My love affair with the cornucopia began nearly two decades ago when I came across a simple black-and-white clip art icon. Something spoke to my heart, and I saved it, though for what I wasn’t yet sure. Years later, it became the Gather logo after being transformed into a beautiful paper-cut image created by one of my favorite artists and neighbors, Alesha Fowlie. Over the years, I have grown ever more delighted by how perfectly right it is. After all, nothing says “ancestral food,” “magical cooking,” and “seasonal celebration” better than the old “horn of plenty.”

Spilling with grains,  gourds, and the fruits of the earth, this symbol of abundance and nourishment is an invitation to celebration. Presiding over harvest feasts as a symbol of thanksgiving long before the pilgrims, this revered ritual object has been blessing the land and the people with fertility, good harvest, earthly pleasure, healing, and good fortune, since time immemorial. Today, the cornucopia still adorns tables as autumnal decor, but its spiritual significance and magical power are barely remembered, never mind utilized, which is why I’m going to guide you through the mystical lore of the horn of plenty and show you how to craft some cornucopia magic of your own.

While the origins of the cornucopia  (from Latin cornu ‘horn’ and copia ‘abundance’) are shrouded in mystery, it’s most likely that it was initially a literal horn.  One of the oldest representations may be a 25,000-year-old limestone relief of a woman holding a horn. Scholars theorize the horn may have been used to receive prayers chanted or spoken into it. By the Neolithic, carved ox or cow horns appear to have been used to consecrate or bless the plants placed within. 

Horns are known as medicine containers throughout Africa and are considered to contain healing attributes. According to this study, a 500-year-old horn was discovered to contain plant compounds with a wide range of applications, “including the control of blood sugar and cholesterol levels, treatment of fevers, inflammation, and urinary tract infections. ” Two dominant compounds stimulate the production of dopamine in the brain, with the former being used to treat anxiety and plants containing the latter being used as aphrodisiacs”.

Later, the horn of plenty evolved into the long, horn-shaped woven baskets or panniers traditionally used in western Asia and Europe to hold and carry newly harvested food products. The basket was worn on the back, leaving the harvester’s hands free for picking.  In the Greco-Roman world, cornucopias in panniers were held high by fertility and harvest goddesses who brought forth growth and plant life. Goddesses bearing cornucopias include Isis, Ceres, and Demeter, who provided grain, and goddesses such as Pomona, Maia, and  Flora, who provided fruit, vegetation, and flowers. Goddesses such as Abundantia, Fortuna, or Tyche bestowed prosperity and good luck.

Whether known as the Lady of Life, She Who Provides the Fruits of the Earth, Mother Who Maketh the People to Grow,” these goddesses and their harvest festivals were considered indispensable for the prosperity of the crops, populace, and city-state.

Cornucopia images can also be found in old Celtic Europe (British Isles, France, and Germany) in countless carvings, votives, statues, and shrines dated between the 1st and 7th centuries. Goddesses like Nehannia of Germany, Rosemerta of Gaul, and the Mothers or Matrones are all depicted with baskets of grain, bread, and cornucopia. Their shrines are often near rivers, mountains, springs, and trees. Scholars generally agree that this “Cult of the Mothers” was a pagan tribute to the female divinity in nature – She Who Provides. 

I am especially inspired by my ancestors across Western and Eastern Europe, who during “Our Lady’s Thirty Days” (August 15 – September 15) gathered overflowing baskets and bouquets of grain, fruits, herbs, apples, nuts, and flowers for harvest festivals such as the Blessing of Herbs and First Fruits, a custom adopted into the Church, as the Feast of the Assumption (August 15th), to honor the Virgin Mary “Mother of Harvests”. In Central Europe, the feast itself was called “Our Lady’s Herb Day” (Kräutertag in German, Matka Boska Zielna in Polish). In Poland, harvest wreaths (wieniec), made from the straw of the last sheaf (broda), were beautifully decorated with flowers, apples, nuts, and ribbons, and blessed in churches by a priest in honor of the Holy Mother.

 Herbs picked during these days were believed to be blessed simply because they were gathered in the days of Our Lady and were dried for medicinal and magical uses throughout the year. Inspired by this harvest folklore, I have crafted many cornucopia baskets and bouquets in remembrance of the generations of my ancestors who used its magic to bless their communal feasting tables. Like them, I take a basket out into the garden, fields, and woodlands and fill it with whatever I find, including the last of the herbs and flowers, such as rosemary, thyme, nettle, wild fennel blossoms, rosehips, crabapple, and hawthorn berries.

It delights me that, in the darkening days of encroaching winter, my basket fills so quickly with bounty. This, in turn, fills me with a wonderful, warm, cozy feeling I can only describe as gratitude. The crabapples and rosemary will be used in pies and chutney, the hawthorn berries and rosehips will become a dried, fruity “cheese” to be served on charcuterie boards, the nasturtium flowers and nettles will create spicy vinegars to enrich salads, soups, and stews, and the fennel blossoms will make an anise-scented finishing salt. And so on.

But here’s the point. Before processing the ingredients, I ceremonially transform them into symbolic and literal cornucopia(s) to preside over the Thanksgiving season.  These are displayed on tables and hung from cupboard doorknobs in remembrance of the literal horns that housed prayers, plants, and medicine, the overflowing cornucopias brandished by the goddesses of fertility and good fortune, and the harvest baskets gathered by my Baltic and Slavic ancestors during the Lady’s Sacred Days.  And as the nights grow longer, darker, and the vivid reds and golds of dying vegetation fall to the ground, I see the cornucopia as a promise of the earth’s never-ending ability to provide – and I give thanks for her life-giving bounty

Studies have shown that expressing emotions of gratitude can enhance feelings of safety, optimism, joy, and pleasure, improve physical health, strengthen the immune system, increase contentment and life satisfaction, strengthen relationships, and make us feel closer and more connected to others. This is why cornucopia’s charm extends beyond decoration, because there is no better expression of thanksgiving than the old horn of plenty. And it’s why there is no better symbol for Gather Victoria. I believe when I came upon that clip art cornucopia decades ago, some archetypal chord was struck in my psyche, and I’ve been reverberating ever since.

I hope I’ve inspired you to grab a basket and get outside this harvest season to craft one of the most enduring and bountiful symbols of Mother Nature.   I believe this ritual act of Thanksgiving will not only beautify your harvest table but also raise a powerful energy of blessing for yourself and your loved ones, and by extension, your entire community.  Now that’s cornucopia magic!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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