Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Pagan
Adventures in Wortcunning: The Last Harvest

Adventures in Wortcunning: The Last Harvest

Last updated on: November 6, 2015 at 11:01 pm by Anne Duthers

Adventures in Wortcunning: The Last Harvest 2015-11-06T23:01:38+00:00 Anne Duthers

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It is a seasonal thing. It comes and goes with the changing of shop window decorations. Now ’tis the season of skimpy costumes and parties celebrating the dead and not quite gone: the last harvest.

jklugiewicz / Pixabay.com

Pulling the last apples from the tree, hoping the figs ripen before the rains come. Praying for the rain…this is my life in the garden lately. And after the trees have been stripped, comes the prepping of the fruit, the boiling vats and canning jars. Everything washed and boiled clean, red, dry hands, a giant metal funnel and rubber-tipped clampy-tongs to fill the super hot jars – keep the top edge clean!- and seal with a fresh new metal disk with the rubber built-in. This invention changed the world in 1858. My personal world changed when I discovered a magnetic-tipped wand to extract the gasket-coated disks from boiling water.

Wash the fruit and cook it with pectin to set the jell, and enough sugar or honey to keep it from spoiling. That is for jam. Pickles use salt or vinegar to preserve the precious harvest – the work of our little family for all the sunny months that must be saved for winter meals.

The sterilizing baths, the hot clean jars and rubber gaskets are part of keeping bacteria, those invisible agents of decay, out of the mix. It isn’t really hard, or complicated. But it is exacting. As with most of the truly Natural Laws, there is no room for error and the consequences are severe. But maybe you’ve never had a hungry winter.

Perhaps the cycles of the harvest mean little to many except as metaphor- an analogy to the cycles of life in general. If you are lucky and comfortable enough for self-reflection, that uncomfortable habit of human anthropomorphizing can be projected onto the seasonal turnings of our Mother, Earth. Spring time becomes a picture of our own youth and beauty. Summer projects images of our mature and lusty fruitfulness. Autumn comes the harvest, our golden years of gathered bounty. We shudder at the coming of Winter, and if we are wise, prepare at the hope of a new Spring to follow.

My friends are old enough now to consider our life’s workings with an eye to this harvest and winter to come. Through trial of pain and sweat, adjustment and perseverance despite errors and failings hangs an acquired accumulation of knowledge and skills from our figuratively well-hung branches.

A beloved mentor of mine died before I could meet her. She died, too, before writing some of the books she had planned. Before finishing books she had begun writing. Her work and life were inspirational to me and many others, but alas she sings her song no more and the remaining words are unwritten. What knowledge was discovered from the treasure trove of time, enjoyed and lost with her beautiful life?

A harvest unpreserved, like my mother’s unwritten memoirs, haunt me at my keyboard. So much unwritten still… so many stories yet to tell. And when the fruit of family trees begins to fall, we gather in the harvest and prepare for winter once again. For as assuredly as spring turns to summer, winter comes.

If we project this analogy farther, cultural knowledge too has cycles of inspirational growth, bounty, harvest and dearth. Perhaps now, in this internet age, we are in a bountiful phase. My soul calls toward preservation and echoes tears for Alexandria’s Great Library. I suppose it is possible my bones remember remnants of this Library secreted to Ireland some 1,600 years ago.

Cultural warfare is wrought this way, by removing the elders from the tribe, separating the children from their heritage and history. Today, information is so abundant many have forgotten to look for it’s secrets. But, I love secrets.

I always figured on being the old lady in the woods who knew stuff, just the right stuff, when folks needed to learn it again. Spent a lifetime studying these too, the stuff of civilization, like how to store food, make clothes against the cold and take healing from herbs. After all, if we don’t remember this while the information is bountiful – how may we find it when we depend upon it again?

Front of the Academy of Arcana / Anne Duthers

So, of course I jumped at the chance to help open the Academy of Arcana. Spanning the same educational landscape of ancient science & mystery schools that inspired great minds of old. Hidden knowledge unattached to religion, with a compendium of cryptic knowledge hiding in the corners. Wyrd things. Useful thinks.

As we move collections, stock the library shelves, prepare the rooms and exhibits of the museum and book our calendar of classes and events, it seems we preserve this bountiful harvest of knowledge for the community. If there are only a few lessons we are destined to learn from the past, then perhaps our Academy of Arcana will provide the seeds for the next Renaissance of thought and discovery.

It is grand to have shelves full of freshly canned harvest, ready against the winter. Part of this joy is in the community effort required to save this sustenance for later, the generations of young harvesters, children and grandmothers in the kitchen, working together and looking forward to those times of feasting ahead.

For more information on the Academy of Arcana — a museum of magick and mysteries – please visit www.academyofarcana.com.

Click here to like
Patheos Pagan on Facebook.

Click here to like
the Agora on Facebook

Adventures in Wortcunning is published bimonthly on alternate Fridays. Subscribe via RSS or e-mail.

Please use the links to the right to keep on top of activities here on the Agora as well as across the entire Patheos Pagan channel.

Adventures in Wortcunning

Previous Post

November 5, 2015

The Lady's Quill: Paganism, Theism, and Belief

Next Post

November 7, 2015 The Rantin' Raven: Telling Our Stories

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Lakeside Hearth Adventures in Wortcunning Alone In Her Presence Arts, Crafts & Cooking Birthing Hereditary Witchcraft Book of Blackbirds Book Reviews Born-Again Witch Cauldron, Sword, Spear, & Stone Cermony and Liturgy Columns Community Dandelion Seeds Dear Jasmine Druid Thoughts Editor's Picks Everyday Pagan Family & Household Practice Family Traditions Full Frontal Magic Gateway Goddess Guest Articles Happily Heathen Health and Wellness Hearth of Hellenism Heathen Woman Hills of the Horizon History Holidays Horse Goddesses Interfaith Interviews Irish-American Witchcraft Jewish Witch Lamp & Labyrinth Letters from Midgard Literature, Media, Film, Music Loop of Brighid Love, Sex & Relationships Magic or Magick Making Light Naturalistic Traditions Nature News Outside The Circle Pantheisticon Politics Prayers, Poems, Blessings & Stories Queer Femme Mystic Queer of Swords Recipes Ritual and Practice Science and Research Seekers and Guides Seeking the Grail Socially Responsible Magic Spear of Athena Star Made Witch Syncretic Electric Technology The Blooming Staff The Busy Witch The Cartomancer The Crow's Nest The Dance of Pagan Recovery The Hearth of Hellenism The Lady's Quill The Other Side of the Hedge The Path of She The Rantin' Raven The Witches Next Door The Zen Pagan Theology, Ethics, Philosophy Tree City Witch Urban Earthwitch Wayfaring Woman Witch on Fire Wyrd Words

Select a Month January 2026 March 2025 December 2024 June 2024 April 2024 March 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What city did Paul visit where the people worshiped "an unknown god"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Athens Corinth Rome Ephesus