Before any circle is closed, wine is blessed and cakes are blessed, and both are passed from hand to hand. It is the simplest rite in the Craft and, for many of us, the dearest.
Gerald Gardner described the ceremony of the cakes and wine in Witchcraft Today and was at pains to say that it was no parody of anything. It is, he wrote, simply the witches' feast: a little food and drink, blessed and eaten together in the presence of the gods. Sharing a meal is among the oldest religious acts there is, and this is the Craft's form of it.
What the rite means
It has three meanings, which sit comfortably together.
The first is thanksgiving. Bread and wine are the fruit of the earth and of a year's weather and work. To bless them and eat them with attention is to acknowledge where one's life comes from.
The second is union. In the blessing of the wine, the blade is lowered into the cup. The athame stands for the God and the cup for the Goddess, and their meeting is the simplest and most often repeated image in the Craft of the joining of the two powers from which everything is born. It is the Great Rite in its symbolic form, enacted at every circle.
The third is fellowship. The cup goes round from hand to hand, each person receives it from one neighbour and gives it to the next, and by the time it has gone full circle the coven has been reminded, without anything being said, that it is one company.
There is also a practical side. Raising power is tiring, and the old teaching is that food and drink bring a person back to earth after magic. Anyone who has felt the slightly unreal lightness that follows a strong working will know why the cakes come when they do.
How it is done
The wording is in the Book and stays there. The actions have been described often and may be told.
The cup is filled with wine. In most covens the High Priest kneels and holds it up, and the High Priestess takes her athame between her palms and lowers the point into the wine while the blessing is spoken. The cakes are then brought to her on the pentacle and blessed in their turn. She drinks and eats, and the cup and the plate are passed deosil round the circle, each person serving the next.
A little of the wine and a piece of cake are always kept back. After the circle is closed they are taken outside and given to the earth, as the share of the gods and of the land.
The wine
Red wine is usual. There is nothing sacred about it: mead, cider and ale have all been used, and in the cider country along the Welsh border it would be perverse not to. For those who do not drink alcohol, for whatever reason, apple juice or plain spring water in the same cup is entirely acceptable, and a considerate coven will see that there is some without being asked. What matters is that it is shared.
The cakes
The cakes are small, plain and traditionally shaped as crescents in honour of the moon. Every coven has its own recipe and guards it with rather more jealousy than it guards the Book. Ours came with our founding High Priestess from her mother coven, and we have her permission to give it.
Hesper's crescent cakes
This quantity makes about four dozen small crescents.
- 175 g plain flour
- 50 g ground almonds
- 125 g cold butter, cut into small pieces
- 60 g caster sugar
- 1 tablespoon of honey
- 1 egg yolk
- A pinch of salt
- Mix the flour, ground almonds and salt in a bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar.
- Beat the egg yolk with the honey and work it in until the dough comes together. Add a few drops of cold water if it will not. Wrap the dough and chill it for half an hour.
- Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, or 160 with a fan. Roll the dough out to about half a centimetre thick. Cut rounds with a small glass, then move the glass across and cut again to make crescents. Gather the trimmings, roll them out again and go on until the dough is used up.
- Bake on a lined tray for 12 to 15 minutes, until pale gold at the edges. Cool on the tray, as they are fragile while warm.
They keep for a week in a tin. Hesper's instruction, which we pass on, is that they are to be made by hand, by someone in a good temper.
After the cup
Once the cakes and wine have gone round, the formal part of the rite is over, though the circle is still standing. This is the time when the coven sits down on the floor and talks: about the working just done, about who is ill or in difficulty, about what is to happen next month. Questions are asked and answered. A good deal of what a witch learns, they learn sitting on the floor with a cake in one hand.
Then the circle is closed, and the real supper begins. By firm custom it is brought by everyone, so that the burden never falls on the house where the coven meets.
For anyone
This is one of the rites of the Craft that a person can keep in their own way without a coven, without a Book and without offence to anyone. Pour a cup of something you like. Take a piece of bread or a biscuit you have baked. Go outside if you can. Say, in your own words, what you are grateful for, and whom you have to thank. Eat and drink. Pour the last of it on the ground. People have been doing something of the kind for as long as there have been people, and it does not need permission.