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“Honeymoon, a term we are all familiar with, is a specific reference to mead. The term comes from an old English tradition that dates from the Middles Ages. Mead was drunk in great quantities at weddings, and after the ceremony nuptial couples were given a month's supply of mead--sufficient for one full cycle of the moon.”

Quote by Pamela Spence

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Mad About Mead: Nectar of the Gods

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Pamela Spence

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“Kore stood amidst the the sheaves of barley to wave Demeter over, then crouched again and poked her finger into the soil. Dark green leaves shot out in every direction, and she circled her wrist upward, raising a stalk out of the earth. She stood slowly. The plant crept toward her hand. Kore splayed her fingers wide and a purple blossom sprang from the thorny stalk. "Oh, Kore, if you grow a thistle in the barley field, someone might prick their finger." "Wait," Kore said, smiling. "Just watch." A fiery copper butterfly fluttered on the warm breeze and alighted on the blossom. Demeter smiled. "You see? I saw her wandering in the barley and made her a home. You don't mind, do you?" "My sweet, clever girl, of course I don't." Demeter hugged Kore. The butterfly folded its wings, fed and content. "My thistle won't interfere with the harvest, will it?" Kore knit her brows. "Not in the slightest." The butterfly spread its wings, sunlight catching them as they fanned. "I don't think she will be alone for long. Surely a good mate will come looking for her.”

“People throughout Hellas had built shrines of wood and living things to Kore and to her mother aeons ago, maintaining them generation after generation. Her private sanctums were always open to the sky, the sunlight, the honeybees and birds that helped her tend to the new shoots and flowers. One of Kore's favorite sacred places lay in this very clearing at the base of the oak tree. Clusters of white larkspur grew up the perfect circle of green willow shoots that served as her walls. Her ceiling was the vaulted branches and the stars wheeling above. The grass beneath her was soft, not wet with dew as it sometimes was, and strewn with rushes and violet petals upon which she made her bed.”

“The first flicker of dawn licked the eastern sky. The light grew stronger, revealing that the white larkspur had turned dark crimson overnight. Within her shrine, a new and beautiful light gray flower sprang from the ground, surrounding her. Asphodel. Kore touched the gentle flowers growing around her and shifted the coloring of her dress to a soft white, mimicking the color of the blossoms. How beautiful they were... like last night, like him, though she knew 'beautiful' was seldom applied to men, and was too soft a word for him anyway. Asphodel... she was the Maiden of the Flowers and knew that's what these were intuitively, but tried to remember where she had heard that name- and what their significance was. She had only ever seen asphodel as a gnarled dark gray weed. It was one of the few plants her mother would rip out of the fields wherever she had seen it. Kore had always trailed behind her, doing the same. She had never seen asphodel bud and and blossom. The white blooms were thin, veined with a centerline of crimson, six petals with bright filaments bursting from the center and ending in deep red anthers. They were beautiful and foreign.”