Physics and Metaphysics are intertwined – as are all things in our reality. The more I study metaphysics – the more I am drawn in the nature of energy, motion, time, space, etc. They are fascinating!

For all of us whether we are scientists, healers or ordinary human beings, life is essentially an energy experience. None of us are focused in purely material reality. Although we must all eat food, drink water and breathe air to survive we actually spend most of our time in the non-physical worlds of feelings and thoughts, with occasional glimpses of a deeper world within and beyond. We are continually moved, swayed and transformed by energies which though physically immaterial, mold our actions and determine our behavior and experience.

All forms of consciousness appear to have a center from which energy radiates, creating an energy field which surrounds them. This energy field is characterized by the quality of energy of the witch and it is within this energy field that a physical form manifests itself and appears for us all to see.

As human beings we are soul sparks of creational energy expressing ourselves in a form of consciousness which is variously described in religious literature as the Soul, Psyche, or Being.

We as witches use this soul spark energy to manifest and create our dreams, wishes, hopes and desires. Our very nature, energy, fuels and sends forth all that we do desire. How does this happen? There are several ways we may accomplish this as witches, singing, chanting, holding hands and passing energy thus creating a vortex and cone of power to emanate and join with the ever present energy all around us on a basic mundane level. Part of our responsibility as witches is to acknowledge and try to understand this ever present energy and then to use it respectfully and responsibly to aid in the needs and wishes of friends, family and loved ones, for the improvement of all.

Energy Bodies

The five-layer Energy Body system is a way of describing the human energy field.  The physical body is counted as an energy body since all matter is ultimately made up of energy.  Also of importance is the fact that the higher subtle energy bodies overlap and interpenetrate the complete physical body.  In much the same way as many different TV signals exist around us in the same space simultaneously and can be individually identified by a specific frequency, the overlapping subtle energy bodies (which are also defined by different frequencies) also penetrate into the same space as our physical body.  So when a witch using energy, places his or her hand on someone, the energies are sent not only to the physical body, but also to each higher energetic body.  Thus, with the proper frequencies channeled through a witch, energy transfer or movement will occur on not only the physical level, but also on the Etheric, emotional, mental and spiritual levels of the witch and all touching within the circle.

The Physical Energy Body

At first, it may seem unusual to consider that the physical body is an energy body, but that is exactly what it appears to be.  And as we explore and become more accustomed to this new paradigm, we are able not only to see the physical body in a greater, more meaningful context, but also we begin to understand the role of disease and the nature of healing.  The physical body is the densest form of energy that our consciousness uses to explore its environment and interact with others.  By the densest form, it is meant that the vibrational patterns of the physical body are of a frequency low enough to be seen by our eyes (they are within the spectrum of visible light), heard by our ears (about 30 to 15,000 Hertz), and experienced with the senses of touch, taste and smell which are within the “frequency capability” of our physical body.
But there are many octaves, frequencies, and vibrations beyond the capability of our physical senses. Beyond what we can see as visible light are the higher frequencies of ultraviolet, x-ray, and cosmic radiation.  We are beginning to understand that what we can physically sense is only a small portion of the vibrational energies around us.  And if we look within our physical bodies at our atoms, molecules and cells, again we find patterns of vibrating energy that we have traditionally called “matter”.

We need to become aware that our physical body is really a field of vibrating energy that has coalesced from higher less dense octaves.  But we also need to remember that as vibrating fields interact with each other, one field can affect another field through the phenomenon of sympathetic vibration.  If a violin player produces a note an octave above Middle C, and a second violin lying nearby on a table has a string which is tuned to Middle C, the second violin string tuned to Middle C will sympathetically begin to vibrate as well.  So as we also begin to understand that there are several vibrational fields of energy around our physical body, it becomes easier to understand how one field affects another through this principle.  And this is the key to understanding how energy-based healing techniques can achieve such visible and profound results in the physical body.

The Etheric Energy Body

The etheric body is the first energy body in frequency above the physical body.  It exists within the physical body, and extends outward about an inch outside the skin of the physical body.  Its purpose is to form an energy template or matrix for the development, maintenance and repair of the physical body.  The etheric body contains a vibrational energy counterpart for each organ, blood vessel and bone found in the physical body.  Indeed, the etheric body contains the energetic blueprint for the pathways that guide the location and development of every cell of the physical body.  Our physical bodies exist only because of the vital (etheric) field behind them.  This etheric field exists prior to, not a result of, the physical body.

Since the etheric body is the physical body’s blueprint, the two are very closely related.  The energetic vibrations of the etheric body determine the pattern for not only the physical tissues and organs, but also the state of health of those tissues and organs.  If the vibrations are not clear and pure, this disharmony will be reflected in the physical body as disharmonious function — what we call “disease”.

Conversely, traumas to the physical body (e.g., broken bones, burns, incisions and scars) will in time be reflected into the etheric body unless there is some interceding process that either prevents this reflection into the etheric body or which restores the original vibrational pattern which existed prior to the trauma. The ability to work with a client’s vibrating energy fields is precisely what forms the basis for rapid and effective energy-based physical healings.

An illness can appear in the energy field weeks and even months before it appears in the physical body.  In his book, Vibrational Medicine, Dr. Richard Gerber, a Detroit physician, notes that “The etheric body is a holographic energy template that guides the growth and development of the physical body.”

The following description of the etheric and higher subtle energy bodies surrounding the physical body are taken from Barbara Brennan’s book, Hands of Light.  To her, the etheric body appears as a grid of tiny energy lines which has the overall structure and shape of the physical body.  This matrix extends from 1/4″ to 2 inches beyond the physical body.  It is upon this etheric grid or matrix that the cells and tissues of the body develop and are anchored.  The etheric body appears as a light blue or gray matrix of lines of light that constantly pulsate or scintillate at a rate of from 15-20 cycles per minute.

The Emotional Energy Body

The emotional body contains the emotional patterns, feelings, and vibrations that determine our personality, and also how we feel about ourselves and interact with others.  If we are constantly angry, always feel helpless, or are consistently fearful, these patterns or vibrations get locked in our emotional energy field and become a part of our personality. This determines to a very large degree how we interact with others on personal, social, and cultural levels.

The emotional body generally follows the shape of the physical and etheric bodies, but is somewhat more amorphous and fluid, and extends from one to three inches outside the physical body.  It contains energy “blobs” of all colors of the rainbow, depending on the specific feeling or emotion.  Highly charged feelings such as love, hate, joy, and anger are associated with energy blobs that are bright and clear, while confused feelings are darker and muddier.

The Mental Energy Body

The mental body contains the structure and patterns of all the thoughts and belief systems that we consider as true.  And there is a very strong connection between the mental and emotional bodies.  Although a thought or idea can in itself be very powerful, our reactions to those thoughts carry even more energy, and different people will react differently to the same thought.

For example, consider the thought form “If you are not a Catholic (or Protestant, or Muslim, or Jew, or whatever), you can not go to Heaven.”  One person might hear that thought or idea, think it was silly, and give it absolutely no energy.  But another person might become very passionate, depending on his or her belief systems, and argue strongly either for or against that statement.  His emotional body would then record the reaction to the thought stored in the mental body. However, the person who thought the statement was silly in the first place would not have any resonance with it, and no energetic pattern would be stored in either the mental or emotional bodies.

The mental body usually appears as yellow light radiating around the entire body from head to toe, and extends from three to eight inches beyond the physical body. Within this area, individual thought forms appear as small blobs of light of varying form and intensity.

The Spiritual Energy Body

The spiritual body (i.e., all vibrational patterns in octaves higher than the mental body) contains all the information related to our experiences, and reflects our gestalt consciousness of all that has been learned and experienced. It contains our higher intentions, our sense of what is right and wrong, and our desires to increase our awareness of our purpose, place and mission for this lifetime.

These five energy bodies make up one’s Human Energy Field, or aura. Its outer shape appears roughly egg-shaped and extends out to perhaps 1½ to two feet beyond the physical body; however, this shape can be extended even further out or contracted closer to the physical body depending on the situation the person is experiencing. For example, when a person is feeling emotions of unconditional love, the aura may expand to several feet and radiate bright hues of gold or white.  But if the same person is feeling threatened physically or emotionally, the entire aura may collapse to a much denser pattern within only a few inches of the body.

Opening Yourself To Energy While Holding Hands

When holding hands, some people might feel their fingers tingle, pulsate or grow warmer or colder. Some will feel strong emotions or suppressed memories might come to the surface. Some feel incredibly happy, relaxed or elated. Everyone is unique and everyone will feel the energy differently. The more you practice moving energy while holding hands, the more you will recognize how to interpret the energy as it flows through you.

For those of us hearing about the energy transfer and wondering what that energy is, there’s a simple exercise that can give a feeling. Many witches use their hands as energy channels to pass it to their fellow grove members and thus help their mind and body to “charge up” and fuel a working. This is a very simplistic description.

While holding your palms facing each other, take a slow deep breath (abdominal breathing) and imagine energy beams entering your body and filling you, gathering inside your abdomen. Exhale slowly, and while doing this imagine the energy flowing from the abdomen through your chest, through your shoulders, arms and radiating from both palms into the space between them. Increase the energy flow with each breath.

This visualization can greatly increase the flow of energy between your palms and you’ll feel it stronger. Usually, my palms start to “repel” each other, pushing farther apart with each exhalation, like the magnets in my palms become stronger. Don’t give up if you don’t experience this from the first attempt. Just perform it another time, when you’re less tired and more relaxed.

In the past 30 years the Foundation of science, The Foundation of Life and H. Coetzee, Ph.D. along with Dr. Ingo Swann presented a thesis to the United Nations proving the validity of bio-electromagnetism and has given a scientific basis to spiritual energy transfer as a form of bio-energy manifestation or usage. It really can work! Each of us has the innate capacity, through the use of simple ancient breathing techniques, to generate a powerful healing resonance, or energy vibration, from the hands. When applied magically this resonance catalyzes the magickal process in workings and in circle. It also brings about high energy, then inevitably deep relaxation and a feeling of well being.

An Ancient Breathing Meditation

Energy from the hand has an ancient history on this planet. It is part of the ancient belief system associated with yoga. These traditions were handed down orally for thousands of years before being codified by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras, several centuries before Christ. It has been used for thousands of years by tribal people on every continent, and has been a part of every religious tradition. In main-stream western society, hand energy has been treated either as a myth or as a mysterious talent given only to a special few. However, there is a simple method which turns on hand energy in nearly everyone who tries it — the Chakra Balancing Meditation*.

The earliest known mention of the meditation is found in the Upanishads, including specifically the Brahma Upanishad and the Yogatattva Upanishad. These vedic models were adapted in Tibetan Buddhism and eventually found their way to the Western World.

The Chakra Balancing Meditation* is a breathing rhythm which influences the body’s electromagnetic field in measurable ways using Kirlian Photography and computerized spectrum-analysis of brain waves  EEG, electroencephalography. While breathing in this rhythm, the energy flowing through the hands has greatly amplified its qualities. Passing the chakra energy, it is possible to stimulate, focus and exchange a powerful flow of magickal energy.

*Note: The meditation is in another  lesson.

Determining Your Dominant (Power) Hand

What is a dominate hand? Do you have one? What good is it? These are valid questions you may have. The dominate hand is defined as: the hand you use to send out and direct energy. In witchcraft, we consider the concept of two hands, the receiving hand which will sense energy, sometimes referenced as the hand that can receive, and then we have our hand that projects energy, called the projecting, sending or dominate hand. Our hands are like the poles of a battery. For example: we use the dominate hand when we are creating a circle. We hold the athame or wand, in our dominate hand, sending energy through the athame as we cast the circle. Like wise our receiving hand is held straight behind us to absorb and receive Earth energy.

When we are holding hands, or working magic in a circle, the thought of projecting with the dominate hand becomes slightly anomalous. We actually are receiving energy with our dominate hand, using the force of the dominate hand and its energy to push the energy through us, absorbing what we need, adding to it and out through our other hand giving it to the next person to accomplish the task we have set. So, which hand is your dominate hand?

To determine your dominant or power hand, hold your hands at a comfortable distance away from you with the palms facing you. Look at your left hand and concentrate on the palm. Imagine energy flowing from the universe down into your crown chakra and flowing into your left hand. Feel the energy in your left palm. Now turn to your right palm and do the same thing. Whichever hand feels stronger, it might tingle, be hotter or colder than the other, this is your power hand. If you don’t feel anything when you first attempt this exercise keep trying and you will eventually start feeling the energy.

Some methods to feel energy in your hands

• Place your hands together and visualize energy entering your crown chakra.
• Feel the energy radiate through your whole being.
• Rub your hands together until your palms feel warm then relax your wrists and shake your hands.
• Put your hands together, then open them about six inches apart. Feel the energy emanating from your palms.
• As you feel the energy, explore it. Feel the different sensations as you move your hands up and down, side to side and around in circles. Can you feel the lines of energy connected to each palm?
• Separate your hands further and again move them up and down, side to side still feeling the energy between them.
• Now cup your hands together and create a circle of energy within them. Place this energy into your heart and imagine it expanding and filling your entire body.

Grounding and Centering

To be effective at energy work it is of great value to know how to ground and center yourself connecting with the spiritual heart of the earth or the All and calling yourself together, aligning your thoughts and personal entirety in a solid focused state. This is a frequent basic practice in virtually all forms of spiritual work, healing, meditation, manifestation, protection, or releasing and is of itself often profoundly healing. Everyone must learn to ground in the way they feel most comfortable with.

Using Hand Energy to Heal the Body

The body has the capacity to heal itself. On the first day of medical school, this fact is taught. Whether you give medicines, perform surgery, or use any kind of medical therapy, you only support the body to heal itself. The same is true with bio-energy therapy, acupuncture, homeopathy, herbs, or any other holistic modality.

The ability for self-healing is an inherent part of all life. The body is constantly renewing itself, getting rid of old and diseased tissues. We are not aware that this is always happening, because the body rids itself of disease so fast it appears we are remaining healthy. On the occasions when the ongoing self-healing process doesn’t work, then it becomes necessary to get help from the outside. Traditionally, throughout the past five thousand years, our species has used foods and herbs for healing. We have also used the healing powers of touch. If you practice what is taught here, your touch will be a transmission of bio-energy, a form of bio-energy therapy. The bio-energy which flows from your hands will melt pain, evaporate stress, and catalyze the healing process. You and many people will be simply amazed!

Our cultural collective conscious mind set has believed for almost two hundred years that such energy has been scientifically proven not to exist. This idea is practically institutionalized! Our collective unconsciousness (the deep knowing) believes and knows that hands-on healing / bio-energy therapy works. This cultural belief operates from the same brain centers as religious beliefs (and scientific “heretics” are sometimes subjected to the same treatment as religious heretics have been).

However, new evidence shows that the body is indeed highly electromagnetic, full of all kinds of energy patterns and configurations of great significance (even though they may be small in size). This evidence has not yet become sufficiently well known to break the cultural taboo against healing. But, you’re becoming aware of this revolution in the new bio-electromagnetic paradigm in biology, and your practicing chakra balancing, will hasten the breaking of this mind set.

Another reason some are afraid to pass energy is this: When you release energy through your hands, touching another person, it is a form of intimacy. We are often afraid of showing this kind of intimacy, either for fear of stimulating repressed sexual feelings or for fear of rejection (or from whatever form the fear conjures). Indeed, our failure to be intimate may feed the roots of many of our physical and emotional problems. So, my advice is: don’t be afraid to share what are beautiful moments of innocent closeness, of psychic intimacy. It will be healing for you, for the other, and for the Grove’s health.

Breaking taboos, by the way, isn’t easy. If the witch believes in the taboo too strongly, even successful energy transfer outcomes can be ignored or dismissed by the person who has just received it. A strong belief in the negative mind set can even block the transfer. This is why we send energy healing to the person’s Higher Self to bypass any resistance/taboos the conscious mind may have as to its effectiveness.

Energy Balls

The energy ball is a very common and basic core technique for becoming aware of and directing energy. Personal energy can be felt and universal energy can be used as a way of delivering other frequencies of energy. Begin by holding your hands a foot or so apart, bringing them slowly toward each other, until you feel a slight resistance between them. It will feel as though a mass of energy has built up between your hands. Feel all around this energy with your hands, feeling the shape of the packet of energy you have gathered. Fashion it into a ball shape. For some this ball will begin by being cup-sized, for others it will be a big beach ball. This may take some practice to feel. Some people do not sense energy this way at all. Sometimes people don’t feel their own energy ball, but they would feel other people’s because the frequency is slightly different.

A technique for rapid healing from injuries, called reframing, that often is effective is to go back in your mind to the moment of the accident and visualize as clearly and nearly as possible the exact event except change a detail /details so that the accident, injury, or trauma, does not happen. You are not in any way hurt, repeat the visualization over and over make it as real as possible, if it is practical to act out the event as closely as possible in the physical world – as almost slamming the door on your hand that can make this even more effective. If you are in pain and the pain is reduced then it’s ok to drop the visualization but keep reinforcing this vision. I have used this on cut fingers and on my chronic knee pain with good results for speeding healing. Theoretically this is more effective if done soon after an injury but I have used it on injuries and traumatic experiences from years back with good results.

Experiment:

Take an energy ball that you have made, and press the ball into your heart chakra. Press it into your third eye. Press it against your skin, and see what you feel.

Some energy balls are first visualized outside the body then filled with energy.  They can be observed to “see” events or information or be used to send an affirmation or to fill with manifestation visualization, such as charging candles. They can be sent out to retrieve lost or needed energy, such as tapping into the Grove Crystal or they can be filled with your anger fears or with pain etc. Then charged with light /energy to dissolve and transform that “negative” energy.

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The History and Tradition of Mead

Mead is a honey-based fermented beverage that has been produced and enjoyed since before the dawn of recorded history. Because of its antiquity, mead has acquired an almost magical reputation in our mythologies. For example, the term “honeymoon” is intertwined with the custom of drinking honey-based mead for a month (moon) after the wedding; this practice was said to ensure baby boys. Mead making was once the province of a select, trained guild. Now, it is open to all who have the patience and skill. You are continuing this long and honored tradition. Welcome aboard and enjoy.

Mead is an important part of the Asatru religion and has a place in both of the major Norse rituals: the blot and the sumble. The sumble is a drinking ritual where stories, oaths, and poetry are shared and mead’s function here is obvious.

In this day and age mead is even more important to the blot or sacrifice ritual. The blot is actually quite simple. A God or Goddess is called upon and a sacrifice is poured in their honor. In ancient times this was most often an animal sacrifice and blood was poured out onto the ground or altar. Today an alcoholic beverage of some kind is the usual sacrifice. This is not only an adjustment to modern feelings about animal sacrifice, but is appropriate from an esoteric point of view as well. In ancient times the Norsemen were primarily farmers and an animal would have been a product that they had raised. Also, sacrifices were not a wasting of the animal, merely given to the Gods and left to rot, but were usually feasts where the Gods got their portion and the humans their own. Today mead making has been a frenzied activity among Norse Pagans, and it is most appropriate that something be sacrificed to the Gods which has been made by your own hands in a sacred manner. Mead fits the bill. It has the immediate links to our farming ancestors, but it can be easily made from household items in even a small apartment.

Finally, we have a few myths involving mead directly. Mead was known as Kvasir’s blood and it’s primary association was with wisdom. Kvasir was a being who was the wisest in all the universe, but he was killed and a mead created out of his blood that when drank brought the drinker wisdom. Aegir, a God of the Sea, was held to be the patron of brewing and the finest of mead and ale for the Gods to drink in Valhalla. Odin is said to never eat, but to exist purely on mead, just as the Greek Gods had their nectar.

The association with mead is not as prevalent in the Greek and Roman myths, but certainly exists. Bacchus is the quintessential god of vine and vegetation, so he is usually associated with wine. I have added him because of his association with brewing. Whether you see him as Bacchus, Dionysus, the Green Man, or some other vegetative god, the god of the vine is a key archetype in harvest celebrations.

The Greek Dionysus was representative of the grapes in the vineyards, and of course the wine that they created. As such, he gained a bit of a reputation as a party-hardy kind of god, and his followers were typically seen as a debauched and drunken lot. However, before he was a party god, Dionysus was originally a god of trees and the forest. He was often portrayed with leaves growing out of his face, similar to later depictions of the Green Man. Farmers offered prayers to Dionysus to make their orchards grow, and he is often credited with the invention of the plow.

In Roman legend, Bacchus stepped in for Dionysus, and earned the title of party god. In fact, a drunken orgy is still called a bacchanalia, and for good reason. Devotees of Bacchus whipped themselves into frenzy of intoxication, and in the spring Roman women attended secret ceremonies in his name. Bacchus was associated with fertility, wine and grapes, as well as sexual free-for-alls. Although Bacchus is often linked with Beltane and the greening of spring, because of his connection to wine and grapes he is also a deity of the harvest.

In medieval times, the image of the Green Man appeared. He is typically a male face peering out from the leaves, surrounded by ivy or grapes. Tales of the Green Man have overlapped through time, so that in his many aspects he is also Puck of the midsummer forest, Herne the Hunter, Cernunnos, the Oak King, John Barleycorn, Jack in the Green, and even Robin Hood. The spirit of the Green Man is everywhere in nature at the time of the harvest — as leaves fall down around you outside, imagine the Green Man laughing at you from his hiding place within the woods!

Even if it were not for any mythological importance, mead is of interest to the modern brewer because it is easy to produce and delicious. One merely introduces a yeast to the sugary liquid, and the yeast converts the natural sugars into alcohol. After all the sugar is converted, the yeast dies off and the wine can be bottled. However, this is not always as easy as it sounds.

The Types of Mead

Mead is classified not by the kind of honey from which it is made, but by what else may be added to it for flavoring:

• “Traditional” mead is made with only honey, water, and yeast, plus perhaps a small amount of acid (to balance the sweetness).
• “Metheglin” is mead made with added herbs or spices, such as cloves or cinnamon. (The word is an English transliteration of the Welsh word “meddyglyn”, meaning “medicine”. Historically, medicinal herbs were infused into a sweet mead to make them more palatable.)
• “Melomel” is mead made with the addition of fruit or fruit juice to traditional mead. Melomel may also contain spices, as Metheglin does.
• “Cyser” is a particular Melomel made with apples or apple juice.
• “Pyment” may have two interpretations: a Melomel made with grapes or grape juice, or a wine sweetened with honey.
• “Hippocras” is a spiced Pyment.
• “Sack” is a name (or an adjective) for stronger meads made with more honey than usual, and therefore more likely to be somewhat sweet.

There are various other seldom-heard terms: “hydromel” (weak, literally “watered” mead), “rhodomel” (mead with rose petals), “omphacomel” (left as exercise to the interested student), and so on.

Depending on the initial amount of honey, and how attenuative (effective at fermenting sugars) the yeast is, the final mead may vary from quite dry and austere like some white wines, to very sweet.

Depending on the bottling process, the mead may be “sparkling” (carbonated) or “still” (no bubbles).

What Kinds of Honey?

There are many kinds of honey, based on which flowers the bees collected the nectar from. Bees aren’t loyal to any particular flower, so any characterization of honey as being from a particular source (for example, “blackberry honey”) can vary from absolutely true to a rough generality, depending on what flowers the bees can find and how interesting they find them. Honeys range in taste and color from the light clover through alfalfa to stronger tasting (and darker) such as buckwheat. There are many unusual honeys to be found where there are unusual local flowers. Which honey you will use depends both on which you like the taste of, and what type of mead you are trying to make. Stronger flavors go well in metheglins and heavier or sweet meads, while the milder honeys make a good base for melomels or dry traditional meads. Realize that a honey with an interesting-but-unusual taste can produce an overpowering character in mead.

You can buy honey in bulk from roadside stands or health food stores. You may be lucky enough to live near an apiary and be able to buy right from the beekeeper. Look in the phone book for honey, health food, or beekeepers. Sometimes, exterminators will remove hives, give the bees to beekeepers, and sell the honey. University agriculture departments occasionally sell honey. Be inventive. If all else fails, you may have to buy it from the grocery store.

The honey will be either raw or processed in some way. Raw honey has bits of wax, bee parts, dust, pollen, microorganisms, and the like in it. You have the most control in how you process raw honey, but you also have the most to do. Honey may be filtered, or blended, or even heat-pasteurized to make it clearer and less likely to crystallize. The more processed it is, the milder it is likely to be and the less character it will give to your mead. The processing also dissipates some of the honey’s aroma. Commercial, “grocery store” honey, crystal-clear and pale, is the most processed and is usually not a good choice for mead making.

Crystallized honey is normally acceptable for mead. In fact, it has two points in its favor: First, it generally indicates less processing, since one of the reasons for processing honey is to keep it from crystallizing. Second, it may be cheaper because it’s less appealing to the average consumer. (One point against crystallized honey is that if the sugar is drawn out into large crystals, the liquid surrounding them can be low enough in sugar content to allow some fermentation from wild yeast.) To re-liquefy crystallized honey so you can pour it, just heat it gently.

How Much Honey to Use

When you decide to start making your own recipes, you may be wondering how sweet the drink will be. This depends on the amount of honey and the type of yeast used.

For the purposes of the following chart, wine yeast can be considered equal to dry mead yeast. Ale yeast can be considered equal to sweet mead yeast.

This chart assumes a 5 gallon batch. For example: if you used 6 lbs. of honey/gallon (6 lbs. X 5 gallon batch=30 lbs. honey) and used a dry mead yeast, you would end up with a medium sweet mead (one with lots of alcohol, by the way). If you used a sweet mead yeast with this amount of honey you would end up with a very sweet mead.
Note: when a recipe says to use 5-6 lbs. of honey per gallon, that means 5-6 lbs. honey and enough water to make a gallon. Not 5-6 lbs. honey and a gallon of water.

Note: this chart does not take into account the sugars derived from any fruit or malted barley added to the mead. This chart is for straight meads only.

Yeasts

Mead is more a wine than beer, with a final alcohol level anywhere between 10 and 18 percent. Wine yeasts, which have a higher alcohol tolerance, may ferment slower at first (although some are remarkably fast) but will ferment more completely than ale or lager yeast. They are also less likely to produce “off” tastes which take a long time to age out after the mead is finished.

A partial list of some popular yeasts:

• Champagne: Ferments out very dry and has a high alcohol tolerance Epernay,
• Flor Sherry: Has a high alcohol tolerance and contributes a flavor that goes better with sack meads
• Steinberg:
• Prise De Mousse: Particularly neutral, fast-fermenting, and attenuate (leaves little residual sweetness).
• Tokay:
• Red Star (this is the one I use. Mainly the green one) Great flavor, high alcohol.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Yeast will impart its own unique characteristic to the mead. Some yeasts (such as Montrachet wine yeast) can produce noticeable levels of phenols (the throat-burning part of cough medicine), which age out eventually in bottle conditioning but are an unnecessary complication since there are yeasts that don’t produce them.

Yeast Nutrient

Honey by itself is low in some of the nutrients that yeast need to reproduce and quickly ferment out the mead must. Fermentation times can be measured in months as the yeast slowly trickles along. This is a disadvantage because as long as the fermenting mead remains sweet and low in alcohol, it is inviting to contaminating bacteria and lacks a good layer of carbon dioxide (CO2) to protect against oxidation. Mead makers can add a nutrient to help the yeast, and normally should do so if the only fermentable ingredient is honey. Fruit, particularly grapes, will contribute needed ingredients; thus melomels have lesser or no requirement for nutrients. Nutrients are normally added when the must is prepared.

There are several kinds of nutrients. Most winemaking shops will sell various salts designed for grape musts. While this is helpful for mead, too much can leave an astringent metallic flavor that will take months or years in the bottle to age out. Yeast extract, pulverized yeast, is also available. Dead yeast are exploded ultrasonically or in a centrifuge, and sold as a powder. Yeast extract will not leave the same metallic flavors as nutrients, but may be more difficult to find. It is not possible to make your own yeast extract at home.

Adding Acid

Acid may be added to the “must” (the honey water mixture you’re going to ferment) both to adjust the pH and to balance the sweet flavor of the honey. Yeast prefer an acidic environment. Many other micro-organisms don’t. The acid you add protects the must until the alcohol level creates a hostile environment for the competition.

Acid can be added in many forms. Winemaking suppliers sell acid blends, powder or liquid. Acid is measured in “as tartaric”, or how acidic the must is compared to pure tartaric acid. For example, if the must is 0.5 percent acid as tartaric, it is as acidic as if 0.5 percent of the must were pure tartaric acid. Inexpensive test kits will let you measure the acidity so that you can adjust it. Acid blends are a combination of tartaric, citric, and malic acids. You may be able to get the individual acids used in blends. Each contributes a slightly different taste in addition to acidity. The natural acid in fruits and berries will also acidify the must, for which reason melomels often need no additional acid.

Recipes

Basic Fruit Mead (Melomel)

10 lbs honey

15 lbs Berries (I used thawed frozen)

Yeast nutrient to instructions on package

1 pack yeast

Water to fill to 5 gallons

Herb Fruit Mead (Metheglin)

10-12 lbs honey

15 lbs Berries (I used thawed frozen)

Yeast nutrient to instructions on package

1 pack yeast

½ cup dry Elderberry flowers

½ cup dry Sweet Woodruff leaves

½ cup dry Damiana leaves

Water to fill to 5 gallons

How to Prepare the Must

The honey/water before fermenting is called “must”. You will want to add the honey to hot water in a large pot, but make sure the pot is not on the heat while doing this because the honey will fall to the bottom and caramelize (or stir vigorously if you leave it on the heat). Stainless steel or enameled kettles are preferred; aluminum is not ok. Do not use iron, nor enameled kettles with cracks in the enamel.

Some mead recipes recommend only heating the must enough to pasteurize it. This is because boiling honey will drive off some of the delicate flavors.

If scum rises while heating or boiling the must, skim it off. It consists of wax, bee parts, pollen, etc., which don’t help the flavor of the mead.

An alternative preparation method involves the use of “Campden tablets” or “sulfiting” to sterilize the must. If you’re a winemaker, you’ll recognize this method. With the use of Campden tablets, it is not necessary to heat/ boil the must at all first, although some mead-makers do so anyway for the sake of clarity of the final mead. If you use Campden tablets, follow a recipe or instructions for quantity, preparation, delay times before adding yeast, etc. Heating is probably easier than sulfiting for the beginning mead-maker.

Directions

Step 1

Alright let’s get started. Grab all your brewing materials and the sanitizer and it’s time to wash some dishes. This is a very important step. Unless you want to get sick with some kind of funky disease, I highly suggest that you not skip this step.

Step 2

Now that you have everything washed and sanitized, grab your brew pot and fill it with the best water you can get. Water with full of chemicals will produce off tastes. Once the water is in the pot, its time to bring it to a boil.

Step 3

Once your water is boiling, remove it from the heat. Add the honey to the hot water at this point. DO NOT add the honey to boiling water as it will burn and will ruin the crucial parts of the honey that make it able to become mead. If you want a dry mead, add less honey. For sweeter mead, add extra honey. Now stir it until the honey and water become one.

Step 4

Once the honey and water are good and stirred, it’s called a “must”. Let the must cool down to around room temperature then grab your funnel and carboy that is sanitized. Put the funnel in the mouth of the carboy and pour the must from the pot to the carboy.

Step 5

Once you have the must transferred into the carboy and it’s cooled off (the next day), Bloom your yeast separately, then add your yeast to it. Once the yeast is pitched in, its time to put your rubber stopper in the mouth of the carboy and put the fermentation lock in the stopper to release the pressure that will happen when the mead starts fermentation.

Step 6

Now it’s wait time. Put the carboy in a closet somewhere where the temperature is around 75 degrees F. (Room temp most of the time). After around 1-2 weeks, you’re going to want to rack the mead. Racking is to siphon the initial brew out of the first container to get the sediment and nastiness left at the bottom out of it. So, if you have another carboy, get it and make sure it’s sanitized, and grab your siphon kit. Siphon the mead out of the first container and put it in the other carboy.

Step 7

After anywhere from 1-2 months, rack again, it can most likely be consumed. Sometimes though it can take anywhere to a year for a mead to become fully matured. So really it’s just a sit back game from here. Every 1-2 months get a little sample out of the carboy to taste test it to see how it’s coming along. Once it reaches maturity or the taste to your liking, if you did everything right, it should be good to drink without any health issues.

Fermentation

Mead will take longer than beer to ferment. Fermentation times are often measured in months, so get another carboy. Mead likes to ferment a little warmer than beer (70F – 75), but should be stored in a cool place to bottle condition. You will have to rack mead (transfer it to a separate vessel, leaving behind the sediment) while it is fermenting. If you make any kind of mead beside traditional, you will have to rack about a week after starting to remove the bits of fruit or spices that settle out. Rack periodically after that to get the mead off the dead yeast and other matter that settles out–every 3-6 weeks depending on the rate of fermentation and settling. This improves the flavor and clarifies the mead.

Initial fermentation of melomels made with fruit (not just juice) is easiest in a food-grade plastic pail so that you can strain out the fruit before racking. Except for this, glass carboys with fermentation locks are the best fermentation vessels. Mead does not tend to form the huge head that beer does when starting fermentation.

Bottling

First, you must make sure the mead has stopped fermenting. Mead is such a slow fermenter that it may appear completely done, yet continues to ferment after bottling. This can turn a still mead into a sparkling one; it can even produce enough pressure to cause the bottles to explode. Exploding bottles– “glass grenades”–aren’t funny. They’re unpredictable and very dangerous.

To be sure the mead is done fermenting, take hydrometer readings spanning a week or more and be sure the readings are not still falling. Dry meads will also finish at a gravity below 1.000. As a mead finishes, it will “fall clear”–the initial cloudiness will settle out. Be careful, though, because being clear is not enough.

Choose appropriate bottles for the type of mead.

Still meads (uncarbonated, like normal wines) may be bottled in regular wine bottles with standard corks, or in crown-capped bottles as above. Since pressure isn’t an issue, almost any bottle with an airtight closure can be made to work. Bear in mind, though, that the appearance of your bottles is part of the first impression when you serve your mead.

Mead that has finished fermentation and is then bottled will be “still” (flat). Sparkling mead is “primed” by adding a small amount of sugar at bottling time to produce a short renewed fermentation so that it is carbonated. For predictable results (again, to avoid “glass grenades”), you should first let the mead finish fermenting in the carboy, then add just the amount of sugar needed to carbonate it. Bottling a mead before it finished fermenting (in hopes of capturing just the right amount of carbonation in the bottle) can lead to under- or over-carbonation, and even in the best case won’t give the mead a chance to finish clearing before bottling. A normal amount of priming sugar is about 4 ounces by weight for five gallons.

Store the bottles in a cool dark place. Mead is not as sensitive as beer to light (unless you have hops in it), but should not be left in bright light.

Wassail!

While reading the mead-lovers digest you will occasionally see the word “Wassail”. It’s a toast, an expression of good will, much as a beer drinker might offer “Prosit” or “Cheers”. The word derives from Old Norse through Middle English, and means “be healthy”. A modern German cognate would be “wacht heil.” The dictionary lists two pronunciations (wahs’ul, wah-sale’).

Legality

In the USA, mead is classified as a wine. A brief, informal (not legal advice!) synopsis: Federal regulations allow an adult to make up to 100 gallons a year, or 200 gallons per year per household of two or more adults, for personal or family use, with no tax or license required. It may not be sold. Concentration (including but not limited to distillation) is prohibited. State and local laws may impose additional restrictions, so check first. The usual situation is that home mead-making is allowed in any locality where commercial wine can be sold. Repeat: this is NOT legal advice.

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In ancient times, the role of the male was well defined. He was the hunter, the warrior, the sage and elder. He was the provider of meat, and the protector of the home. As time progressed, the gender lines of the olden days have disappeared.

Only by invoking the God and utilizing the symbolism can we all truly form our own opinions and experiences with the God in our daily lives.

Aspects of the God in our Tradition

The God is gentle, tender and comforting, but he is also the Hunter.  He is the Dying God, but his death is always in the service of life.  He is untamed sexuality, as a deep holy, loving power.  He is the force of feelings.  Our God wears horns, they are the crescents relating to the  mysteries of the Moon and the symbol of animal vitality.  In some aspects he is all black, not because he is dreaded, but because darkness and night are times of power and a part of the cycles of time.

The Horned God embodies the power of feeling.  His animal horns represent the truth of undisguised emotion, which seeks to please no master.  He is the Life Force and the Life Cycle.  His power is always directed to the service of life.

He is also the God of Love. This love includes sexuality, which is wild and untamed as well as gentle and tender.  He is the Dying God and the Horned Hunter, the bringer of death so that life may go on.  He is the Searcher, the Seeker.  He, as well as the Goddess, unifies all opposites.  He is the proud stag that haunts the heart of the forest, the hidden forest of the self.  He is the stallion, swift as thought, whose crescent hooves leave lunar marks even as they strike solar sparks.  He is the moon bull with the crescent horns and the hooves that thunder over the Earth.  He is all that within us will never be domesticated, that which refuses to be compromised, diluted, molded, or tempered.  He is free.

He is the dream world, the Other Lord.  He is the self-voyaging of the dark waters of the unconscious mind. The gates He guards are the threshold that divides the conscious from the unconscious; the gates of night and day through which we pass in and out of life.  As He is ever dying, He is also ever reborn.  In the moment of his transformation, he becomes immortal even as love is immortal.

Symbology of the God

Antler

Antlers symbolize the pagan Horned God, the sacred Stag. They are almost symbolically interchangeable with Horns.

Antlers represent the God who is a symbol of all wild creatures, especially those virile creatures who give themselves away to serve the life of the people.

The Bull

The Bull is an ancient symbol for the power of the God, specifically as a devotee of His Goddess-Mother.
In ancient Crete, women would dance around and leap over bulls in sacred rituals. The Bull survives in many mythological forms, even today. The Minotaur is probably the most well-known example.

The Bull owes this association in part to the shape of its horns, in part to its connection with the Sacred Cow-Goddess, and in part to its power and virility. A single bull will produce a herd of calves, which creates prosperity for the people.

Eye of Horus

The Eye of Horus is a God symbol that conveys ultimate protection. (Although originally it was seen as the Eye of Maat.) It was thought, because of this power of protection, to aid one in reincarnating.

This Eye is sometimes seen as two-fold. A right eye for the feminine – the Moon – is called the Eye of Horus or Thoth, and a left eye for the masculine – the Sun – is called Ra.

Naming this symbol after Horus may have evolved to simplify communication, since Horus – the Sky – contained both the Sun and the Moon as His eyes.

Gold

Shining like the warm Sun, gold is a symbol of the God in general, and the Sun God in particular. Gold is a yang metal.

Gold is also a symbol of spiritual pursuit and purity, because it does not tarnish or rust. Gold is incorruptible, as is the Divine.

Holly

Holly is the Winter God symbol, the Green Man in his winter guise. He is the complement of the Oak King, the Summer God.

As an evergreen, Holly is revered as a symbol of eternal life. The red berries, reminiscent of Persephone’s pomegranates, reinforces this meaning.

The Holly King represents life that lives on, beneath the surface. On the surface, the God is dead; the Green has given way to white snows. But this death is an illusion. The God, this symbol promises, will rise again. Holly is the promise of that.

Horn

Horns are an ancient God symbol. Horns have been associated with worship of the Divine perhaps since the dawn of human consciousness. Stone Age art everywhere depicts men wearing horns and antlers.

One obvious reason for this correlation is the visual similarity between horns and the Crescent Moon. The first is a symbol of male virility and spiritual power, and the second is a symbol of the creative power of the female.

Thus the curved horn, such as a bull’s horn, can simultaneously signify the God and the Goddess, specifically the God as lover and child of the Goddess.

This explains the Bull’s ancient power as a spiritual animal.

Maypole

The Maypole is an ancient phallic God symbol, representing the generative power of the God.

The Maypole would be set into the Earth at Beltane (May Eve). This symbolically fertilized the Earth Mother to produce new life in the Spring.

Then women and men danced around this sacred union, women widdershins and men deosil. As the lines wove in and out, ribbons tied to the head of the Maypole interlaced into a colorful sheath along the Maypole.

Oak

Oak is associated with Wicca because it was particularly sacred to the Druids, from which Wicca was said to have evolved.

The word Druid may in fact come from the same root as the word for Oak. It is from oak trees that sacred mistletoe was gathered.

Oak is associated with the masculine divinity. The Oak King is the Green Man in his summer aspect: growing, powerful, virile.

The Stag, Buck

The stag is a symbol of the Horned God. This is the God of joyful virility, radiating Power and life force. It is He who gives Himself away so that others can live.

The stag is not only a Wicca symbol, but also widely used in Neopaganism.

Sun

European tradition has the Sun as male, so any image of the Sun is, in Wicca, a God symbol.

The God in Wicca symbolism is connected with the cycles of the Sun: the birth, growth, failing, death, and then rebirth of the sun and the seasons of nature that are tied into this cycle.

This is a symbol of the God who gives himself away, so that His people can live. And in this way He preserves His immortality . . . for after death, He can be again born of the Goddess.

The Sun King, who was the God’s representative on Earth, would similarly reign for a year, or another symbolic period of time, and then would give his life for the good of all.

Sun-Antlered Stag

The image of the Stag with the sun cupped in his antlers is a symbol of the masculine aspect of the Divine, the Great God.

This God symbol shows both the worldly God and Highest God united as one. The God who is manifest in a physical body, yet retains knowledge of his true Self.

Animus:

The male component of the unconscious female psyche. Like the anima (Eros), but he personifies “spirit” and “intellect” (Logos). His negative aspect gives a woman her irrational convictions and opinions. He’s usually plural because women focus on one man only in conscious relationships. He also compensates the basic female faculty for unity. He seems to lack the anima’s historical quality and is more concerned with present and future, which Jung saw as compensation (its women who think more about roots, the past, etc.)–but in his deepest qualities he is as history-oriented as the anima.

Anima:

The feminine component of the unconscious male psyche and inner counterpart to the persona. Possibly she reflects a man’s smaller number of female genes. Ultimately an archetype of Eros and of life itself, this “woman within” functions as a filter, bridge, guide, and mediator between the ego and the deeper layers of the unconscious. As long as she’s not differentiated she stands for the unconscious; later, she stands apart, a daughter to the Wise Old Man who compensates her and sometimes mate of the shadow. Because she carries a man’s “soul” and his “relatedness,” she can be fully realized only with a female partner. “If a man cannot project his anima, then he is cut off from women” (Analytical Psychology).

First projected onto the mother and always mixed with the mother archetype, she usually appears after a man confronts and integrates his shadow. Unless he addresses her as an autonomous personality-fragment and gets to know her, integrating, not her, but her products, he will project her onto an outer woman and confuse the image with the external reality. (Jung didn’t need to consult his anima once he’d learned to read the meaning of his dreams directly, without requiring a mediator, and to accept whatever surfaced from the unconscious. When she vanishes into the unconscious, the collective contents are constellated. The anima seems immortal until she “brings forth”; then she dies.)

Anima images are usually singular (as opposed to animus images) to compensate both the male habit of seeing a mate as one woman among many and the basically male faculty of discrimination, as opposed to the basically female faculty of unifying and synthesizing. (Jung felt that for the collective state to arise, the anima had to be suppressed.)
The anima passes through four stages corresponding with a man’s maturity: Eve, Helen of Troy, Mary, and Sophia.

Anima and Animus

A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play. For most people that role is determined by their physical gender. But Jung, like Freud and Adler and others, felt that we are all really bisexual in nature. When we begin our lives as fetuses, we have undifferentiated sex organs that only gradually, under the influence of hormones, become male or female. Likewise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we are neither male nor female in the social sense. Almost immediately — as soon as those pink or blue booties go on — we come under the influence of society, which gradually molds us into men and women.

In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, usually based on our different roles in reproduction, but often involving many details that are purely traditional. In our society today, we still have many remnants of these traditional expectations. Women are still expected to be more nurturant and less aggressive; men are still expected to be strong and to ignore the emotional side of life. But Jung felt these expectations meant that we had developed only half of our potential.

The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Together, they are referred to as syzygy. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, even argumentative.

The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our love life: We are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our other half, the half that the Gods took from us, in members of the opposite sex. When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone that “fills” our anima or animus archetype particularly well!

Jung’s Archetypes

Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung described several archetypes that are based in the observation of differing but repeating patterns of thought and action that re-appear time and again across people, countries and continents.
Jung’s main archetypes are not ‘types’ in the way that each person may be classified as one or the other. Rather, we each have all basic archetypes within us. He listed four main forms of archetypes:

• The Shadow
• The Anima
• The Animus
• The Self

The Shadow

The Shadow is a very common archetype that reflects deeper elements of our psyche, where ‘latent dispositions’ which are common to us all arise. It also reflects something that was once split from us in early management of the objects in our lives.

It is, by its name, dark, shadowy, unknown and potentially troubling. It embodies chaos and wildness of character. The shadow thus tends not to obey rules, and in doing so may discover new lands or plunge things into chaos and battle. It has a sense of the exotic and can be disturbingly fascinating. In myth, it appears as the wild man, spider-people, mysterious fighters and dark enemies.

We may see the shadow in others and, if we dare, know it in ourselves. Mostly, however, we deny it in ourselves and project it onto others. It can also have a life of its own, as the Other. A powerful goal that some undertake is to re-integrate the shadow, the dark side, and the light of the ‘real’ self. If this can be done effectively, then we can become ‘whole’ once again, bringing together that which was once split from us.

Our shadow may appear in dreams, hallucinations and musings, often as something or someone who is bad, fearsome or despicable in some way. It may seduce through false friendship or threaten with callous disregard. Encounters with it, as an aspect of the subconscious, may reveal deeper thoughts and fears. It may also take over direct physical action when the person is confused, dazed or drugged.

The Anima and Animus

The second most prevalent pattern is that of the Anima (male), Animus (female), or, more simply, the Soul, and is the route to communication with the collective unconscious. The anima/animus represents our true self, as opposed to the masks we wear every day and is the source of our creativity.

The anima/animus may appear as someone exotic or unusual in some way, perhaps with amazing skills and powers. In fiction, heroes, super-heroes and gods may represent these powerful beings and awaken in us the sense of omnipotence that we knew in that very early neonatal phase.

Anima and animus are male and female principles that represent this deep difference. Whilst men have an fundamental anima and women an animus, each may also have the other, just as men have a feminine side and women a masculine. Jung saw men as having one dominant anima, contributed to by female members of his family, whilst women have a more complex, variable animus, perhaps made of several parts.

Jung theorized the development of the anima/animus as beginning with infant projection onto the mother, then projecting onto prospective partners until a lasting relationship can be found.

The Syzygy

(The Divine Couple)

In combination, the anima and animus are known as syzygy (a word also used to denote alignment of planets), representing wholeness and completion. This combining brings great power and can be found in religious combination’s such as the Christian Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy ghost).
A perfect partnership between man and woman can occur when not only are our physical forms compatible but also the anima and animus. Thus you might find your soul-mate. Finding our matching other half is a lifetime of search for many of us, and few of us succeed in this quest. Love of another indicates an actual, perceived or hoped-for close match.

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