HOREHOUND AND THE HARD CANDY QUEST

Horehound is a wonderful herb, an unappreciated herb and one of my favorite herbs. It has numerous uses both medicinally and magickally. It is easy to grow being tolerant of many climate zones, moisture and light conditions and soil types. It is an excellent choice for a drought tolerant garden too. Although it is not native to this continent it can be found growing in the wild all over the place. You see, it was such an important herb to European settlers that they brought it with them to the New World and its inherent hardiness and adaptability allowed it to naturalize here. It is relatively inexpensive to buy and not as difficult to find as many of the herbs that witches trend towards, although in most cases you will not find it a corner grocery store; of course that will depend on your corner grocery store.

Horehound is thought to be sacred to Horus, Isis and Osiris although personally I find it most appropriate to Horus but that’s just me. Magickally it is useful for warding off negative and malicious energy, breaking spells, clearing away obstacles to inspiration, preventing theft, keeping secrets, honesty, fidelity, retention of knowledge and working with animals. With all of this going for it you’d think it would be more popular than it is.

 All herb workers have herbs that they just naturally have an affinity for and horehound is one of mine both magickally and medicinally. I love the scent and feel of the fresh leaves and I find its energy very easy to tap into and work with. I use it dried, fresh, infused and tinctured.

Medicinally it has a long history of use, back to the Romans at least, as a remedy for all sorts of coughs, sore throats and chest congestion and digestive complaints.  Sugar and honey syrups were and are at least as popular as infusions when it came to the methods of administering this soothing and healing herb which makes sense due to the fact that horehound is such a bitter herb. The syrups evolved into a hard candy or lozenge which overtime became the one of the most popular ways to partake of the medicinal properties of the herb.

Horehound candy is as much an old-fashioned treat as it is an old-fashioned remedy; one that could be found not only in drug stores but also general stores and candy shops. My father is rather fond of the dark brown sweet yet bitter confection that was definitely something that was very common in his youth. Those of you who are of my generation may have some few faint memories of the candy but few successive generations have ever tasted the candy or even seen it; especially those who grew up in large urban areas. Its taste is not one that everyone will find appealing but it is certainly a taste of times gone by. You can still find horehound candy in boutique stores seeking to capture the appeal of old-fashioned shops but in general it is not widely available. 

Seeing as I had a rather abundant harvest of horehound last autumn I decided that I would try my hand at making horehound candy. I thought it would make an excellent Yule gift for my dad and others and it would also be handy to keep about for cold and flu season. Even though I am rather proficient in the kitchen I had no experience in making hard candy. Truthfully the fact that I had never made it actually made it an even more appealing quest; something of an adventure if you will.

I started by doing some research and what I learned fairly quickly is that there are very few hard and fast rules. I searched the internet and my own collection of cookbooks and I did indeed find many, many recipes for horehound candy as well as all sorts of other hard candies. While I seldom follow any recipe exactly it is often very helpful to have a reference point to start from. I thought that there would be some basic recipe, some general guideline as to proportions either in reference to the amount of herbs to use in the infusion or to the ratio of infusion to sugar. What I found was that there was little similarity in the recipes; every recipe whether it was attributed to someone’s granny or Aunt Bessie was completely different. What I did learn from all of my research was that basically all you need is a bunch of sugar of some sort, an herbal infusion, a thermometer and some time and patience to make old-fashioned horehound candy.

All types of sugar can apparently be used either alone or in various combinations. When I say all types I do mean all types: white or brown granulated, corn syrup, molasses, honey, etc, etc. The proportions of water to fresh or dried herbs used to make the infusion were as varied as the amount and variations of the sugars in the many recipes. My first infusion attempt was way too strong and had to be diluted by half.

I include a thermometer as being necessary for this task but in truth hard candy was being made long before candy thermometers were readily available. You see the candy must be cooked to a certain temperature which is referred to as the hard crack stage to achieve the hard aspect of the finished candy and while the correct stage can be determined by dropping small amounts into a container of cold water and observing the result, but it is a lot easier to just use a thermometer; at least until a certain level of experience is obtained. You see it takes quite a bit of time to get the candy syrup to the correct stage and if I’m going to spend that much time on a project I want to have the best possible outcome. Once the correct stage is reached your next challenge will be forming the syrup into candy. Again there are various ways to achieve this; pulling and forming, molding, pouring on a slab and scoring before it gets too hard.

As it turned out, much of the process depended on my own cunning and happily it was such a great success. In fact it was such a great success that I have now created all sorts of other hard candies; candies of a more magickal nature. The thought occurred to me that if one could make hard candies for medicinal and/or confectionery purposes why not for magickal or spiritual purposes. Why not a prosperity, love or a protection candy? Why not an Isis or a Morrigan candy? Okay, maybe not a Morrigan candy, that would probably not taste to good but you get the idea. I now have recipes for magickal candy, God and Goddess candy and recipes for Sabbat candies. So many possibilities, so little time!

So the point of all this is that hopefully it illustrates that you can bring the magickal into the mundane in many, many ways. On the other hand, I hope that some of you will give horehound a try in your magickal and medicinal work; if you do I think you will be pleased.

Blessings

Raven

Raven’s Flight the Magickal Apothecary

SALT

Salt

Have you ever really thought about salt?  Good old sodium chloride, it sits on almost every dinner table, in every kitchen cabinet. But do you ever really think about it? It is so much a part of our everyday lives and it such an inexpensive commodity that many of us probably do not think that much about it. Interestingly enough, I do think about it from time to time. I sometimes ponder the many types of salt that are now available. I wonder if I should branch out and use some of the more exotic varieties in my bath salts. I like to cook so I have considered trying some of the gourmet salts that seem to be all the rage with the “foodies”. I also occasionally consider if all salt is technically sea salt; a theory put forth by a participant in one of my classes.

It is a necessary element for humans and animals alike. People who raise livestock have to provide them with salt licks and animals in the wild will seek it out from more natural sources. Just down the road from here is a place called Deer Lick; that quaint and somewhat funny name comes from the fact that the creek beds in this particular area were frequented in years past by the wild population of deer. The deer would congregate there and lick the rocks and stones to get the natural salt and other minerals that wash down from the higher elevations.

Mankind has a long history with salt; the truth is salt has played an incredibly important role in the history of humanity. We have mined, extracted, harvested, traded, savored and valued it through out our time on this planet. The oldest known salt works are some 5,000 years old in China and those of us who are Celtophiles undoubtedly know of the Hallstatt salt mines in what it is now Austria; these are but a mere 2,500 years old, give or take. Let us not forget the brilliant and brave Salt March of 1930 by Ghandi and his followers to protest the British Salt Tax. In some ways it could be said that salt has played and important part in shaping the history of human beings.

Historically we have used salt to flavor and preserve our food, to make soap, to dye cloth and to soothe and heal. Today we also use it to make glycerin, soften hard water, produce chlorine, melt ice and snow and the list goes on and on.

As witches, ceremonialists, magickal and spiritual practioners we use salt for our specific practices. Spiritually and magickally we use it to cleanse, to purify, to heal, soothe and to protect. Lots of authors and teachers are specific that we should use sea salt for our workings but there are those who claim that table salt is just as good or in truth no different. Chemically speaking salt is basically sodium chloride and depending on where the salt comes from it will also contain various other minerals or other organic constituents. Table salt is highly processed with all of the “impurities” removed and sometimes it is “iodized” to correct a deficiency on some diets. Many practitioners believe that these processes render the salt less than ideal for magickal and/or spiritual work.

Salt is very plentiful in some locales which is a good thing because as man has evolved we have found more and more uses for this abundant mineral. Interestingly enough although the acquisition of salt has definitely grown in scope the basic processes to harvest it has remained relatively unchanged. The deposits are either mined or it is harvested by flushing salt beds with water, transferring the water and dissolved salt to “beds” and then evaporating the water so as to harvest the mineral. Salt is also obtained from sea water by an evaporation process; this type is commonly referred to as Bay Salt, Sea Salt and sometimes solar salt.

Probably at no time in our history have we had so many choices when it comes to salt. Salt has been a rather precious commodity through out most if not all of human history but I dare say that never before have there been so many variations so widely available. Gone are the days when Dead Sea Salt was our most exotic choice. Today we can purchase Hawaiian Red Sea, Himalayan Pink, Dendritic, Premium Pacific Sea Salt, Celtic Grey Sea Salt, Smoked Salt, Indian Black Salt, Italian Sea Salt and the list goes on. The old standbys are naturally still available; kosher salt, table salt and of course Dead Sea salt.

Recently through an interesting series of events I acquired a large quantity of pure salt harvested from great ancient salt lakes long dried up, right here in the Southern California desert. This salt is pure, no additives, no anti-caking agents. Besides sodium chloride it contains trace amounts of other natural minerals such as calcium, magnesium and potassium (just like sea salt). This is a rock salt, slightly smaller than pea sized and it is mostly white with an occasional grayish-yellow cast. This is salt from the land we live on and while using salt from far flung lands does have a certain appeal there is something equally awesome about using local salt for some or all of our magickal work. It is inexpensive and perfect for all sorts of spiritual and magickal workings.

So, if you do find yourself thinking about salt; if you are discerning about the type of salt you use for your work I hope you try our Natural California Salt. It is inexpensive, natural and perfect for many types of magickal and spiritual work.

Salty Blessings

Raven

Raven's Flight

www.ravensflight.net