Kitchen Witchcraft 📖🧙‍♀️

“Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder, keep rosemary by your garden gate, plant lavender for luck, and fall in love whenever you can.” • Practical Magic, 1998.

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that cooking food is a part of life. To many of us, you can’t get more mundane than cooking. It’s something that we all have to do. Regardless of whether you are boiling water or cooking some elaborate recipe, it’s about as mundane as it gets. What if I told you that the mundane is truly magical? What if I told you that the kitchen can be a sacred space, your pot is your cauldron, and your wooden spoon is your wand? Think about it. No matter where you look in a kitchen, it’s filled with magical items. Do you use herbs and spices in your cooking? They all have magical properties. Let’s take bay leaves, for example. They can be used to make delicious dishes. Did you know that bay leaves represent prophecy and divination? The bay leaf is associated with the Greek god, Apollo. In the ancient world, the Pythia or oracle of Delphi, a priestess of Apollo would chew on the bay leaf before pronouncing prophecies (Frigerio). I often use bay leaves in my own witchcraft and religious practice. This is all a part of kitchen witchcraft. In this article, I am going to tell you how you can infuse a little bit of magic into your daily life in the kitchen. But, before we do that, let’s talk a little bit about what kitchen witchcraft is.

I started my kitchen witchcraft journey about two years ago now. It’s something that I constantly work at. What I quickly realized is that while I acquire knowledge, I am always learning something new. Such is the way of the craft. So, what exactly is kitchen witchcraft? As the name implies, it all begins in the hearth and home. Moreover, it takes place in the heart of the home, which is the kitchen. If you speak to numerous kitchen witches, you are going to get different definitions. On top of that, it has a unique meaning to every person. Kitchen witchcraft, to me, means bringing your witchcraft practice into the kitchen. It means attuning your practice to the changing of the seasons and reflecting that in your kitchen. It means infusing your cooking with magic and intention, blessing those who partake of it. It often means maintaining a kitchen altar and practicing certain rituals throughout the year. Now that we’ve explored kitchen witchcraft, let’s dive into how you can make your kitchen more magical.

1. Set up a kitchen altar. As a kitchen witch, the kitchen is your sacred space. The mundane suddenly becomes magical. In fact, there is a certain level of sacredness to what others would consider normal or ordinary. A great way to celebrate using magic in the kitchen is to set up a kitchen altar. When I first started out, all I had was a tea light, a small dish, and a lighter. It took me a while to establish my kitchen altar. The best thing is that you can make it your own. Do you work with or worship a certain deity? Why not place a picture or statue of them there? I honor Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth in my witchcraft. I have a statue of her and an electric candle that I keep going all the time. This is a simple way to show my devotion. If you have a deity you honor, you can place offerings there as well. If deities aren’t your thing, why not put magical items there? I like to take jars, fill them with water, and place herbs in them. I like to surround myself with herbs that have certain magical properties. So, if you are looking to bring happiness, harmony, or prosperity into your life, try basil. 2. Write it all down. When it comes to having a kitchen witchcraft practice, it’s a great idea to write everything down. For those of us who have been in the craft for a while, we often read…a lot! We often try new things…a lot! The best way to keep track of your progress is to keep some sort of journal. It doesn’t even have to be some fancy book. A witch friend of mine prefers to use composition notebooks because they are easy to find and write in. Start by jotting down your experience. Write down what recipes you made, what vegetables or fruits you used (as well as the magical properties), what herbs you incorporated into your cooking, etc. Check out different videos or blog posts by different kitchen witches. See what they made. I like to start my kitchen books of shadows by writing down the different herbs and spices as well as their magical properties. There are certain herbs that I use again and again. This way I can be cognizant of what kind of magical correspondences each herb has and use it in an intentional way. For example, I like to use parsley a lot. According to Anna Franklin, in The Hearth Witch’s Compendium, parsley is associated with: “The underworld, ancestral knowledge, the dead, the autumn equinox, Samhain. Ruled by the planet Mercury and the element of air. Sacred to Aphrodite, Archermorus, death gods and goddesses, Persephone, and Venus.” I can use parsley in a dish around Samhain or the autumn equinox, especially since it is associated with those sabbats. Alternatively, I can use parsley to make special offerings to the gods it is associated with. These are the sorts of things I would be writing down. 3. Know your magical tools. Magical tools are often a very important part of the kitchen witch’s practice. Just think about it. When you are cooking in the kitchen, you need implements. You need a kitchen knife to chop fruits or vegetables, a pot or dutch oven to make soup, a wooden spoon to stir as you are sauteing. As a witch, these implements start to take on a more magical purpose. Suddenly…the broom used in the kitchen is no longer just a broom. It is a way of banishing the negative energy from your sacred space. As I am sweeping in the kitchen, I like to envision the dirt and the negative energy being swept away. As I am emptying the dustpan into the garbage, I envision the negative energy leaving my life. In the absence of the negative energy, I can set the stage for my next magical ritual. The soup pot becomes a cauldron. The cauldron is generally a feminine ritual tool, representing the womb. So many wonderful meals can be made in the cauldron. My dutch oven is my cauldron. It is the center of my practice where I make all sorts of dishes. As I am making soup, I often speak positive intentions and stir deosil (clockwise) to infuse it with that positive energy. Other times, as I am cooking, I will do some form of sigil magic, drawing sigils over the food that I am making. The wooden spoon or the ladle becomes a wand. The wand, often seen as a masculine tool, flows energy outwards. I use my wooden spoon to saute and stir. This is yet another tool where you can infuse magic into your food. In another vein, when you join together a wooden spoon and a pot, you are bringing the masculine and feminine together.

So, there you have it. It’s so easy for the mundane to be magical in kitchen witchcraft. It’s so easy for you to infuse magic into your food as you are preparing or cooking it. If you have never done it before, give it a try. You may be pleasantly surprised. Sources Figerio, Giulia. “The Impact of the Laurel on Apolline Divination: Affecting the Mind Without the Use of Drugs.” New Classicists, no. 21, March 2021, pp. 23-33. Franklin, Anna. The Heath Witch’s Compendium: Magical and Natural Living for Every Day. Llewllyn, 2017, p. 397.