Descended from the Abruzzo, Part 2
Reconnecting to your ancestors and spiritual lineage through recipe and ritual
Nocino Time!
A few years back, I was asked to give a talk at a local herb exchange about my Italian spiritual lineage and the plants that are associated with it.
As I was preparing for the talk, I came upon information that was new to me. In parts of the Abruzzo, on June 24th, villagers celebrate St. Johns Day, the feast of San Giovanni, as part of the festivities of summer solstice. In this celebration of summer, while harvesting herbs in the height of their potency, villagers also pick 24 green walnuts from which they make a walnut liquor called Nocino.
I included this information in my talk. The next day, a friend who attended the talk called me and said, “Your ancestors really want you to make them some of that Nocino.”
At the time I was feeling overwhelmed in my life. I couldn’t conceive of taking up this task. “I don’t know how to make Nocino,” I replied. In fact, I had never even tasted it. This was not a tradition I was familiar with.
“If you are not going to make it, I will have to buy some for us to drink and offer to them,” she replied. “They really want it.”
After a while of looking, she couldn’t find any to buy and gave up trying. Then she called me again saying, “They are keeping me up at night. They really want you to make it.”
This time my excuse changed to, “I don’t know where there is a walnut tree.”
I realize now that this was a crazy thing to say. There are so many walnut trees in my town in Northern California. I was totally resisting this assignment.
A couple days later, on the walk I take almost every day in a local park near my home, toward the end of the trail, I noticed a tree with lush, bending, branches, blowing in a cool afternoon breeze. Between the delicate leaves were green walnuts.
“Are you kidding me?” I said out loud. I called my friend. “I guess I am learning how to make Nocino.”
My ancestors from the Abruzzo rarely take no for an answer.
Walnut trees and Italian witches
I located a recipe online. The next day I was back to that tree with clippers and a paper bag, collecting my 24 green walnuts.
Walnuts figure big in the story of Italian witches, the Streghe. There is a very well-known story of the walnut tree of Benevento, Italy that was famous for the witches and their rituals. They were known for dancing around the tree in their nighttime meet ups with the effigy of a snake. This honored tree was cut down by the local bishop in 662 AD. The purpose was to terminate that kind of behavior. It seemed extra poignant that this prescription was coming to me through walnuts.
You can read more about The Walnut Tree of Benevento and even find a recipe for Nocino at this link to my Ritual Goddess blog.
The seeds of a spiritual lineage
A walnut is a seed, and seeds are important for recovering rituals. Years ago, my mother gave me a chestnut. She had found it when cleaning out my aunt’s home after her death. It was in a small zip lock baggie with a note that said, Nonna carried this around in her apron pocket for many years. She would often rub it between her fingers when she was thinking. The chestnut was smoothened from this persistent rubbing.
This was the second item I was given that belonged to my great-grandmother, the Strega. The first was a large set of keys, most of them skeleton, also in a baggie with my aunt’s handwriting: Nonna’s keys. She had saved these upon my great-grandmother’s death, tucked them away somewhere special for herself. She had preserved these items as she had preserved the memories of her Nonna, the wise woman, midwife and healer. She didn’t want her to be forgotten.
I treasure that chestnut. It has a special place on one of my altars. It took me a while to remember that chestnuts are seeds. I had been handed the seed of the spiritual lineage of the Streghe in my family. Once planted, seeds grow.
Walnuts are also seeds.
Making sacred food and drink
That first year, I made the Nocino. When it was ready, 6 months later, I passed it out to family and friends along with the story and, of course, I saved some to offer to my ancestors — the ones who wanted me to make it.
Over the years, I have learned how to make many of the ancestral recipes of my father’s family from the Abruzzo. Cheese pie at Easter, zucchini and tomatoes in summer, the traditional family red sauce or sugo. I feel connected to my ancestors when I make them.
This Nocino situation had some differences: this was not only a recipe but a ritual and the prescription came from the other side.
Now, it has become a summer ritual, not only for me but for my community. I have augmented it. Here is the ritual we carry out after we have gathered our green walnuts, before we turn them into Nocino.
Ritual for calling ancestral wisdom into the walnuts for Nocino
Around the fig tree in my backyard, which we ask to stand in for the ancient walnut tree of Benevento, we each set our bowl of gathered green walnuts.
- Call in the 6 directions
- Light 6 tall candles in glass jars under the tree as we call in: the ancient walnut tree of Benevento and its sacred wisdom, the witches of Benevento, the old ways, the medicine stored in the roots in the earth, Theresa’s great-grandmother, a Strega and guide.
- We each take a minute to acknowledge that we are the survivors. That their wisdom was not lost. We invite them to join us in our celebration.
- We make all the offerings we were told to bring, one at a time, under the tree.
- We stand and circle the tree. With our rattles and bells we begin to dance around the tree, calling up the medicine into our walnuts, calling forward the memories that are stored in time. We call upon and honor the witches of the past as well as celebrate the survival of them through us, through our work.
- When we are through, we make our Nocino with our wisdom-infused walnuts.
- Once complete with making Nocino, we celebrate with food and drink
Creating a similar ritual for your own ancestors and spiritual lineage
You may not have ancestors from the Abruzzo or Italy, but you can alter this ritual to suit any other food. Many people from the southern Italian region of Napoli and the Amalfi coast would choose to make limoncello. You can carry out a similar ritual with the lemons.
For your ancestors and spiritual lineage, it could be a recipe with apples or tomatoes or peaches or chard. Perhaps, like me, it will be a food you’ve never heard of that your ancestors want you to get to know.
Carrying out the ritual will offer you a lot of information, not only intellectual. It will put you in touch with their rituals, their seasonal celebrations, and generate offerings for them that they like. This continues the cycle of reciprocity with is the underpinning of all indigenous traditions.
When you eat or drink any of what you make, remember to offer them some, and ask for what you want when you do. Remembering who you are and where you came from, having this intimate relationship with your ancestors is a great gift to them, to you and to your descendants, especially if the chain has been broken through trauma.
As the ancestors recently said to me: the spiritual lineages are stored in the earth.
Blessed be
© Theresa C. Dintino 2024
