Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen (14 page)

It takes 900,000 of the tiny black seeds to make one pound.
71

Magical uses:
Though abuse of the latex extracted from ripening poppy seed pods (which is used to create opium, morphine, and heroin, among other drugs) continues, black poppy seeds are standard culinary and magical substances. Since the latex never reaches the seeds, they're neither illegal or narcotic.

If physical fertility is a concern, eat poppy-seed buns or other poppy-flavored foods with visualization. For love, add the tiny, round seeds to your favorite love-inducing foods. Or make a poppy-seed cake.

Rose

(Rosa
spp.)

Planet:
Venus

Element:
Water

Energies:
Love, happiness, psychic awareness

Lore:
In India, a few wandering tribes of mystics are said to live solely on roses, abstaining from all other foods except the queen of flowers.
15
Roses have been eaten for thousands of years, and rose water is still an important part of Middle Eastern cooking.

Magical uses:
Eat roses as a part of love diets. For a tasty treat, fresh rose petals can be sprinkled onto vanilla ice cream. Or, add rose water to dishes such as whipped cream, apple pie, and other appropriate foods. Rose water is available in gourmet cooking shops and a few grocery stores. Make sure that it is genuine rose water, not an artificially scented water.

Roses can also be eaten to induce happiness. Crystallized roses are fine for this purpose. Eat rose-flavored foods for psychic awareness.

Never eat flowers that have been sprayed with pesticides or that show insect damage! Check before you munch.

Rosemary

(Rosemarinus officinalis)

Planet:
Sun

Element:
Fire

Energies:
Protection, conscious mind, healing, love

Lore:
Rosemary, which thrives to this day on Mediterranean shores, was sacred to Venus and to many other goddesses. It was considered the flower of Mount Olympus. Rosemary was used in many ancient religious and magical ceremonies.

Magical uses:
Add rosemary to protective foods, especially those utilizing tomatoes. Drink the tea or use in dishes designed to increase mental alertness and the ability to think clearly. If you're having trouble following a recipe, smell fresh rosemary.

Rosemary is also useful in diets designed to maintain good health and to stimulate the body's natural healing abilities. This tasty herb is also added to a variety of love-inducing foods.

Saffron

(Crocus sativus)

Planet:
Sun

Element:
Fire

Energies:
Happiness, spirituality

Lore:
In the ancient world, saffron was a sacred flower. Phoenicians baked saffron-flavored crescent cakes in honor of Ashtoreth. The tiny red inner portions (stigmas) of the flowers were used to dye garments and to flavor foods for the tables of the very rich.

Today, saffron is still the most expensive spice traded. Each flower produces only three stigmas, and it takes 13,000 of them to make up an ounce of the spice
.71
Fortunately, only small amounts are ever needed for use in cooking. Saffron foods are perfect for Wiccan ritual feasts, particularly those linked with the sun.

Magical uses:
Eat saffron-flavored foods (such as paella) to induce happiness. The saffron rice recipe given in chapter 26 is another fine happiness food. Saffron also induces spirituality.

Sage

(Saivia officinalis)

Planet:
Jupiter

Element:
Air

Energies:
Longevity, health

Lore:
Dedicated to Zeus by the Greeks and to Jupiter by the Romans, sage has been used in cooking, medicine, and magic for at least 2,000 years. The Latin name derives from the word
salvus,
“safe,” due to its healing qualities.

Magical uses:
Use sage in your cooking to enjoy a long life. This stems from an ancient belief as summed up in the words:

“Eat sage in May
and live for aye” [ever]

Sage is also an important part of healing diets. Visualize as you cook and eat. Rather strangely, one authority states that drinking sage tea reduces the desire for sex.
101

Thyme

(Thymus vulgaris)

Planet:
Venus

Element:
Water

Energies:
Love, psychic awareness, purification

Magical uses:
Since the days in which it was used to cleanse Greek temples, thyme has always played a role in spirituality and religion. It was and is a popular seasoning as well.

Place one teaspoon of mixed thyme and marjoram into a tea cup. Add one cup hot water. As it brews, visualize yourself enjoying a satisfying, two-sided relationship. Sweeten with honey if desired and drink the tea, continuing to visualize. Add thyme to psychic foods or drink the tea to gain control over your psychic awareness. Thyme is also used in purification diets.

Turmeric

(Curcurma domestica)

Planet:
Mercury

Element:
Air

Energies:
Purification

Lore:
Hawaiians use turmeric in purification ceremonies. It is mixed with sea water and flicked around the area with leaves.
77

In India, turmeric is burned to detect the presence of demons, who are said to detest the smell. If a demon (in the disguise of a human being) is in the room, she or he will leave when turmeric is burned.
61

Magical uses:
We know turmeric from its use as a coloring agent in dill pickles, which it turns a greenish-yellow color (artificial colors are also used for this today). Pickling spices usually include turmeric.

For internal purification, eat a pickle with visualization. Or, add a small amount of turmeric (no more than one-eighth of a teaspoon) to your favorite nonsweet purification food.

Vanilla

(Vanilla planiflora)

Planet:
Venus

Element:
Water

Energies:
Love, sexuality

Lore:
Vanilla is one of Mexico's gifts to the world. The cured fruit of an orchid, vanilla was created long ago by a divine act.

In the distant past, when goddesses and gods still walked the Earth, Zanat, the young daughter of the fertility goddess, furiously loved a Totonac youth. Unable to marry him due to her divine nature, she transformed herself into a plant that would provide pleasure and happiness. Xanat became the vanilla orchid so that She could forever belong to her human love and to his people.
91

This beautiful legend speaks of the respect that early Mexicans gave to this orchid and to its fermented fruit, which we know as the vanilla bean. The Totonac Indians may yet celebrate the Vanilla Festival in late spring with dances and feasts. Among them, the flower of the vanilla orchid is still known as
xanat
.
91

Native to Central America, the plant is now grown in Mexico and other parts of the world.

The vanilla is the only orchid that is regularly used for food purposes.
71
The Aztecs, who knew it as
tlixochitl,
used it to flavor their chocolate, which they imbibed in the form of a spicy, unsweetened liquid.
94
Vanillin—an artificial form of vanilla—is still used to flavor chocolate by American confectioners.

Vanilla was introduced to Europe via Spain in the late 1500s. Soon the French were using it to flavor chocolate and to scent tobacco. Eventually, it won out over rose as the favored flavoring material and became widely popular.
104

Magical uses:
Because vanilla is linked in Totonac mythology with love, and due to its pleasant smell and taste, it follows that it is one of the prime love flavorings. Vanilla ice cream, vanilla pudding, and all foods that are flavored with vanilla are fine for use in love-expanding diets. For a simple vanilla-charged sweetener, place a whole vanilla bean in a sugar jar or canister. Let it sit until the sugar has absorbed the scent of the vanilla. Add to love foods.

Though the story of Xanat isn't widely known, it's curious that American woman once dabbed vanilla extract behind their ears as a magical love perfume to attract men.

Sexual activity in a loving relationship may also be enhanced by the addition of vanilla-flavored foods to the diet.

As much as I love Mexico, I must give one warning: do not use the “vainilla” extract commonly sold there at extremely low prices. This is made from tonka beans
(Dipteryx odorata),
not vanilla, and is toxic. Do not take internally!

Additionally, only real vanilla extract (or the beans them selves) should be used in magical cooking. Artificial vanilla extract, which may cost all of a dollar or two less, is magically inert and will have no effect.

[contents]

Chapter Thirteen

Honey, Sugar, Chocolate,
Carob, & Maple Syrup

Y
ou may try to eat right. You may be a vegetarian, avoid processed foods, and never darken a fast-food restaurant's doors. But sweets still haunt you. A bit of honeyed herbal tea. A dish of ice cream made with real sugar. Even—horrors!—that chocolate bar that you've been craving for several weeks.

The full story of the religious and magical uses of these substances down through the ages would fill several volumes. In this chapter we'll discuss honey, sugar, chocolate, carob, and maple syrup—and the ways in which you can gleefully utilize them with moderation in your magical diet.

Honey

(product of
Apis mellifera)

Planet:
Sun

Element:
Air

Energies:
Purification, health, love, sex, happiness, spirituality, wisdom, weight loss

Lore:
The world's first sweetener, honey has been gathered since humans lived in European caves some 10,000 years ago. Ancient rock paintings depict humans gathering honey from hives.
71

All early honey-using cultures attached myths and legends to the divine substance. Most employed it for magical and ritual purposes as well as for food.

According to one Egyptian myth, the god Ra wept. The tears that dripped from His eye turned into the bees that produced the first honey.
23
Honey was a favorite offering to Min, the Egyptian god usually depicted with an erection, who oversaw—among other things—human fertility.
23
The Egyptians also used honey in medicine; indeed it is both antiseptic and antibiotic.
50

Honey's high cost in earlier times probably contributed to its divine status. In Egypt, Sumer, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, honey was used in offerings to the goddesses and gods. Assyrians dripped honey on to foundation stones and walls of temples as they were being built.
84
Honey was offered to Anu, Ea, Shamash, Marduk, Adad, Kittu, and almost every other Babylonian and Sumerian deity.
24

The Greeks used honey as an elixir to restore and maintain youth. Aristotle called it “dew distilled from the stars and the rainbow.”
84
Honey cakes were made and offered to sacred snakes in the Acropolis in Athens. Honey was also offered to the dead.
71

The Romans believed honey was a magical substance that endowed those who ate it with poetry and eloquence. Pliny instructed his readers to eat it every day for good health and long life.
84

In ancient Rome, a special drink was created at the completion of the harvest. It was made of honey, milk, and poppy juice. This was said to induce euphoria, happiness, and dizzy optimism. Not surprisingly, sleep usually followed.
84

Throughout Europe, honey was associated with the Great Mother, who was also the provider of milk. Demeter, Artemis, Rhea, and Persephone are just a few of the goddesses associated
with honey.
71, 78
These two substances—honey and milk—are the only two items in our diet that are specifically created for food.
29

The Indian love-god Kama's bowstring was purportedly made of very cooperative bees. In India, a newborn child's tongue is smeared with honey. Also in that country, milk and honey is presented to guests and to the bridegroom during wedding ceremonies. Hindu novices often fasted from honey (among other foods) because of its supposed aphrodisiac properties.
81

In Central America and Mexico, honey was deemed sacred. The Maya so highly esteemed this substance that they made offerings of corn meal when removing honey from the hives.
109

Throughout Europe and in many other parts of the world, honey was made into mead, an alcoholic beverage that is still enjoyed by many. Mead is a favorite drink among some Wiccan groups.

Honey may have been so honored because it is produced by bees, which is rather miraculous in itself. It can be eaten as food, used as medicine, or distilled into an intoxicating brew. A substance with so many properties must surely be divine.
22

In the Middle Ages, when sugar was still unavailable, honey continued to be used for sweetening and for medicine. It was prescribed for “grumbling guts” and used to cleanse wounds.
104

As previously mentioned in this book, Pagan Germanic tribes baked and ate honey cakes on the night of the winter solstice. The mystic power of honey was probably consumed to lend energy and strength to the celebrants for the hard winter months ahead.

These extraordinary records of the uses of honey point to the high regard in which it has been held. In earlier times, sweet foods in general were rare, and for many millennia honey was the most widely used sweetener. Though India had sugar cane, the ancient peoples who lived there seemed to prefer honey. In the Middle East, date syrup, fig syrup, and grape juice were all used to sweeten foods, but honey was the most favored.
104

Surprisingly, the first inhabitants of the United States didn't eat honey, for the native bees produced only a vile-tasting, unhealthy variety. It wasn't until after the introduction of the honey bee by the colonists in 1625 that honey became a popular sweetening agent in the United States.
74

We still cling to at least one vestige of honey's fabled history in our own culture. Honey has long been used at weddings, and the honeymoon honors two ancient traditions. Its purity was thought to protect the couple from evil,
84
and honey was also symbolic of love and wisdom—certainly two welcome attributes at marriages.

The term “honeymoon” refers to the old European custom in which a newly married couple drank mead (honey wine) for one lunar month following their wedding. The honeymoon was originally the period in which mead was shared by the newlyweds.
31

Magical uses:
Here's a quick list of some of the magical uses of honey. If you've decided to substitute honey for sugar, a wealth of opportunities await you.

Purification

Health and healing

Love

Sexuality (the French may have thought that bee stings were powerful aphrodisiacs, but eating honey is simpler and far less painful)

Happiness (especially during weddings)

Spirituality (especially related to Goddess worship)

Wisdom

Weight loss (use in place of sugar)

Honey isn't habit forming. Easily assimilated by the body, it doesn't give the same rush and subsequent drop that sugar produces. We've been eating honey for thousands of years. Haven't we known something?

Sugar

(product of
Saccharum officinarum)

Planet:
Venus

Element:
Water

Energies:
Love

Lore:
As we've seen, honey was worshipped in the past. Many humans of today are likewise devoted to sugar, the most popular sweetener in the world.

Sugar originated in either New Guinea
6
or on the Indian subcontinent.
104
It was grown in gardens in India as early as 1400
b.c.e.
, and the stalks were used in medicine and for chewing.
6
The peoples of India may have first produced crudely refined sugar in about 500
b.c.e.
71
China had the knowledge and raw materials to refine sugar around 100
b.c.e.
23

An admiral of the fleet of Alexander the Great, after a historic voyage to India, brought sugar back to Rome.
81
Pliny, who described the substance as “a kind of honey that collects in reeds,” wrote that it was “used only for medicine” in ancient Rome.
86

Though we're not quite sure how the Polynesians first came into contact with sugar, they spread the plant throughout the Pacific Ocean during the migrations from island group to island group.
6
Sugar was widely cultivated throughout the Pacific islands.

In Tahiti, sugar cane was thought to have been formed from the human spine, probably due to the appearance of its stiff, jointed stems.
77
The origin of human beings was also ascribed to this miraculous plant. In the Solomon Islands, a stalk of sugar cane produced two knots. When these burst open, a man and a woman stepped out of them. They were the parents of all who came after them.
77

Many of us associate sugar with Hawaii, due to the aggressive advertising of C & H products. It seems certain that the Hawaiians brought sugar cane plants with them when they migrated to those volcanic islands.
6
Soon, the Hawaiians were hybridizing sugar, producing at least forty distinct varieties.
77
Sugar there was used for food, religion, medicine, and magic.

A myth states that Kane (pronounced KAH-nay), a benevolent agricultural deity worshipped throughout the Pacific, brought sugar cane to Hawaii. The plant was not only sacred to Him but was also a physical manifestation of the god.
47
A certain species of sugar,
manulele
(flying bird), was chewed in Hawaiian rituals to renew a wife's love for her husband.
77

As recently as five hundred years ago, sugar was still a costly substance in Europe. Only the extremely wealthy could afford it. Courtiers offered small lumps of plain sugar, housed in silver boxes, to favored women. We continue the custom by giving presents of candy.
104

About 1580, sugar came into more general use in Europe. We wouldn't recognize this early version, which was poorly refined, almost black, and smelled of molasses.
81
After the discovery that fruit and flowers could be preserved in sugar, much of it was used for these purposes.
104
Jam was probably first made in the 1700s.
104

Sugar was severely rationed on the home front during World War II. Many Europeans and Americans dreamed of the days when it could be purchased in quantities and used for everything from canning to pickling to preserving.

Today, sugar is a firmly established part of our lives. Though nutritionists warn of its dangers, the artificial sweeteners that food scientists have created to replace it are usually more hazardous than sugar itself. Honey is the sole healthy alternative.

Magical uses:
Ruled by Venus and by the element of water, sugar is a natural love-inducing food. Sweets of all kinds can be ritually prepared and eaten with visualization to bring love.

Don't misunderstand. While eating small amounts of sugar-sweetened foods can be an important part of love diets, sugar binges aren't magical. Control the amount of sweets that you eat or you'll be so saturated with sugar energy that you'll love only it—not yourself, not others. This isn't the best condition in which to look for a relationship with another human being.

As we know it, sugar is in a highly refined state. Small, plastic-wrapped pieces of sugar cane, however, are sometimes sold in grocery stores. Though they've been processed (to pass agricultural inspection), they're the closest available version of sugar in its natural state. To taste what the ancients knew as sugar, slice off the tough peel and chew the inner, light-brown middle of the stalk. It is sweet, but not overpoweringly so.

Today, sugar is produced from both cane and from the sugar beet. Sugar experts claim that no difference in taste between the two can be detected. It is curious that beets have long been used to promote love.

Sugar from either plant can be used with equal results, but cane sugar has a longer magical history behind its graceful, tasseled stalks.

Chocolate

(a product of
Theobroma cacao)

Planet:
Mars

Element:
Fire

Energies:
Love, money

Lore:
Ahhh! Chocolate. Dark. Sweet. Dense. Chocolate cheese cake. Chocolate milk. Hot-fudge sundaes. Chocolate-covered strawberries. Chocolate two-layer cakes with chocolate frosting. Chocolate ice cream. Chocolate truffles. The plant from which these culinary wonders spring was aptly named
Theobroma,
meaning “food of the gods.”
116, 120

The trees are probably native to South America,
71
and were probably brought to what is now Mexico by the Mayas prior to
c.e.
600
.
71
Cocoa trees were extensively cultivated by the Aztecs and the Toltecs.
71

The forerunner of today's chocolate milk was enjoyed by the Aztecs centuries ago. Then as now, cacao beans were fermented and dried for several days until they had developed the characteristic color and taste of chocolate. The beans were ground and placed in water with vanilla, chili peppers, and other flavorings. Annatto was added to produce a reddish color, and the drink was whipped with a wooden instrument made especially for this purpose. What was missing? Sugar, which was unknown to the Aztecs, as well as milk.
104, 120

This beverage seems to have been drunk only by men of the upper classes, who could afford it. Women were probably forbidden to drink it, due to its legendary ability to arouse sexual desire.

Cacao beans (our word “cocoa” is actually a corruption of the word “cacao”) were highly regarded among Mesoamerican peoples. The beans were used as money. They were an accepted medium of exchange and could be traded for everything from food to slaves.
71, 91, 120

Among the Mazatec peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico, cacao beans represented wealth. Prior to a magical healing, the shaman bundled together a few cacao beans, an egg, some copal (a resin incense), and parrot feathers in bark cloth. The shaman then buried this package outside the home, probably as a sacrifice to the deities that had granted her or him healing powers.
109