Great and Good - Honey
The Magick of Honey
Honey is a pantry staple for most people, but especially the witch. Not only is honey a heavenly culinary sweetener, it is an excellent household remedy as well. Honey disinfects wound, soothes coughs, aids indigestion, insomnia, reduces hay fever and calms the restless spirit.
I want to share with you all the rich and delicious ways I use honey in both my herbalism and magical practice. At the very bottom of this post, I have included printable grimoire pages for all three of the recipes shared here.
Honey Mead
Let’s start with honey mead, my favorite pre-ritual beverage. Mead is one of the oldest drinks known to humankind. The drink, popular with Greeks, Romans, and the Angle-Saxons combines honey, water, and brewers yeast. It was drunk after Norse weddings and is where the word “honeymoon” comes from. Honey mead is quite easy to make, but requires a long period of fermentation and aging. Every year I make my own mead using wildflower honey from a local farm.
To Make Your Own Honey Mead, You Will Need
4-5 lbs of local honey
2 lemons juiced
2 oranges juiced
Instructions to Make Mead
Mix the honey with one gallon of filtered water in a large pan, warming it over low heat until the honey has dissolved completely. Be very careful to keep the heat as low as possible in this process.
Add the lemon and orange juice to the honey and water mixture. Allow to cool. Yeast cannot survive over 110 degrees, so add it too your honey mixture when it reaches about 90 degrees.
Mix in the yeast, stirring well.
Using the funnel and strainer, pour the liquid into a demijohn. Use an airlock seal attachment.
Leave the mead in a warm, dark location to ferment. The mead will begin to ferment within about 48 hours. Fermentation is complete when the mead is no longer bubbling through the airlock. This takes anywhere from 1-3 months typically. The longer you allow the mead to ferment, the more sugar the yeast are eating and the drier and more alcoholic your finished mead will taste.
Before filtering, it is important to allow any sediment to sink to the bottom of the demijohn. I like to do this by placing the demijohn in the refrigerator overnight.
When fermentation is complete, siphon the mead into sterilized bottles and lay them down to ferment for another 6-12 months to mature. This aging time helps develop the rich honey flavors of your mead. But I encourage you to try a glass at this stage in the process, its delicious already!
As you gain experience you can also experiment with different fruit juices, herbal infusions, and spice blends to enhance the rich flavors of your mead. This is a shockingly easy beverage to make. Enjoy it prior to your ritual work, or bring it to your next sabbat gathering.
You can also buy a self contained mead making kit that comes with almost everything you will need to craft your own honey mead. The kit kit comes with all of the supplies you need to homebrew mead at home: 1 gallon Glass Carboy, Airlock, Rubber Stopper, Racking Cane & Tip, Transfer Tubing & Tip, Funnel, Yeast, Yeast Nutrients, Sanitizer, and Mead Making Guide.
Infused Honeys
What better time than in the weeks leading up to February and Valentine’s Day to make an infused honey to share as a gift with loved ones. Below is a recipe for Vanilla Rose Honey. Package it up in a special jar or bottle, tied with a ribbon. With ingredients traditionally known for their associations with romance and love, this simple infused honey is sure to melt their heart.
Vanilla Rose Honey
Ingredients
2 TBPS organic rose petals, ground to a fine powder
1 vanilla bean
1 cup local, raw honey
Instructions to Make Vanilla Rose Honey
Slice open the vanilla bean and scrape along the insides of each half, collecting all the little black vanilla seeds.
Mix the honey, vanilla, and ground rose petals.
Transfer to a jar, or a couple small jars, securing the lid. Label.
Place in a warm, dark place and let infuse 1-4 weeks before enjoying in tea, on toast, drizzled over a special desert, or straight off the spoon. Use this honey in love and romance based magick and glamor magick.
There are dozens of delicious and useful variations of infused honey. Experiment and don’t be afraid to try ingredients like garlic!
If you really want to master the art of working with honey to create delicious and magical concoctions, check out the online herbalism course, Basic Witchy Brews.
Are you intimidated by the idea of making your own infused honeys or fermenting with honey? Or maybe you would like to create safe and family friendly cough syrups? Creating honey based herbal recipes where the herbs work well together is a craft and useful not only in day to day life, but also as a part off our witchy rituals. Learn how to bring herbalism into your witchy lifestyle.
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Final thoughts and a favorite honey recipe
Here is one of my favorite beauty recipes using honey. This gently foaming face wash is mild enough for most skin types and the green tea is cooling and mildly astringent. I love using this face wash after long, hot hours working in the garden. Enjoy!
Refreshing Honey Green Tea Face Wash
Ingredients:
6. TBSP local, raw honey
6 TBSP almond oil
6 TBSP liquid Castile soap, unscented
1 tsp matcha powder
5-10 drops bitter orange essential oil
Instructions:
Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and stir until fully combined. Add the essential oil slowly to a desired strength, you don’t want to make this overwhelmingly scented.
Store in a glass jar or pump bottle. If the mixture is a little too thick, ass a bit more of the Castile soap.
When using, gently message into the skin and allow to sit for 1-2 minutes before rinsing off with warm water.
This gently foaming cleanser will last several weeks and can be used on all parts of the body. Consider this a staple of your glamour rituals and try mixing up the essential oil based on mood, intention and season.
As you sip your honey mead, enjoy rose and vanilla infused honey over vanilla ice cream, or pamper yourself with a homemade honey based cleanse be sure to share the love and knowledge you have learned here at Wind Moon Magick.
Brush up on and build confidence in your herbal spell crafting knowledge with the Complete Basic Witchy Brews courses which includes all three units and nine lessons. Now available as part of The Inner Circle Membership.
Never again worry about the safety of efficacy of your herbal workings.
