The Way of the Cauldron

 
 
 

A JOURNEY OF Kitchen EMPOWERMENT

We started out really wanting folks on there healing journey’s to know what it feels like to be nourished and provided for, and so we set out to feed apprentices as they have never been fed before. It was delicious. It was healing. And, what we found is that those who received the most from our medicinal kitchen where the ones cooking the food, and sharing with their sisters about the farms and relationships and stories behind the process. Throughout these first few years we have heard the message again and again that kitchen empowerment is one of the greatest skills we can commit to if we wish to be of service to community, to women, to children and to others on their healing journeys. We have turned out kitchen structure inside out again and again in attempt to listen more closely to the feedback and spirit guidance and align with what is being asked of us, and are excited to introduce the new direction we have been moving in.

Medicine Mandala Collaborative Kitchen

 

In Person Trainings Include:

 

• 3 Meals per day of gluten free locally sourced, seasonal traditional nutrition

• Nourishing herbal infusions, ferments, and medicinal broths provided at every meal

Together we will take a journey towards kitchen empowerment that begins with being provided with a seasonal, medicinal ritual feast at our first gathering and ends with apprentices providing an educational healing feast for their sisters at Graduation weekend.

 

 

 

 Traditional Nutrition

 

Many mystics and seekers ask themselves after years of wild experiences, "Yeah, but what's the point?" We have found meaning, purpose and happiness in the pursuit of serving Goddess by embodying Her. We have found that in many shamanic traditions the practitioners die young, the energies they work with exact a great toll on the body. Inspired by Director Yaya Erin Rivera Merriman's personal healing journey, our Food Sadhana (daily support practice) aims to enculture an evolutionary approach to the role of Healer/Priestess/Practitioner, and we will have no martyrs for the Goddess on our team. Goddess desires that we be well and serve in joy, and on the level we desire to play on, radical self care and commitment to nourishing yourself and providing for your own very unique and specific needs as a Healer/Priestess/Practitioner is of primary importance. Being in right relationship to our food then becomes our primary practice. More than just providing apprentices with nourishing meals, we are passionate about sharing our best practices in the kitchen that create the solid foundation on which our local mystical community rests. In addition to enjoying 3 meals a day of locally sourced nutrient dense foods, we will have daily mini lessons on the medicinal properties of meals and how they relate to the seasons, Goddesses, themes, and other energies of each in person training module.

Some may simply enjoy the exquisite amount of care, creativity and love woven into our meals. Others through our time together may find their path in the kitchen, discovering the ways that growing, preparing, and sharing medicinal foods can serve as a pathway to Liberation complete unto itself. In all cases, we promise a special opportunity to look deeply at and evolve our relationship to nourishment over the course of our time together.

Sample Menu

Our seasonal and local menu is subject to change based on availability of ingredients and the intuitive, creative whims of our team of dedicated kitchen witches.

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Saturday Breakfast

  • Good morning infusion

  • Deer Bone broth

  • Papaya Kefir probiotic

  • Seasonal greens scramble with eggs from chickens raised on site

  • Grilled nopalitos with goat cheese handmade from goats raised on site by land steward Carrie Lou Arnold.

  • Lactofermented red salsa

Saturday mid morning nourishing herbal infusion:

Restorative, nervine and nutritious Oatstraw

Saturday Lunch

  • Seasonal Botanical Water

  • Squash soup

  • Almond flour Muffins

  • Cheese butter floral spread

  • Medicinal honey

  • Chopped raw veggies as garnish

  • Probiotic juice

  • Herbal ice cream

Saturday Dinner

  • Chicken Bone Broth

  • Afternoon warm horchata

  • Chicken tinga

  • Local greens salad

  • Probiotic vinaigrette

  • Salted herbal pepitas

  • Pumpkin pie with almond flour crust

Late night sleepy time infusion:

Valerian, passion flower, lemon balm 

 
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PAST Apprentices are Saying

Featured
Elena

“Stepping away from that world where the tension between seen and unseen, the acknowledged and ignored forces runs so high, and into the nourishing vessel of Elder Farm, gave November’s gathering a flavor of celebration for me, a lightness, a break, a festivity, and feast for the senses.  Being together in sisterhood, in prayer, in medicine space, was joyful and easy and I was aware of a grace that seemed to be passing too fast no matter how sincerely I endeavored to savor it.  

Profound openings came for me through the voicing my prayers inside the container of group intention and sacred space.  I recall a certain new feeling of cohesion emerging, a blurring of the lines of identity into a deeply shared experience of sisterhood, not an erasure of uniqueness but a lack of emphasis on individual personalities that was comforting to me.

As we sat gathered again around the ancestor altar I spoke my prayers aloud, offering gratitude to the shrewd survival strategies of my forebears and asking to be released now of any patterns of hiding that no longer served my soul’s highest truth, so that I can come into the world shining the light that I have to shine.”

- Elena

 

Lisa

"My body is feeling quite different since the beginning of this. I know without a doubt that it is the most important work I could possibly be doing right now...My body actually feels full of vitality. I am becoming healthier and richer on the inside."

- Lisa

Teren

“ Thank you for everything you have offered to my path this year. i purposely did not take another class i was looking at bc i thought it would be “too much”. “herbs”, i thought. “nice and gentle”, I thought. lol! little did i know that this apprenticeship would take me right to the place i was trying to avoid. because you can’t avoid it at a certain point. i’m learning this. and honestly, i can’t imagine a better set up to assist me through this transformation. this group reinforces my ability to feel safe. you guided us and gave us tools to help us create that safety for ourselves and i am so grateful for that. safety doesn’t just exist in this world. you can’t depend on others to make you feel safe. but what i’ve learned so far is that i can step deeper into my responsibility to myself and learn how to communicate and negotiate what makes me feel safe and with whom…”

- Teren

Blake

“Every plant we work with, every teacher, and herbal infusion offer an intimately new and unique depth and lesson for my soul to break down… The chakra work and exploration helped not only my own work, but has also shifted the way I work and assess clients as I am sharing breath work with.  My communication with guides and spirits has dramatically changed and I am finding it easier to clearly hear the messages and know what is being communicated.”

- Blake

Myah

" I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude for being a part of this Apprenticeship.  It is such a blessing for me to feel like I am a part of something that exactly speaks to what my soul wants to see being propagated in the world.  I feel seen, heard, supported, and understood more than I ever have in a group setting before.  The topics that are in each module really build on each other and touch a deeper part of me that inspires growth…. I have felt some definitive shifts since being introduced to Yaya’s teachings.  I feel like I now have more resources to go to when I am feeling lost.  Just the nourishment protocols alone help tremendously and I can feel the difference when I  follow them…  All of the wisdom that is being introduced to us is exactly what I am yearning for. 

It’s perfect!"

-Myah

Malika

“I am so grateful that I am a part of this group… Women in circle, healing ourselves, Sitting under the tree canopy, letting the dark creep in around us.  Nothing to be afraid of in the woods.  Doing the simple, needed, gracious work of forgiveness.  I feel aware that for hundreds of years, women weren’t allowed to sit in the woods together in this way, to make magic together, to be whole together, to work with the earth and the plants like this.  I am so grateful for the simple joy of doing this, and that we are safe here, now, to open those portals of healing together.  For being held, by each other, by the darkness, by the earth under us and tree’s canopy around us.

I don’t want to do healing work indoors anymore!  My body and spirit likes being outdoors.  I enjoy the air, the breeze, the ground under my feet, the aliveness and dynamic nature of everything; the presence needed to keep an eye out for snake and other unknowns; the remembering emerges and is beyond my mind’s ability to put into words.  It is so soothing and precious to my being to have those days out on the land.”

- Malika

 

Medicine Mandala on Instagram

Lest anyone out there fear we are suffering from the dis-ease of taking ourselves too seriously...#eyeballthemusical #funhealseverything #everythingismedicine (final project participatory performance art goodness with @forestbething )
In the forest we heal our hearts and learn to trust ourselves and others again. In the forest we face our fears and uncover that thing within us sometimes called common sense, that just knows how to be in reciprocity, how to be simultaneously interconnected, respectful, sovereign and free. The story of retreating into the forest and seeking the council of trees in times of corruption is found in Buddhism, Tantra, the African Orisa tradition, and even in Disney movies like Pocahontas who if you remember, regularly takes the council of a grandmother willow tree, and likely because of this, declines to marry the prince in favor of staying with her village and becoming a leader within the context of her own existing tribal governance. The Tantra that we have the opportunity study here during foundation year is an ancient earth honoring tradition and within it, trees are Goddesses, Grandmothers, and Guardians. They dwell at the boundary between village and the wild- in fact they ARE the barrier between the village and the wild- an important part of creating the container of safety we call civilian life. Many of us go on to practice daily in this stream, an intact lineage of Forest Yogini’s. Those who came before us where women who fled from corrupt societies, oppressive regimes, and arranged marriages in which they where treated as property within capitalist, patriarchal, and brahmanic systems, to live and practice together outside of the caste system, to be in ecstatic connection with themselves and the rest of the natural world. There are many pathways to liberation but this one has been a lifeline for us and like many of the great lineages of planet earth, was created and stewarded to see us safely through these times. Now accepting applications for 2020, link in profile. (photo by @erin_leighfrom our 2017 apprentice group) #sistersoftheoaks #medicinemandalaapprenticeship #livingthewheeloftheyear #greenmagic #greenwitch #medcinemandala #becomethemedicine
@cedar.grace Putting the finishing touches on our ritual garments for #lughnasadh2019 ( and our device tried to auto correct to “ritual farmers” which is also correct!)
Sending so much love and mid-summer blessings to this courageous first group of apprentices who are out in the community and the world sharing their own unique flavor of magic and medicine. (ritual garments by @cedargrace) #medicinemandala2018 #sistersoftheoaks #greenmagic #elementals (Photo by @erin___leigh )
It is the source of some debate whether Kombucha is appropriate for folks with gut health issues. Although the official word is that the beneficial bacteria in the drink consume all of the white sugar used to make it, those with sugar sensitivities often report that drinking kombucha causes their symptoms to flare up. For this reason, we have chosen to switch to Jun. Similar in taste and process, the beneficial bacteria in Jun consume honey instead of sugar, which is acceptable in small amounts on the gut healing diet we encourage apprentices to explore. Blessed by a year of apprentice made ferments by @forestbeth and excited to get to continue to ferment using scoby babies from the same “mother” with the next group of apprentices gathering on the land for the first time in November. (Photo by @erin___leigh )
How sweet it is to tiptoe between the baby oaks sprouting up under the skirt of the grandmother tree to harvest #mugwort as an offering to the dreams of the next group of sisters who will arrive in November to turn the wheel of the year and traverse the spiral path with us! We are so grateful for all who hear the call to come together to place individual passion, creativity and authenticity in service of each other and the earth. Interested in learning more? Visit us online (link in profile) for info about our new rolling admissions process! #greenmagic #greenwitch #elementalmagic #servantofgaia #wisewomantradition
No sting, no honey! We are honored to be learning about the ancient practice of bee venom therapy with our guest facilitator and mentor @shonagh.home If you are interested in hearing more about what’s happening here, check out our video over on our mothership account @activeculturefamily ’s IGTV this week titled “Stinging Nettle Intitiations and Bee Venom Therapy…Blessings!
Summer in the temple☀️ #farmtotemple #lughnasadh2018 #greenmagic #livingthewheeloftheyear

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BANNER IMAGES BY JAMIE STREET

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