at one time, the stories we could tell would be epic. That’s true of my magickal ancestors too, those from the Craft that have gone before me. I can only hope to do them justice by having a few stories of my own to tell when I’m an ancestor.
In our house and in our circles, we share the tales of our ancestors. We laugh with our ancestors. We sing their favourite songs, eat foods they loved, mimic the singular way they did invocations and magick. We keep them alive by calling their names and telling their stories and honouring their memories. There’s a line from a Pagan song, “Bone By Bone,” written by Phoenix LeFae and Sephora, that goes “I lay you down and promise to remember you,” and that’s what we do—we remember them.
What Is Remembered Lives
There are recipes that are special. Not because they are difficult to cook or take precise kitchen techniques, but because of who you learned the recipe from. There’s a dish in the in the back of this book called “A Winter’s Feast: Shepherd’s Pie to Live For.” It’s my grandmother’s shepherd’s pie recipe that I’ve tinkered with over the years. I think it’s the best shepherd’s pie you’ll ever taste. It’s a humble meal that connects my family to our dear ancestor. I’d say the delight in making and eating this meal absolutely comes from my memories of sitting in her kitchen, watching my grandmother cook.
Similarly, for very many years I’ve attended a witch camp. It’s exactly what you think it is. One hundred and twenty or so witches gather deep in a forest for a week of ritual, community, myth, and magick. There’s a team of cooks, many of them chefs in their own right, and they participate in the magick too. It’s important to note that they are not “the staff.” Each member of the Hearth Team plays an integral role in how witch camp unfolds. The menu varies every year, depending on the cooks present and the myth the camp is working for the week. For instance, if the witch camp theme is “the Descent of Inanna,” the meals feature dishes associated with modern-day Iraq and ingredients Inanna would recognize. Each meal is vegetarian, with options for gluten-free and vegan folks. Breakfast is hearty and simple. For lunch and dinner, you could expect an exquisite soup, rice, grain, salad, and main dishes all made lovingly from scratch each day.
Every year I’ve attended witch camp there’s one special soup dish I look forward to. It’s often served as part of the first night’s meal. There’s a story that goes along with the soup that’s been told and retold for many years, and I imagine it will be passed along for many more years to come. The culinary genius who created this soup was named Willo. Willo died at an early age. I never met Willo, but I’ve eaten her soup. I’ve made her soup. And I’ve passed along the story as it was told to me. Carin McKay, one of my kitchen heroes, knew Willo well. It was she that first shared the story with me.
What follows is a recipe, or an un-recipe. This is the only recipe in this book that is entirely someone else’s recipe. However, there isn’t actually a recipe for you to follow, which means that it’s your recipe and it’s never been made before, because you haven’t made it yet. With deep gratitude for Willo’s gift and to all the cooks that have made Willo soup and have told the story of this recipe, thank you. For in making and remaking this soup, year after year, we honour Willo’s life and her memory. As you embark in creating your version of Willo soup, offer the phrase “what is remembered lives.”
Wisdom from the Community Pantry
Willo Soup
By Carin McKay, chef and owner of Culinary Magic
Willo was one of my greatest culinary teachers, an she taught me how to make this soup. The thing is, Willo refused to use recipes, so this soup comes out different every time. She would simply pat the side of the pot and say “it’s a good one.” In honour of Willo’s teaching, I am only going to give you a basic ingredient list for this soup, and I will only offer the principles of how to make it.
For the dish, there is a very important balance of sweet, salty, and sour. Thai cooking has lots of sweet added to it, as well as lots of sour. Toasted sesame oil adds a great touch to this recipe, and feel free to salt to taste. When I make this soup, I constantly adjust the flavourings to get it right for however I’m feeling at the moment. Willo taught me to use a variety of each type and flavour to make this soup so magnificent and rich. Have fun!
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Serves 4 |
Prep Time: |
Cooking Time: |
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1 cup red lentils |
2 cloves garlic, minced |
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1 can coconut milk |
1 lime, sliced into thin wheels |
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Oil Options: Olive oil, |
Sour Options: lemon juice, lime juice, rice vinegar |
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1 onion, diced |
Sweet Options: Sugar, honey, agave |
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2 sprigs basil, de-stemmed and chopped |
Salt Options: Soy sauce, sea salt, sweet miso (make a paste with miso and water before adding) |
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2 inches fresh ginger, minced |
2 cups water |
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2 sprigs cilantro, de-stemmed and chopped |
2 sprigs mint, de-stemmed and chopped |
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1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper |
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In a pot, place the lentils, coconut milk, and water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer. Add the onion, garlic, ginger, cayenne. Stir. Do not cover. Once the lentils are cooked and not firm (about 15–20 minutes), add one thing from the sour category, one from the sweet category, one from the salty, and some oil (add about a teaspoon of oil at a time). Taste. Repeat with a different item from each category. Garnish with sliced wheels of lime and minced-up basil, mint, and cilantro. Enjoy!42
41. A quick author’s note: This section of the book is about grief and death, but food trains are excellent for happily overwhelming occasions too, like folks becoming parents.
42. Excerpted with permission from Carin McKay. Culinary Magic at the Regenerative Design Institute: Creating Community through Food, Farm and Permaculture. Self-published, 2013.