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The Red Meal (Housle)

The Red Meal, is a term used by certain groups to describe an offering of blessed food- usually bread and wine- taken between brethren, the Gods and the Ancestors. The purpose is both as an offering and a tool to bring the Witch closer to the otherworld through the shared meal.

The breaking of bread symbolizes the rending of flesh, while the moistening the bread with the wine represents the blood issuing forth from the flesh. Its consumption is an expression of the exchange of spiritual essences with the God or Ancestors with whom the meal is shared.

First ask the Witchfather to bless a small pot or bowl of water, making it “full of grace and a road of the unseen powers”, and then anoint yourself with it, and sprinkle it around your area in the same manner that you walked it.

Then light a lamp or candle or fire, asking the Secret Presence and Witchmother to make it “a powerful lamp and light to what is seen and unseen, and a great door to the otherness”.

Ring the bell- ringing its sound to the ears of the powers you are sharing the Red Meal with. Then say the blessing for the bread, with your left hand held over it:

Here is bread, the life of the Earth. Blessed to give us life and strength. I consecrate it in the name of [NAME]. With my left hand I bless it, and with my left hand I shall eat it.

Ring the bell again, and say, for the Wine, while lifting the cup:

Here is wine, filling the cup with abundance. I consecrate it in the name of [NAME]. With my left hand I lift it, and with my left hand I shall drink it.

Holding the cup in your left hand still, bring it near your lips, and say:

I drink of this cup in my Lady’s name. She shall gather me home again.

Then drink a little. Everyone who shares from the cup should say the same, holding the cup with their left hand, before they drink.

After you (or everyone gathered) has shared from the cup, everyone should eat a piece of the bread- tear or cut it apart, making enough pieces for everyone. As you bring the piece of bread, held with your left hand, near your lips, you should say:

I eat this bread in the unknown name, for fear and care, and want of Him.

Then eat.

The rest of the wine should be poured into the same bowl or dish containing the remains of the bread, mixing the two together, and each person who is at the gathering should dip their finger in the mixture and anoint their head with it. If the area that the Red Meal is being performed in needs to be consecrated or blessed, the wine inside the bowl can be sprinkled around it, and objects can likewise be blessed with the same sprinkling.

When that is done, the bowl with the remainder of the bread and wine should be held up by the person leading the Red Meal. They then say the Declaration of Giving:

As some is taken, so is this given, by the sons and daughters of the family of the Old Faith. I give it to the Ground (1), I give it to the Pale People below (2), That above and below will become one (3). For what is taken is truly given, and what is given is truly taken. The day and night are wed, as the living and the dead. Here is shown a mystery.

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