Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen (2 page)

Part One

the magic in
your kitchen

Chapter One

Food Power!

T
he woman bent over the stone hearth, adding twisted branches to the embers that glowed behind the and-irons. Once they'd sprung into flickering life, she stepped outside to pump water into the old iron pot.

She returned to her house and placed the heavy cauldron directly over the fire, positioning its three long legs evenly around the blaze.

As the water warmed, she carved a small heart on to a beeswax candle, placed it in a pewter holder on the kitchen table, and lit its wick. She uncovered the baskets of strawberries that she had gathered that morning. Removing one, she placed it on the cutting board.

“Love . . . for . . . me,” she murmured.

Working slowly and deliberately, she transferred the luscious fruits to the board, placing them in a pattern. She soon had created a small heart fashioned of strawberries.

The woman made another heart around the first, then another and another, until her supply of strawberries was exhausted. She smiled and chopped the strawberries, imagining what her life would be like once she'd met a man.

While waiting for the water to boil, she took an apple from a string hung from the ceiling. She carefully carved a heart into its peel with a white-handled knife, saying:

“Love for me!”

The woman stared at the apple, smiled, and bit into the fruit. The sweetness refreshed her. She slowly ate the apple, biting clockwise around the fruit from where she'd first penetrated it, slowly consuming the heart.

Later, the woman rose from her spinning and checked the pot. It was nearly boiling. She took the cutting board to the open-faced hearth and, using the white-handled knife, slid the chopped strawberries into the rustling water. As the fruit dropped into the cauldron, she said:

“Love for me!”

The cake of sugar had sat undisturbed in its ceramic pot for three months, but now was the time. The woman gently added it to the simmering, fruit-filled cauldron. It absorbed the water and melted.

She sat beside the fire and took up a spoon made of cherry wood. Slowly stirring, and moving the spoon in the direction of the sun, the woman cooked her strawberry jam. As it boiled, she said, over and over again in a voice barely audible above the crackling wood and the bubbling water:

“Love for me!”

The practice of folk magic
†
utilizes a variety of tools to empower simple rituals. These tools include visualization, candles, colors, words, affirmations, herbs, essential oils, stones, and metals. Other tools, fashioned by our hands, are also used, but these are merely power-directors. They contain little energy save that which is provided by the magician.

Another magical tool is at our disposal, a tool that contains specific energies which we can use to create great changes in our lives. This tool is all around us. We encounter it every day without realizing the potential for change that exists within it; without knowing that, with a few simple actions and a visualization or two, this tool can be as powerful as the rarest stone or the costliest sword.

What is this untapped source of power?

Food.

That's right, food. The oatmeal you had for breakfast, your salad-and-seafood lunch, even the chocolate ice cream that topped off your evening meal, are all potent magical tools.

This isn't a new idea. From antiquity, humans have honored food as the sustainer of all life, a gift from the unseen deities who graciously provided it. Food played an important role in religious rituals for most cultures of the Earth as they entered the earliest stages of civilization. Its essence was offered up to the deities that watched overhead, while its physical portion, if not burned, was shared by the priestesses and priests. Food became connected with rites of passage such as birth, puberty, initiation into mystical and social groups, marriage, childbirth, maturity, and death.

Not only was food linked with all early religions; it was also understood to possess a nonphysical energy. Different types of food were known to contain different types of energy. Certain foods were eaten for physical strength, for success in battle, for easy childbirth, for health, sex, prosperity, and fertility.

Though food magic was born in an earlier age, it hasn't died out. Foods are used in magic in both the East and West, though the rationale for including them may have changed. Birthday cakes are an example. Most birthday cakes contain iced wishes of good luck. Why should we eat words? Originally, the words were thought to contain the energies associated with them. So the birthday celebrant was believed to enjoy both the cake and the energy of the words. Birthday cakes are a contemporary form of food magic, whether or not those who perpetuate this ritual are aware of it.

While food magic has suffered from neglect in most of the Western world (outside of religious connections), there are many places where food is still viewed as a tool of personal transformation. In Japan and China, specific foods are eaten to ensure long life, health, love, even a passing grade on an examination. Such rituals have continued for 2,000 to 3,000 years because they are effective.

In my twenty-year excursion into the realm of magic, I've realized that no part of our lives is divorced from its power. I began researching the magical uses of food about seventeen years ago, when I was struck with the knowledge that it, too, was a tool of magic and could be used to create positive, needed change.

Many of my peers expressed disbelief when I first explained the premise of this book. Locked into one particular viewpoint concerning magic, they couldn't grasp the simple idea that food itself could be a force for magical change. Most of them agreed that herbs contain energies. All right, I said. If herbs are properly chosen and used, the magician can release their energies to manifest a specific change. Right? Correct, they said. Well, herbs are plants. Plants are food. And if food is properly chosen and used, couldn't the magician release its energies for magical purposes?

Of course they could, and they do. Doesn't it make sense that the rosemary a magician burns during a love ceremony could be used in other magical ways—in cooking, perhaps? Since lemons have been used for centuries in purifying rituals, can't we bake a lemon pie and internalize its cleansing energies?

This is the magic of food.

Both familiar and strange dishes can be found on these pages. Their magical energies are clearly stated. Where needed, directions for preparation are also given. I've included recipes where I felt they were appropriate, though you've probably prepared, or at least eaten, most of these dishes.

Every meal and every snack offers us a chance to change ourselves and our world. We can empower our lives with the energies of food. With knowledge and a few short rituals, we can spark the powers naturally inherent in food, transforming them into edible versions of the stones, woods, and metals used by magicians.

We must eat to live. Similarly, we must take control of our lives to be truly happy. The tools for doing just this are in your cupboards, in your refrigerator, and on your kitchen table.

Turn the page, and discover the magic that awaits!

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Chapter Two

Magic

S
ome words are necessary here regarding the practices described in this book. This information is vital to the correct practice of food magic.

“Magic is supernatural.”
“Magic is evil.”
“Magic is dangerous.”
“Magic is illusion.”

These statements, all false, have been passed down to us by earlier generations of nonpractitioners. Only those who haven't worked magic believe these ideas to be true. All of the statements have also been made about many other practices in earlier times: mathematics, chemistry, psy
chology, psychics, astronomy, and surgery. These and many
other arts and sciences have been pushed from the darkness that lurks behind such statements into the light. They are no longer considered to be supernatural, evil, too dangerous, or illusionary.

At least two aspects of our lives haven't yet been ushered into this august group:
magic
and the
religious experience.
Hardline scientists and those sharing their worldview lump these two together because, to them, they're fantasies with no basis in fact. Magic, to them, can't possibly be successful, because there are no known laws governing the mechanism at work in magic, and no known force that could empower it. They often view the religious experience with a similar mixture of amuse-ment and contempt.

Unfortunately (for these scoffers, that is), magic works, and the religious experience does exist. Telling an individual who has established a personal relationship with deity that deity doesn't exist will produce predictable results. The same is true of magicians:
they don't
believe
that magic is effective; they
know
that it is.

The basis of magic is power. Though magicians have used it for thousands of years, we still don't know exactly what “power” is. But we do know how to work with it.

Magic is the movement of natural but subtle energies to manifest needed change. These energies exist within ourselves, within our world, and within all natural objects on it. These energies, whether in avocados or in our own bodies, share a common source, even if their specific manifestations are quite different. What is this common source? Each religion has given it a different name
.

Three types of energy are used in magic. These are
personal power,
the energy that our bodies possess;
earth power,
that which resides within our planet and within plants, stones, water, fire, the atmosphere, and animals; and
divine power,
which has not yet been brought to Earth in specific forms.

Magic always utilizes personal power. In folk magic, Earth power is used as well: the magician arouses (or awakens) her or his own power through visualization or physical exertion. Then Earth power (the energy that resides within natural objects) is awakened through visualization. Visualization (the process of creating images in the mind) fine tunes these energies, altering them in order to make them useful for a specific purpose. Once this has been accomplished, and it is easily done, the magician blends the two types of energies. This is usually done through visualization, but there are other techniques available. Food magic is unique in offering a very natural method of uniting these two energies.

For example: Marjorie wants to increase her income. She's working hard at her job and brings home a regular paycheck, but she can't seem to get ahead of her bills. She has a need: more money.

Being familiar with food magic, she decides to add one money-energizing food to each of her meals. She checks part three of this book and comes up with three foods for the first day: oatmeal for breakfast, a peanut butter-and-grape jelly sandwich for lunch, and fresh tomatoes for dinner. This won't be all that she'll eat, of course; Marjorie will simply include these foods in her meals.

The next morning, Marjorie lights a green candle in the kitchen. As the wick catches the flame and burns, Marjorie sees her self free from financial strain. She visualizes herself paying her bills on time and enjoying the use of more money. Marjorie doesn't hope that this happens—she sees it as if it has already occurred.

She continues to visualize as she pours water into a glass pot and measures the oatmeal. Once the measuring cup is full, she sets it on the kitchen counter and places her hands on either side of it. Marjorie visualizes as strongly as she can. She then adds the oatmeal to the water and cooks it as usual.

As she's waiting, Marjorie sections a grapefruit and pours a glass of low-fat milk. These foods aren't related to her magical need; they simply provide nourishment.

When the oatmeal has cooked, she moves the green candle to the kitchen table, spoons the cooked cereal into a bowl, pours a dab of maple syrup over it (another money food, she thinks), and looks down into the oatmeal. She may say this before she eats:

“Oats of prosperity and gain,
lift away my financial pain.
I'm flooded with prosperity;
This is my will, so mote it be!”

Marjorie may also not say anything, but simply renew her visualization. Then she finally eats the oatmeal. With every hot bite she feels money energy pouring into her body. She also senses her body responding, welcoming both the nourishing food and its prosperous energy.

Marjorie pinches out the candle flame and returns the taper to a kitchen drawer until her next magical meal. She repeats the same ritual for at least one food per meal. Though she'll have the peanut butter and jelly sandwich at work, she'll prepare it with the same care and visualization, and will eat it in the same way during her lunch break.

As she wipes her lips, she decides to add money foods to her meals for at least a week to give the magic time to do its work.

So that's an example. What exactly did Marjorie do?

—She recognized that she had a problem.

—She found the tools (foods) that could help her solve it.

—She tuned her own personal power to a prosperous pitch through visualization.

—She also used visualization to attune the earth power contained within the oats.

—She used a short, rhymed chant to strengthen her resolve and her visualization.

—She moved the prosperous energy that resided within the oats into her body by eating them.

The green candle that she lit is a physical manifestation of the change that she wished to make: green is an ancient symbol of growth, prosperity, and abundance. In our modern world, it is also a color of money and of the things that money can bring us.

Folk magicians say that burning a candle releases energy into the surrounding area. The type of energy is determined by the color of the candle. By lighting the green candle, Marjorie added extra money-attracting energy to her ritual. The candle isn't necessary, but it can be used if desired.

Visualization is important in any type of magic. Most of us can visualize what we've already seen quite well. Close your eyes for a minute or two, and see in your mind's eye a picture of a favorite food, your pet, or your next-door neighbor. Don't just think about these things; try to see them as if you were actually looking at them.

In magic, we use visualization to create images of the change that we've decided to make. It wouldn't have helped Marjorie to visualize stacks of unpaid bills, to see herself scrounging in her purse for her last few pennies, or to picture being thrown out of her apartment. These are symptoms of her problem,
and problems are never visualized.

Instead, the solution to the problem and the outcome of the magical ritual is visualized. This is why Marjorie saw herself paying her bills and enjoying extra money. This isn't positive thinking, though that does play a part. Magical visualization is actually positive
imagining.

On a subtle (but real) level, images created and sustained in the human mind affect us as well as objects around us. In visualizing, our heroine was setting both Marjorie-energies and oat-energies into motion and giving them purpose. The final step was introducing those energies into herself, which she accomplished by eating the oatmeal at breakfast.

Visualization is the most advanced magical technique necessary for the successful practice of food magic. Many good books are available on the subject. Read them if you feel you need help in this matter
‡
, or attend a class if one is held nearby.

This is food magic. It consists of choosing foods, cooking or preparing them with a purpose, and eating them. Since we all have to eat to survive, why shouldn't we make our meals more than nourishment rituals?

Consider again the four statements that opened this chapter. Judging from the example I've given, it's obvious that the energies involved in magic aren't supernatural. On the contrary, they're the energies of food and our own bodies—and of life itself.

Magic certainly isn't evil, except to a minority of folks who, for religious reasons, have decided that it is. These same folks often consider exercise, psychological analysis, self-improvement, and many other aspects of personal growth to be evil as well. Though their bias is clear, it's meaningless to those who don't accept their religious views.

Is magic dangerous? No more dangerous than any other part of life, from taking a shower to using a ladder. The idea that this ancient practice is dangerous stems from the concept that “magic is evil.” Magicians don't contact demonic energies, perform sacrifices, or worship fallen angels (
see
chapter 22
).

The fourth statement, that magic is illusion, is also false. This idea is accepted by most of those who haven't practiced it and who don't belong to a fundamentalist religious group. It is difficult or impossible to prove to these cynics that magic is effective precisely because magic utilizes energies that these cynics haven't yet fully investigated.

Still, the effects can be seen. Magic doesn't produce miracles; it produces needed changes. Disbelievers usually discount the fruits of magic as coincidence, as accidents, or as pure psychology. These three explanations are quite handy, but if magic produces the desired results time and time again, and if its practitioners find within its simple rituals ways of improving the quality of their lives, then it isn't illusion, no matter what others may say.

The only way you can discover this is by practicing it. Don't believe that magic works. Try it, so that you'll know that it does.

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