Norse Apple Pie for Attracting Youth, Beauty and Love
The apple has been the mythic symbol of love, immortality and magic since time immemorial. The Norse myths tell us of the gods who kept themselves eternally youthful by partaking of the golden apples of Iduna, the goddess of youth and Spring.
Besides it's magical elements, the apple is as delicious as it is beautiful. Apples were such a popular desert in ancient Rome, that the Emperor Claudius was a big fan of an apple pie made with spices and honey. Here is a recipe for a pie that will make you as seem as beautiful as the love goddess Freya and just as tempting.
Make this pie when the waxing moon is in Venus (the signs of Libra or Taurus), especially on a Friday (which is Freya's day). When you light the oven, light a blue candle over the stove.
Place a little flour and confectioners sugar in a small dish. As you add each ingredient place a little of your purpose in the shell with it, so that when the shell is full of apples, it will also be full of your new beauty. When the pie comes out of the oven, snuff the candle in the dish of sugar and flour and empty the dish into the garden.
You will need:
2 9 inch pie frozen pie crusts
5 cups of tart apple slices
1 teas. flour
1/2 teas. cinnamon
1/4 teas. nutmeg
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teas. lemon rind
2 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup honey
confectioners sugar
Defrost the pie shells. Peel, core and slice about a half dozen tart apples to make 5 cups. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Fill the bottom crust with the sliced apples and sprinkle over them the flour mixed with the cinnamon and the nutmeg, lemon juice and rind.
Dot the surface of your pie with butter. Cover with a latticework of pastry strips from the second pie shell. This will form a series of the Gebo rune across the top of the pie, indicative of cementing relationships.
Bake in the hot oven for 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake your "love and beauty pie" for another 35 minutes or until the crust is golden and the apples tender. Remove the pie from the oven and pour honey through the openings in the top of the crust. Let the pie stand for one hour and serve dusted with confectioners sugar.
Good Baking, Good Love and Good Magic,
Lory
Within the Norse Rune Magic traditions there are many avenues and roadways by which to approach these universal mysteries. It is clear that a rune is not simply a letter or a character in an alphabet. It is much more. Every rune is made up of three elements or aspects:
1. a sound (song)
2. a stave (shape)
3. a rune (hidden lore)
No part of this triad can stand totally alone. Each implies and projects the other. The sound or phonetic value of the rune is it's vibratory quality in the air, in the Quantum Ocean. This is the magical-creative quality that is in speech. It is the quality we think of when we hear about "the word of God," or the Logos (Word), the creative vac of Brahma and so on.
This is the cosmic principle with which runesters work when they sing or speak the runes in acts of Galdor. The shape of the rune-stave is the spatial or visible quality of the rune.
This aspect can be the most deceptive because we put so much emphasis on what we see. The visible staves (characters) are only reflections of the actual runes, which remain hidden from our five senses.
They exist a realm beyond the three dimensions and are only approximated in the two dimensional diagrams we can see. The runes themselves are complex and multifaceted and fit within a web-work which only further complicates the picture.
Really no one definition of rune is possible, for each rune is in and of itself infinite and without bounds. In practical terms the rune is the sum total of lore and information on the stave and the sound. The song is the vibration, the stave is the image, and the rune is the lore needed to activate the magic.
All true Runic traditions take certain factors into careful account. These are: the order of the staves (this gives their numerical value) and their total number 16 - 24), a threefold division of the total number, the shapes of the individual staves, their phonetic values, their special rune names, and a body of complex poetic lore surrounding each stave.
Each of these elements has its esoteric reason for being there. If the runes were merely a system for writing all that would be needed would be the visible sign and a conventionally agreed on sound value.
Brightest of Blessings,
Lory
As an artist myself, it is not difficult for me to grasp the idea that "all" of us are artists and that life is our canvas. So many of us have difficulty in thinking of our selves as creative people. But I disagree. I believe with all my heart that the ability to bring forth Art from real life is a gift every person possesses. It is the true reason why we are here; it is the "Magic of life", to be creative.
You may not draw, paint, write, sculpt, knit, sing, play an instrument, dance or act but any thing you do with dedication and individual creativeness is "Art!" Whatever you are about to do today can be transformed into an art, if your heart is willing to be the Great Creator's conduit. The world does not applaud everyday art, so we must.
As an artist I have come to know that there are three very different layers to creation: the labor, the craft and the elevation. The man/woman who works with their hands is a laborer. The man/woman who works with their hands and head is a craftsman/woman. The man/woman who works with their hands, their head and their "heart" is an Artist.
Labor is in creation showing up to do the work. Craft is how you go about doing it. Weather it is elder care, child care, office work, housework or gardening. Are you there in body, mind and spirit? Are you taking your time or are you rushing? Are you concentrating or are you thinking about twenty other things that need to be done?
If you can answer yes to being there in body, mind and spirit and you are taking your time and concentrating, Love is present. Love is the spiritual energy that induces elevation - the transcendent moment in creation when craft becomes art.
It takes a lifetime to create the work of art for which we were born. But it only takes five minutes to center yourself before you begin each task today. It takes five minutes to acknowledge in your soul that you are a "Magical Artist" of the everyday. So herald your personal gifts. Offer your love, creative energies, and enormous talents to the person, idea or projects awaiting your attention.
Brightest of Blessings,
Lory
