Beans for Dead People, pt. 1
Spooky season is upon us and though the AC is on full blast right now, it’s starting to, sort of…almost, feel like Fall. Tomatoes are waning and soon the reign of hard squashes and citrus (tequila everywhere rejoices) will be upon us. Until then, it’s time to eat the last of the sungolds and pile Trader Joe’s pumpkins on the front porch in hopes they won’t rot before Halloween.
I’m all for this month’s commercialized spooky stuff (Hocus Pocus is a canon event worth returning to year after year), but I try to take time for the real magic this season holds too— the diminishing light, the thinning veil, the quiet, the vulnerability, the deaths and transformations. In an effort to hold these juxtaposing magics at the same time, on October 31st, I celebrate Halloween and Samhain (pronounced Saw-win). Halloween, because candy is good and costumes are fun, not to mention the camaraderie around things grim and gory. Samhain, for the rituals and connection to the ancestral plane.
With kids in the mix, the Halloween portion of the evening is fairly chaotic and predictable: dress up, trick or treating and then 2 hours of negotiating how much candy can be eaten before bedtime (although apparently there’s no such thing as a sugar rush…so, gorge on babes). The Samhain stuff is slightly more involved: Collect plants, leaves, and fruits for an altar. Cleanse the space. Cook something that takes time (Beans enters the chat). Set the table. Light the candles. Present a small offering to the Forest Mother (Baba Yaga fans, please stand up). Finally, plate the dinner and welcome the dead; this dinner is not meant for the living. In this house, October 31st is Halloween and Samhain, but it’s also The Night of Three Dinners— one for picky children, one for my partner and I, and one for our otherworldly family and friends.
I am a witch. Seeing the word written out here makes me uncomfortable, not because it’s secret or shameful but because my beliefs are deeply personal and mostly practiced in solitude. In reality witch is just a generalized label for tuning into the rhythm of the natural world, exploring a non-linear/decolonized concept of time, and practicing ancestral traditions (which in my case is a commingling of Sicilian folk magic and Jewish mysticism with undercurrents of California Girl Does Astrology).
All in all the craft takes a number of forms— names are written and kept in the freezer should I need to freeze someone out, string magic for ailments, amulets and talismans for protection and luck, working with the moon, herbs, and candles for cleansing bad vibes/endings + creating openings for new beginnings. But the ritual I return to, everyday, that carries the deepest transformative power I know, is cooking. Preparing a meal with seasonal offerings and care for quality (and beauty!) is a spell. Feeding ourselves (and loved ones) something to savor is a spell. A lit candle, a centerpiece, the good napkins, filled cups — all bits of magic.
For the past handful of years, for Samhain and its thinning veil, I have made beans for our departed loved ones. The number of settings at the table grows each time, leaving me to wonder how I’ll manage to fit everyone 20 years down the road, but I guess that’s later me’s problem. Right now, we have 11 guests, with the addition of my beloved Gram who exited this world last spring.
When I was a kid my mom worked a second job at night, so most Fridays I’d stay over at my grandparents’. Often my Gram’s dinner parties would fall on the same night. Her dining room, at the time, was near the fireplace in the front of the house. Mismatched desert glassware, collected hand-painted English plates, tarnished silver cutlery, and linen napkins + their rings, made from bone, adorned the table. The lights were never on, just the fire and candles, enough to give everything and everyone that good-feeling warm glow.
There was something so uncomplicated about her gatherings. White wine, Jameson, or berry flavored sparkling water were the beverage options, never cocktails. Dinner was almost always a pot of potato leek soup with homemade bread (winter) or make your own tacos (all other seasons). After dinner I liked to sit under her big wooden table, stare at the fire, and listen to the conversations. My grandparents, Stevie and Billy, had lived many lives in one and the company they kept was an unconventional bunch of cowboys, homesteaders, yogis, revolutionaries, artists, old hippies, environmentalists, and even a few psychics. The stories were never dull, and the guests only added to the lore of my family’s history and eccentricities.
I like to think, with my grandparents in attendance at the Samhain party this year, that the conversation will be…spirited. That a story or two, from my time under the table, will be retold over a plate of beans, white wine, Jameson, and berry flavored sparkling water.
Usually the dead people beans are freestyle, it is The Night of Three Dinners after all. But this year, with my two favorite people in tow, I want to make something a little more special, something that brings more ancestral magic into one pot.
So, what’s on the ingredient list?
Beans ~ although I’m sure there’s plenty of folk magic around beans, I don’t know any. Beans are here because this is FRANK and because they’re a powerful player in my rituals, they are slow and simple and seem like nothing significant and then they are suddenly transformed and so are we.
Garlic ~ Jews (and even Sicilians) have beheld garlic as a cure-all since beginning times. It is so deeply treasured in our culture as a protective blessing, it’s even the subject of the first Hebrew sonnet.*
Beyond romantic musings, garlic is an ancient protector:
Hung in windows to keep the plague away (something to consider bringing back if you have school-age children in the house).
Around the neck to ward off evil.
Under a pillow, sewn into clothing, inside a pocket, handkerchief, or a bulsika (little sack) with salt, a piece of amber, or a blue bead to keep children and babies safe.
Prepared ritualistically and eaten or strung onto blue rope to remove evil eye.
Fussy baby? There may be impure forces at work, simply bathe the little one “in a stock made from onions, garlic, and a comb” and pour out at a crossroads afterwards.
Eat a warmed clove to renew sexual power.
Beware the garlic (or onion!) that’s been peeled and left out, it could have been exposed to “unclean forces” in the night and may result in spiritual harm or even death.
I mean garlic…what range, what power!
Chili Pepper ~ Folk magic everywhere reveres the amulet as a mode of good fortune and protection. The most powerful of these in Sicilian and Italian traditions is the Corno or Cornicello, a large red horn usually seen hanging from rearview mirrors or as a hornlet around the neck (anyone remember the jewelry of the hairy chested men of The Sopranos? That’s the horn) . Women don’t often wear cornicello so it became common for them to string dried corno di capra, “goat horn” peppers around their necks or in the home as a talisman. The peppers are their own potent magic. A dried pepper in a handbag as a guardian against evil eye, in the kitchen for protection, or crushed up, fried, and sprinkled on food for good luck.
Rosemary ~ Sicilian witches believed Rosemary to be the herb of memory. Used in past life recovery rituals, in death rites, and to uncover and embolden our threads to the past.
Leeks ~ A nod to the magic that was my Gram and her potato leek soup✨
Recipe and documentation to come.
*From the Hungry, Praise
I gaze on manna and on quail,
but voices warn, "Approach not here";
the banquet now is but a dream bereft the grandeur of my soul.
For heart's redeemer is the onion, onion, garlic, leek, my peace, upon my head fit coronal, and for my soul-ills, unction.
Garlic is earth's stag and blossom,
Grace did bear him, Glory robed him, over him -the Great Bear and her sons.
And wheel in wheel, like heaven's spheres, the onion's skin; the leek, Elisha's wand. in wondrous miracles.
Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome (Manoello), 1260-c.1328
Beautifully written friend ❤️ love this so much!