Sowing the Seeds of the Ancient Pagans - Literally!

Since our beginnings, Shining Lakes Grove has been working to understand the practices of the ancient Indo-European pagan cultures, and recreate them within a modern context. As part of this process, we have been growing our own wheat. This variety of wheat is called "emmer wheat", and is one of the earliest known cultivated plants. The ancient Egyptians used emmer wheat to make their bread and beer. It was a staple of cultures throughout the Middle East and Europe for thousands of years, including the Indo-European cultures that our group focuses on. These days, more modern varieties of wheat have taken its place in the fields. We were fortunate enough to get a batch of emmer wheat seeds from Butser Ancient Farm in England, an Iron Age replica farm that grows ancient seed varieties.

Since the spring of 1998, one of our members has been generous enough to lend us a small patch of land on her mule farm. At our Spring Equinox rite in March, we join together to bless the seeds from the previous year. In April, we till the soil and plant the seeds, along with an offering of cream for the Nature Spirits and our river goddess Ana, and a birch branch to give protection to our crop. In August, we harvest the wheat, hopefully before the local deer can get it! We also hold our Lughnasadh festival, during which we offer the first fruits of the harvest to our tribal father god Lugh. We save the seeds from the harvest for next year's planting, and the straw is used to make our Brid Crosses at Imbolc. Eventually, we hope to have enough wheat to make our own bread and use it during our High Day rites.

We invite everyone to our Spring Equinox ritual, to join us in blessing our emmer wheat seeds. If you have any seeds or gardening tools that you would like blessed, bring them along! We will provide native wildflower seeds for everyone to take home and plant on their own land.

The rite will be held at 2 PM on March 25th, at the Friends' Meeting House, 1420 Hill St., Ann Arbor. For directions, or for more info, contact us at (734) 487-4931 or robh@cyberspace.org

Rob Henderson
Senior Druid, Shining Lakes Grove, ADF

Bibliography:

• Beer Making in Ancient Egypt (http://blavatsky.net/confirm/peb/peb1997/egyptianBeer.htm)
• Butser Ancient Farm web site (http://www.butser.org.uk/)
• Shining Lakes Grove's Spring Equinox Ritual (http://www.msen.com/~robh/slg/slgse.html)

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