readoldthings

Day of the Moon

Monday is ruled by the Moon, and the Moon rules all those activities related to the home and domestic concerns, such as cooking and crafts, brewing, and (with Venus) gardening.

It thus provides an opportunity to talk about something I've wanted to talk about here for some time: baking bread. Oh, and one other thing, which I'll get to presently.

The Simplest Bread You Can Bake

Here is the simplest bread recipe, and the one I followed for a long time. You will need to 4 ingredients:

1. 3.5 cups flour
2. 12 oz lukewarm water
3. 1 tsp Fleischmann's bread yeast
4. 1 tsp salt

None of these has to be especially fancy. I recommend Fleischmann's bread yeast in particular because it's also good for brewing mead, but if there is something else available, use that. I like King Arthur flour, but the cheapest all-purpose flour at your grocery store will also do nicely (you can find a 5 lb bag at the Walmart up the road from me for $2.24). I do recommend getting a real salt, such as Kosher salt or Himalayan pink salt, so that you know it isn't adulterated with foreign chemicals, but, here again, it's up to you.

Then do the following:

Step 1. Add 1 tsp yeast to 12 ounces of lukewarm water.
Step 2. Mix 1 tsp salt into 3.5 cups of flour in a large mixing bowl.
Step 3. Now, add the mixture of water and yeast to the mixture of flour and salt.
Step 4. Mix it up just until

Now cover it with a clean towel, and leave it alone. For how long? In this case, overnight, and you're going to start all of this in the evening, around the time the sun goes down.

Step 5. The next day, when you wake up, check on your dough. It should have doubled in size.
Step 6. Turn the dough out onto a floured cutting board and kneed it. If you don't know how to kneed dough, you can watch a video. Or just wing it. The easiest thing to do is just to press it down until it's flat, then gather it into a ball, then press it again. After a while it will build up resistance and become harder and harder to press. That's when it's time to return it to its bowl.

By the way, yes, you can over-kneed bread. At this point you're more likely to under-kneed it, so don't worry about that. Just do a good job with it and put it back in the bowl, and cover it again with that towel.

Step 7. Let the bread set for a while longer. How long? Usually about 2-3 hours. What you want is for it to double in size. If it's cold in your house it may take a little longer.
Step 8. Now that the dough has doubled in size, turn it back out onto that cutting board and do a little more kneeding. And set your oven to 450 degrees.
Step 9. Once your oven is ready, check to see if your dough has returned to its previous size. If it hasn't, give it another 20 minutes or so. Then transfer your dough to a floured baking sheet. The one you use for cookies is fine.
Step 10. Stick the bread in the oven, and turn the temperature down to 375 degrees. Then set a timer for 42 minutes. Yes, I know, that's oddly specific.
Step 11. Take your bread out of the oven and set it on a drying rack or cutting board to cool down. Leave it alone for 30-60 minutes.
Step 12. Cut a piece of bread, add butter or jam or whatever you like (I prefer beef tallow, but that's just me), and eat it. It will taste better than any bread you have ever bought at a store.

Optional Steps

• While you pour the yeast into the water, trace a holy symbol over it such as the Sign of the Cross or the Three Rays of Light. Say words like "May this yeast be blessed."

• Before you add the salt to the flour, trace a holy symbol over it, and say something like "May this salt be granted the power of healing.

• Once your dough is made, say a prayer over it, asking an appropriate God to bless it. For example, you might trace the sign of the cross over the dough and say something like, "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I ask that this bread may be blessed, that it may bring healing to the body and soul of all who will eat of it, and call to our minds the Bread of Life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen." Or, "Hu the Mighty, Great Druid God, enlighten me through Thy initiation. In the presence of the Holy Powers of Nature I pray that this bread, formed from the gifts of the Earth Mother, may be blessed in the sign of the /|\ Three Rays of Light. May it bring healing to the body and joy to the hearts of all who eat of it." You can add another blessing while putting the bread in the oven, and, if you are part of a church which does this sort of thing, you can use it for a communion service.

• I like to set aside a part of the first piece that I cut for the spirits of the house, and to imagine that they join me when I eat the first piece.

Okay, Why Are We Talking About Bread?

I started baking bread for my family every day during 2020, when I was at home with the kids and we were trying to save money. I found that it was very easy and very cheap to make bread that tasted better than anything I'd ever gotten out of a bag at the grocery store.

If you're a serious baker, you'll notice that this recipe is extremely simple, and missing a lot of details. There's no Dutch oven, no cast iron, no pan of water in the stove;, no poolish, no proofing baskets, no sourdough starter; no pull-and-stretch technique. That's very deliberate. I've found that even with something as simple as baking bread, people will look for any excuse not to get started, and the internet provides 10,000 excuses in the form of extra steps you can take. Yes, it's true that by using a starter or a preferment you can improve the flavor of the bread. Yes, you might want a proofing basket eventually, and you might consider investing in a Dutch oven or at least cast iron pans down the road. But you don't need these things, and in general all they do at the beginning is to keep you from getting started.

A lot of things are like that. Bread making is far from the worst. Writing is the worst. If baking bread was like writing, there would be bakers' bars in trendy neighborhoods, where young people dressed up like bakers would talk about the coolest bakers in history while agonizing over their bakers' block. Most of them would never have baked anything in their lives, except for a couple of half-finished loaves back when they studied baking in college.

But baking bread is very easy. And, more than that, it's sacred. Bake a loaf of bread in the morning and share it with your family, and you will find yourself connecting to 10,000 years of human history. That simple act of mixing six ingredients: yeast and water, salt and flour, Time and Fire, is an alchemical working of great power. Through it we unite ourselves to all of the hearth goddesses and fertility gods and grain mothers that the Divine World has ever given us. Brigid and Hestia, Freyr and the Dagda, Ced and Ceres: All are with us. 

The same can be true of every craft that we undertake.

A Change In Direction

When I started this blog, the purpose was simply to talk about old books. I attempted to begin with a discussion of Plotinus's Enneads. This was a terrible idea; I'd barely started making my way through Plato and had no base from which to approach Plotinus. Reading the Enneads felt like beating my head over and over into a brick wall, and so I gave up.

But then something very unexpected happened: 2020. In March of that unforgettable year my workplace closed its doors, and so did every other employer in my field, not to reopen for some time. And so I found myself with a great deal of time on my hands-- time for which I am eternally grateful. Yes, I know how hard a year that was, and it was hard for me too. Never forget that Saturn rules difficulty and pain and struggle, and also wisdom gained through suffering. And also, as we saw recently, the Golden Age. 2020 was a year of Saturn for me, and I made the best use of it I possibly could.

For a long time I was able to update this blog almost daily. I worked my way through the writings of many ancient writers, including Seneca and others among the Stoics. Then I turned to Sun Tzu, and then to the Gospel of Matthew (a work still in progress). In late 2021 I was gripped with the need, which seemed sent from without, to write down the intuitions toward a Christian magical system that had been percolating in my mind for some time.

This is all to say, I was able to take the same approach to writing that I did to baking.

I've been both surprised and delighted with the support this little blog has received. It's not just the donations to my paypal links or the support that many here have given to my Etsy shop, though I'm grateful for all of that. Even better, though, are the comments that I receive both here and privately. The people who read this blog are very smart and very fun to talk with. More than that, I've never had a single troll or negative comment here. Even when someone disagrees with me-- which is not something I mind, by the way-- they do so respectfully, and in a way that shows that they've thought through the issues under discussion.

Now, since April of last year I've been working full time again, and that's made updating this blog as often as I'd like more difficult. And more than that, I find myself wanting to expand in different directions. I want to go into more detail on Astrology and the way that I approach that practice, which I think is different from anyone else. I want to talk about politics, but not form the usual angle, since I dislike the Democratic and Republican parties, the oppositions within those parties, and all of our third parties. And there are other things I'd like to talk about, too-- I have entire books wholly or partially written on topics including Christian magic, Druidic spirituality and practice, self-improvement, and classical Hermeticism, and it's past time for these to see the light of day. Continuing with the original theme of this blog, I plan to do a serious collective reading of Plato, including the Republic and the Iamblichean sequence of dialogues. I also want to start incorporating audio or video discussions. I like writing, but the truth is, I like talking more. 

In order to do all that, I'm going to need a new format, and a new way of structuring things. I'm going to keep this Dreamwidth journal. In fact it's going to be updated more often now. But I'm going to start working with other platforms soon, that will allow me an expanded range of options. If that sounds interesting, stay tuned!