Three of the best scenes ever, from my ultimate favorite movie.

My God is stronger, he is the everlasting sky. Your god, lives underneath him.

All the Gods, they cannot sever us. If I were dead, and you still fighting for life, I’d come back from the darkness. Back from the pit of hell to fight at your side.

Do you want to live forever?

This movie still gives me as many chills as it did when I was 5.

So I got the $50 I won off of Blingo. I’ve been debating with myself whether to buy something for myself or just save it and use it for holiday gifts or gas or something needed.

I guess I’ll hold onto it and figure out something.

Over a decade ago (damn) I was keeping a lot of research notes on paganism in one of those fivestar notebooks. I actually just found it and have been going through it, some of which is old old stuff that I don’t even remember having. I was trying to find the paper I had started keeping track of which Grove rituals I attended so I can update my bead count for my Grove button.

I did however find this one little recipe that I remember making years and years ago and was fairly good.

Faery Wine:
1 1/2 cups milk
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
cinnamon (or nutmeg)

Warm milk, careful not to boil. To each glass or mug add honey and vanilla. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon.

I thought these were hilarious and creative. Originally displayed on food_porn on Livejournal. A great idea for halloween treats. I should do more decorating, but Halloween really crept up on me this year.

Witches Fingers:
1 C butter, softened
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 3/4 C flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup whole blanched almonds
red food coloring
and/or
1 tube red decorator gel

Makes About 5 Dozen Cookies

Preheat oven to 325° F. Combine dry ingredients. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.

In a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg, almond extract and vanilla, beat in dry ingredients. Cover and refrigerate dough for 30 minutes.

Working with one-quarter of the dough at a time and keeping remaining dough refrigerated, roll heaping teaspoons full of dough into finger shape for each cookie. Press an almond firmly into one end for nail. Squeeze in center to create a knuckle shape and use a paring knife make slashes in several places to form knuckle. If you want to paint the nails, use some red food coloring that’s been diluted with water and brush on with a clean artist’s brush.

Place cookies on the prepared cookie sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes or until pale golden. Let cool for three minutes. If desired, lift up almond and squeeze red decorator gel onto nail bed and press almond back in place so gel oozes out from underneath.

Remove from cookie sheet and let cool on a wire rack. Repeat with remaining dough.

Note: Make cookies smaller than you think they need to be, as they spread when cooking. Our witch has fat fingers because we didn’t heed our own advice.

Eyeball Punch:

Ingredients

For punch
2 parts vodka
2 parts white cranberry juice
1 part white grape juice
1 part lemonade

For eyeballs
4 cans of pitted lychees
1 bunch of smallish dark purple grapes

For bloody hand
red cranberry juice
cleaned plastic hypoallergenic glove

Make sure all ingredients for punch are cold. Freeze the vodka.

Pour red cranberry juice into glove and twist and tie with a rubber band. Freeze for at least 24 hours. It needs to be frozen very hard.

Drain the lychees and carefully insert one grape into each. If you want to do this ahead of time, put them in a bowl and cover with one of the ingredients of the punch (or a mixture), to keep moist in the fridge.

Mix ingredients for punch in a large, clear punch bowl and add the eyes. When the first guest arrives, snip the plastic glove off of the hand and float it in the punch bowl.

Last night we held our Samhain ritual at the Grove. There are some pictures but you’d have to register on the gallery to see them. Mostly because when I had registration off, I was getting tons of comment spam on the pictures.

I didn’t really get as much out of the ritual as I would have liked. It was entirely too windy and I could barely hear anyone. Still the candles, the lit pumpkin, all the decoration gave it a nice setting, which to me is very important to help set the mood for ritual.

We did somewhat of a roman style ritual. Honoring the Earth Mother, Janus as the gatekeeper, and the Genii and Iunium as the primary invocations. Renee even did the invitation to Janus in Latin, which sounded -awesome-. When acknowledging the outsiders, Kat used an old Roman method involving black beans, which I had never heard of.

A newer member did a workshop on Roman mythology before ritual, so it all felt in place.

Preparing for ritual was somewhat of a comedy of errors, though most of it was rather annoying. When preparing the pumpkin with rubbing alcohol to be lit for the ritual, our fire tender poured too much so that it was pilling out of the pumpkins mouth. Him and the person who carved the pumpkin decided to throw the alcohol onto the fire and carve it out more. You can just imagine what happened then.

Luckily no one got hurt, but a lot of things surrounding the fire pit caught on fire, including the pumpkin, the log it was sitting on, and the person carving the pumpkin. The fire tender also kept causing sparks (which a few caught me and burned my skin) and smoke in the fire, which pisses me off to no end because there was no need for all that wood.

The fire warden position is very detailed and very important for every ritual. Setting up the space, taking it down, and keeping an eye on the fire at all times. Not leaving as soon as ritual is over, ESPECIALLY with all that wind that could blow the fire and cause some real damage.

It wasn’t easy keeping my mouth shut, but I did. No need to ruin ritual by blowing up at someone. If something had gotten seriously hurt though, all gloves are off.

I bruised my palms again drumming, and didn’t drum as much as I usually do because I was trying to help with other things. Unfortuntely the other people who brought drums didn’t really use them as much, so I probably should have just stayed with the drums.

This morning my uncle came over and we killed another 24 rabbits that have been really eating enough food to cause problems with our budget. So we have a good amount of rabbit meat for the winter now. We probably won’t kill again till spring.

And last night they killed 4 of our 6 ducks. I really want to get a trail cam my next paycheck, so I can at least figure out where they are getting in and either 1. Block it or 2. Stay up and shoot them. If anything it may give me a time frame that I know they are doing their hunting.

Either way, I’m declaring war.

I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately, but always forget about writing them down.
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