A beautiful liturgy of justice and welcome which can be found in The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread, & Resurrection by Andrea Bieler. Sunshine sent this in around Christmas last year and I (hellaD) am just getting around to sharing it with you all now. The ritual of speaking from the elements is very powerful and the call to a table set and waiting resonates deeply in all of us. The community and communion of breaking bread together is very important to all of humanity. Even if you are not a Christian, or even religious, this liturgy will demonstrate the power of a long awaited meal, shared together with deep respect for the bread and the mystery of soil and elements which come together to provide the bread in the first place.

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I have pulled out some excerpts from Sema: Human Being in the Universal Movement (Text by Dr. Celaleddin Celebi, illustrations by Ingrid Schaar) which will help to explain the Sema Ceremony of whirling. At the end it explains briefly how to twirl like a dervish and tap into the energy of nature, please read the full article with an in depth explanation here.

Sema is part of the inspiration of Mevlana Jalaluddin-i Rumi (1207- 1273) as well as of Turkish custom, history, beliefs and culture.

The fundamental condition of our existence is to revolve. There is no object, no being which does not revolve and the shared similarity among beings is the revolution of the electrons, protons and neutrons in the atoms, which constitute the structure of each of them. As a consequence of this similarity, everything revolves and man carries on his live, his very existence by means of the revolution in the atoms, structural stones of his body, by the revolution of his blood, by his coming from the earth and return to it, by his revolving with earth itself.

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One should not pass over these things, simply saying they are food. They are in reality a complete civilization. -Abdulhak Sinasi, Camlicadaki Enistemiz (1944)

I really like the philosophy and spirituality of the Mevlevi (a Sufi brotherhood which originated in the Seljuq period, under Mevlana Jalaluddin-i Rumi) because the kitchen is central to their philosophy and daily life. Their rituals value the importance of taking time to cook, something we are missing in the modern age. Many of our ancestral rituals, whatever culture we come from, focused around food and cooking. The alchemical mystery of fire, water, air and earth coming together to create something new that nourishes and pleasures our bodies and senses has inspired mystics and poets, around the world, for thousands of years. Food is an aspect of spirituality that we all easily resonate with.

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The One-Straw Revolution is Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about natural food and farming. It is a collection of short essays that were translated from Japanese. Masanobu was trained as a scientist, but rejected modern agribusiness and centuries of agriculture lore. He perfected what he called the “do-nothing” technique of farming. Masanobu Fukuoka died in 2008 at a ripe old age yet still stunning the world with his highly effective no-work farming techniques.

This little book is filled with amazing insights into modern life. These excerpts were taken from sections on food and natural diet. Masanobu Fukuoka puts into clear and concise language a practical way to return to a state of health for our world and ourselves. I highly recommend getting your own copy as this book is so full of profound understandings of nature that they are best absorbed in small doses.

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As I started writing up this article on sima I realized my timing couldn’t be be better. Vappu is only a week away. Just enough time to brew up my first batch of the year. It brings back a flood of memories of my time in Finland.

Sima is a Finnish homemade mead, and is the traditional drink for their Vappu holiday, which falls on May 1st. The holiday itself is quite a mix match of different traditions. Originally there was a pagan celebration at this time, involving the lighting of bonfires and the welcoming of spring. With the coming of Christianity the same holiday was used instead to honour a Saint Walpurga, while still keeping some of the old traditions. Later on it became a day associated with political, religious, and student activism, including marches, demonstrations and speeches. Today it is a mix of all these things, and the holiday typically involves music and picnic feasts in the park by day, and bonfires, partying and drinking by night. And so with that bit of background here is my recipe.

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Any kind of movement will help to detox your tissues, especially if you work up a sweat! The breathing and moving help get your lymphatic fluid and circulation flowing.

I have always loved walking just to get somewhere, or see a city, as well as a therapeutic method of letting events work themselves through. It is one of the easiest and most affordable things to do if you need to get things moving again.

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This is just a quick post because I have just discovered Susan Weed’s site Wise Women Weblog and her radio show where she interviews empowering women. Sally Fallon has been one of my heroes ever since I first picked up her cookbook Nourishing Traditions in 2001. Reading her book finally made nutrition make sense, the continuous contradictions that were coming out about long held nutritional ideas since them has fallen in line exactly as Sally Fallon has stated. Her book is my main go-to cookbook in my kitchen, the principals around food contained in this website are geared towards traditional roots cooking as a result.

This interview covers a wide variety of various aspects of our modern industrial food and nutrition and how to get back to a more healing traditional way of eating and preparing our foods. Very good interview! I highly recommend taking the time to listen to it.

Interview of Sally Fallon by Susan Weed.

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My Healthy Options magazine arrived with this health horoscope for April 2010. I found it to be right on track with many points I have been pondering lately about rituals, healing and detoxification. Given that I am in the process of posting about various detoxing methods, this message fits right in, and says better than I can what I am currently finding to be so important. Taking the time and putting in the effort to choose your own rituals, and find your own personal healing techniques. Harsha Rigney, the lady who writes these horoscopes, is an Astrological Counsellor who lives in New Zealand. I have been reading her horoscopes since 2001 and I generally find them very helpful and right on target. I have her calendar the Astrovision Moon Calendar, which is stuffed with all kinds of information about the cycles of the year.

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I first read of this unusual healing technique in Moon Time: The Art of Harmony with Nature and Lunar Cycles by Johanna Paungger and Thomas Poppe when I first moved to New Zealand in 2001. At that time for some reason I couldn’t get my hands on cold-pressed sunflower oil and I never had a chance to try it. I suddenly started hearing about this method again last year and we tried it out with great results. It seems that Oil Pulling is also used in Ayurvedic healing which goes back at least 5,000 years, so the roots of this old European version are indeed ancient. It is supposed to be very helpful for removing heavy metals from the body, and people have used it for nasal congestion, eczema and various other issues. The following is taken from the book Moon Time and describes in detail the old method of practising this ancient healing technique.

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I was just looking over some posts from last year and found this in a post about seeds, seasons, rebirth and resurrection:

Lady Day, the 25th of March, was a very ancient celebration of the Great Rite, or the holy marriage. In the legends of ancient Sumer, Inanna descends to the underworld on the vernal equinox, she passes through the seven gates, leaving an article of clothing at each gate. When she arrives she is naked and is killed by her sister, Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, and hung on a hook. After three days and nights, Innana is rescued and sprinkled with life-giving water. On the 25th of March, Lady Day, Innana is resurrected. Traditionally, rituals re-inacted this rebirth/resurrection every year. Think of a seed, which is buried and put into the earth, as though dead. It is sprinkled with water and a few days later bursts out of the ground a new life, but also, in a sense, the old. The process of walking through the underworld has created something new.

Read the original post here.

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