• Clean up a beach then do a ritual to connect with the elemental spirits and animal spirits of the area. Follow this with a yummy vegan potluck.
• Do a volunteer workday at an animal sanctuary, followed by a ritual to connect to the spirits of farmed animals, and then of course also follow this with a yummy vegan potluck!
• Do a local clothing-swap so that members of your community get what they need in a greener way. Spread the word about veganism with pamphlets, a vegan bake sale, etc.
• Have a pet food drive at public rituals and donate it to local food pantries and/or animal shelters and sanctuaries in the name of your group. This builds your community relations as pagans.
I was laughing as I made this list about how central food is to paganism, which of course fits right into a vegan dietary and activist lifestyle. This made me think about the concept of the kitchen witch.
There's a big trend toward "kitchen witchery" right now and it couldn't fit better with vegan paganism if we tried. Cooking and meal planning are such huge necessities for vegans, especially in rural areas. Seeing food prep as "alchemy" and a magickal practice can really enrich our path.
I think we tend to devalue kitchen work as "mundane" instead of magickal...at least I sometimes have. Yet when you think about it, most of the craft has always been making use of mundane tools and daily realities with a deliberate, magickal intent. The broom and cauldron, the knife were common household items but became symbols of craft.
"Alchemy" is defined as:
a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination (Oxford Dictionary online)
So as vegan pagans it can be fun to explore how our making of a healthy recipe that sustains ourselves and our friends/family is actual "magick" - no different than following a recipe in a book of shadows to make a potion or perform a spell.
The current (Spring 2012) issue of Circle Sanctuary Magazine (from which I borrowed this notion of alchemy) is all about Kitchen Witchery and I found it a fun read. It can be downloaded for $5 if you are interested:
http://www.circlesanctuary.org/store/
