Believe it or not, one of the most powerful things you can use to practice magic is food. Beyond foods that have been magically charged with powerful intentions, feeding food to a lover, using food to heal, and foods that stretch back into your ancestry that help to form your identity are all magical ways of using food. This article will discuss:
When you are working with energy, be it healing energy, relationship energy, or any other kind of energy, there are some things that can be incorporated into your magic to help. While food may be thought of as either a necessity or as fuel for the body, it can bring great healing for people, and being given food by a lover can be one of the signs that they feel emotionally connected to you.
While herbs for attracting money may be placed in magical bags, they can also be grown in your garden or used in food. Romantic picnic ideas for couples using aphrodisiac foods are just one of the ways of using food to enhance love, and making family recipes your own is magical as well. How is food magical, and what are some powerful foods that can be ingredients in magic spells? How can you use food for magic, and what are some simple recipes? Read on to find out!
How is Food Magical?
When you think of magic, you think of oils, herbs, and spells with rhyming words. You might not think of food as being part of the ingredients, but food can be more than just what you eat. Food can be used for magical healing techniques, as a way to keep up the relationship energy of maintaining traditions, and can be used to express and attract love.
Healing
Some people think of pills as physical healing tools, and the only ones you’d need, but food also acts as medicine. Food acts on a scientific level to heal, but it is also used in energy healing techniques. If you have a digestive disorder and discover that not eating fatty meats but adding fresh ginger to your diet helps you feel better, then omitting fatty meats and eating fresh ginger regularly is medicine.
While you might think this sounds mundane, and not magical, it’s actually both. Self-energy healing requires you to retrain your mind, changing how you think. If you change the attitude that food is just delicious and serves no other purpose, to thinking about food as a tool in your self-healing techniques, you will use food as a part of your energy healing therapy.
Most especially if we have been taught to see food as what creates us as opposed to just what we are in the mood to consume, we understand that food is very magical. “You are what you eat” is very true, and each time we take food, drink, or medicines into our bodies, we are building ourselves with every bite we eat. The materials that go into a spell can be words, and materials like paper, candles, and various other things like crystals and photographs.
Foods combine to make our bodies a unified whole, with the ingredients of the “spell”, or meal working to rejuvenate us or poison us, which either nourishes us or takes years off our lives. While the road to happiness may entail going for ice cream with the family often, food is more than that. Then again, bonding over food is also very magical, and it creates memories everybody is fond of.
Tradition
Keeping old relationship energy going by honoring the strength of the past is one very magical way to use food. If a beloved Aunt or other family member has passed on, someone in the family may take it upon themselves to always bake that Aunt’s cake she always brought to family gatherings every time they attended. This will magically bring the presence of that dear Aunt to future family gatherings.
Maybe you and your significant other have a routine of eating popcorn on the couch while cuddling and watching movies every Friday night. This will have become a newly established tradition you both use to bond with one another, and it magically brings you closer together. Joining into a continuing tradition of something means keeping it alive, and that is one way people use food for magic.
Love
If you’re looking for passion vs comfort in a relationship, food can be a magical ingredient to help provide that. Besides bonding over meals while dating, forming energy cords between lovers with things like going to your favorite restaurant together and sitting in your favorite spot every time establishes a routine that you can both look forward to.
Whenever we are enjoying ourselves with new people we are starting to love, one thing that strengthens the energies of love is spending quality time together, and a lot of people do that over romantic meals.
A romantic picnic idea for couples is to show up with a surprise stash of great food and take them to one of their favorite outdoor spots. After a long day at a job that might be stressful, your sweetheart can let go of negative thoughts and let the pressures of the day melt away, eating with you.
It doesn’t necessarily matter what foods you pick while you are getting to know one another’s preferences. It’s the thought that counts when you surprise them with a picnic. Breakfast in bed the morning after lovemaking or meeting them for lunch on a workday are also great romantic ways to bring magic into the relationship using food.
Some Magical Ingredients
While the above ideas will get the gears turning in your mind of how foods can be used for magic, another point that’s important to bring into the discussion is what kinds of ingredients, or what specific foods, can be used for magic. The answer may surprise you. Any and every food can be used in magic! Things that are sentimental make great magical ingredients, as well as things from the garden. Perhaps more famously, herbs you grow yourself are powerful ways to make magic.
Sentimental Things
Sentimental foods make great magical tools. Say you have been dating someone for a while, and you have caught them cheating, and you want to break up, but you’d like to make them feel bad for what they have done. To really send the message of how much they are losing you, cook all their favorite foods, and allow them to feast to their heart’s content.
Then inform them this is the last time they will ever taste your succulent foods, right before you ditch them. Maybe their little side piece can cook for them, but the foods they cook will never equal the foods you have. Too bad for them.
When someone you love is going through a difficult time, sentimental foods can make them feel better, and that is something very magical indeed. Simply cook for them or take them out for the foods that make them happy and watch their mood lift once they eat that food that means a lot to them. Sharing special recipes with people is also a magical way of bonding, and cooking with people who you love and working together to nourish one another is another way to use food magically.
Establishing a special food routine is one thing that brings people together. Holiday meals are perhaps the most well-known way this is done. Everybody comes together for Christmases, Passovers, birthdays, or other special occasions, and there are certain foods that always seem to make their way to the table.
Birthdays are often occasions for cake and ice cream, and while a lot of people pick up a large cake at the bakery, some other people are lucky enough to have a loved one bake a cake especially for them. This recipe will become a sentimental one, and birthdays won’t seem like birthdays without that special cake!
One fun way to create sentimental foods is by pot lucking with people who you gather with. Each person will bring a different dish to the potluck and sometimes, they will bring the same favorite dish to each and every potluck. People will learn to look forward to that special dish, like cousin Leota’s potato casserole, and some may even hopefully ask “Is she bringing her famous potato casserole?”
If you find yourself looking forward to a gathering where a few people who you don’t especially like are going to be, it may be that the food helps you to tolerate annoyances better. That’s magic!
From the Garden
Anything that you grow bonds you with the earth, and that is powerful magic. Participation in creating life puts a part of yourself into whatever you are growing and nurturing the planet and her creatures, including human beings. This makes us a part of the divine cycle of creating new life. Honey from the garden is quite magical, and so are fruits and vegetables, most especially if you raise your own bees or have your own fruit or vegetable gardens. Then, perhaps most famously, herbs are fantastic food items to use to make magic with.
Honey
What is called by some the king of clovers, honey, is magical. Clover symbolism often shows industrious bees buzzing about the lovely clover blossoms, gathering nectar, so they can make honey. Bees do the gathering and processing of nectar, and make the amazing ingredient people have been eating and using for magic for over nine thousand years! Honey has been used since ancient Egyptian times for treating burns, and it has been used to sterilize wounds. It has antibiotic properties, and it is believed to help the body fight off colds, flu, and infections when consumed.
While a mixture to treat burns may be better left to medical doctors, a great remedy for sore throats and coughs is a hot drink that has honey in. Teas, including green teas and chamomile are great for sore throats, and mixing a teaspoon of honey into them instead of just sugar is a great way to coat the throat and soothe it. It is also said that eating honey helps with ulcers, and it enhances mood. Honey is also used to soothe stomach issues and helps with constipation, as well as helping to reduce gastric bloating.
In magic spells, honey is used as a natural adhesive, to seal things, and also for protection. It is used to “sweeten” people’s feelings for you. One way to do this besides feeding it to people is to “feed” it to a poppet, or a doll you have made to represent them. If you are involved with a neighbor, co-worker, or family member who is not pleasant at all, creating a figure out of beeswax of them, and coating it down with honey can help them to become “sweeter”, or more pleasant to deal with.
Fruits
Fruit has been used for magic for generations. apples are famous to use for divination. Simply sit in a darkened room, in front of a mirror, and make sure all you can see in the mirror is yourself. Start eating the apple and pay attention to any images that form in the mirror. It is believed that doing this around Samhain, also called Halloween, will make an image of your true love appear in the mirror.
Fruit can be made into poppets to protect you against people who are attacking you. Think of the fruit that looks like the individual who has been seeking to harm you. For example, if she looks like a tall, scrawny string bean, get a string bean, and bind it by tying it up with red string, as if it were her, telling it that it has no power over you, and you bind its ability to harm you.
Fruit that is like somebody can also be used to protect and bless. If your grandmother, who loved and protected you, had a face that was shaped like a strawberry, plant strawberries around your home to bring in the protection your grandmother gave. Name it “Grandma’s Strawberry Patch” or something similar in her honor.
Vegetables
Like fruits, vegetables can be used in magic. Tomatoes are known as “love apples” and are sacred to the goddess of love, Aphrodite. It is believed they are aphrodisiacs and will enhance sensual desire. You can feed your sweetheart foods with tomatoes to make them more turned on, but tomatoes enhance love in general, not just sexual love. Feeding dishes with tomatoes to family and friends will strengthen your loving bonds, and it is said that growing tomatoes in your garden brings prosperity and fends off evil.
Another magical vegetable is cabbage, which can be planted in the garden right after a wedding to help ensure the new couple have a happy married life. Carrots are said to help women get pregnant, and to increase sexual desire, and to also help combat impotence. Cornstalks hung over the mirror at home bring luck to the household, and an ear of corn can be hung near where a baby sleeps for protection.
Eating the seeds of the cucumber aids in fertility but eating the flesh of one helps reduce lustful feelings and thoughts. Potatoes are believed to prevent against colds when a single potato is carried at all times during the winter, but it has to be the same potato the whole time! Radishes are believed by some to protect against evil eye, and some use it to help them find out the whereabouts of sorcerers.
Herbs
A lot of metaphysical shops will sell herbs for use in magic. These can be eaten, brewed into tea, burned, mixed into creams, or combined with other ingredients to make candles to burn for magic. While there are countless different herbs used for magic, three very powerful ones are bay, chamomile, and thyme.
Bay
One of the herbs that helps aid success and money is the bay leaf, and the way to use this for magic is simple. While bay leaves can be bought at pretty much any grocery store or metaphysical shop, growing your own bay leaves will also bring the power they instill to your property.
One easy way to draw money and success with bay leaves is to take a dried bay leaf and put it in your wallet. Bay leaves symbolize money, and it is believed that having them where you keep your money increases your financial wealth.
Chamomile
The lovely chamomile calls to mind relaxing tea parties, and mugs of hot chamomile tea have been championed for their ability to bring about relaxation. Chamomile can be burned to bring wealth, and chamomile is believed to ward off negativity and malevolent energies. You can use chamomile infused water to wash windows and doors to keep out negativity, and chamomile infused water is said to bring luck, so gamblers love to wash their hands in it.
It is also used to draw love and can be blended with bath water and used in ritual baths for relaxation or to cleanse negativity and draw love to you. Plant chamomile on your property near entrances to protect the home for negative forces that could enter.
Thyme
Thyme is believed to instill courage, heal heartache, protect, purify, and help with developing psychic abilities. Whenever you are nervous about something, like asking for a raise at work, carry some thyme with you to help make you feel braver.
It can be added into foods you eat right before the meeting to instill the courage to ask for that raise. Dried thyme or thyme incense blends can be burned to cleanse and purify your home or sacred spaces, and thyme is also believed to be protective, warding off negativity and welcoming positive energy.
Thyme is also used to bring about prophetic dreams and visions by placing sachets filled with it, or sprigs of thyme, under your pillow while you sleep. Ground up and sprinkled around the home, thyme is said to aid in healing broken hearts, and it helps to alleviate loneliness.
The Magic of Food in Practice
Aphrodisiacs
Is there a love potion that is better than any other when it comes to magical foods? It depends. There are some foods that have been proven to make people in the mood for lovemaking. Chocolate, oysters, clams, red wine, honey, and strawberries are said to boost the libido and help get someone in the mood for sex.
However, another type of aphrodisiac exists, and this can be much more powerful than anything else. First, ask one of the very best love questions, which is “What do you want to eat?” When you find out what it is they want to eat, especially if they don’t want to go out to get it, do it for your lover. When they see you bringing them the food they want to eat, they will love and appreciate you for it- and you just might get lucky later!
Identity and Culture
Have you ever been seduced at work by food? Part of the culture of jobs can be food, and some employers sweeten the deal for employees to stay by feeding them good food. One way to do this is to cater in for lunches at work or take the staff out for meals. Gift cards to restaurants, or baskets filled with fruits and other goodies, can also make employees feel appreciated.
Apartment rental offices that provide treats for pets and complimentary coffees and teas daily can help renters feel welcomed by the hospitality, and this will make people come and go from the main office and communicate with management more often, magically drawing them in.
Personal culture is a big part of the magic of food as well. How we were raised to eat dictates how we eat once we are adults, and our personal identities are partially decided by family food culture. These cultural food ways can be seen at holidays and rites of passage. For example, some Americans eat a black eyed pea dish called Hoppin’ John at New Years’ time because it is believed to bring wealth for the New Year, since at one time the black eyed peas were said to look like money.
Likewise, pork and cabbage are eaten by some people with German ancestry, and the ancient belief was that if you were lucky enough to have fresh cabbage and good pork for a meal in the wintertime, it meant you would be lucky for the whole year.
Fellowship
One magical thing food does is bring people together. After a meeting, sports event, or even a religious gathering, people typically come together to eat. While relaxing to share a meal together, people talk, and get to know one another better, or catch up with people who they had not had time to visit with for a while.
Food is the thing that makes people slow down and come together long enough to bond. In ancient times, respect was paid to whoever hosted the food and drink at gatherings, and it was believed to be a great honor for people to allow you to feed them when you gathered together. Perhaps the food is not the goal, but it is the way that is used to make the gathering happen, and that is very magical.
Magical Recipes
With the magic of food comes lots of different magical recipes. While any recipe can be magical, there are some that are recognized as favorite foods that can become a big part of your own food traditions. Freshly baked banana bread as well as homemade chili tend to be two favorites, but regardless of what recipes you are given by other people, creating your own recipes is very magical as well.
Lady Saoirse’s Banana Bread Recipe
Here’s the first of our magic cooking recipes. To bake a fantastic banana bread, first butter an eight-inch round cake pan or a nine-inch by five-inch loaf pan with butter and preheat the oven to three hundred fifty degrees. Next, combine the following:
- Three large bananas, mashed
- 1/3 cup oil or melted butter
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- One teaspoon baking soda
- A pinch of salt
- One cup sugar
- One egg, beaten
- One teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Using a mixer, combine all ingredients, blending until completely smooth. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for about forty to sixty minutes, depending on which pan you use, or when a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
You can use gluten-free instead of regular flour, and you can mix three quarters of a cup of quick cooking oats with three quarters cup all-purpose flour instead of using one and a half cups of flour. For another variation, you can add a half of a cup of chopped walnuts into the batter, and you can also sprinkle walnuts on top of the batter instead of blending them into the batter.
Lady Saoirse’s Chili
The second of our magic cooking recipes is a chili con carne. To make a great, simple chili, you will need a heavy soup pan, a strainer, and plenty of counter space for chopping fresh foods. Here are the ingredients:
- One pound of lean ground beef
- About four to six large tomatoes
- Two cans of kidney beans, drained
- Two cans of great northern beans, drained
- About a cup or two of fresh chopped onion
- Two to four freshly minced garlic cloves
- Water
- Salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and chili powder to taste
Brown the ground beef and pour off all the fat when it is cooked through. Put it back in the soup pan and add all the rest of the ingredients. Bring the chili to a boil, and cook until the onions are soft, and the tomatoes have broken down to help make a rich broth. Correct the water and seasonings to taste.
Chili is something many people make their own variations of. Some people switch out what kind of beans they use, and others prefer canned tomatoes and tomato juice to make the broth. Some people omit the cayenne pepper, and some people throw in whole jalapeño slices to make it spicier.
This can be adjusted for diet, using ground turkey or ground chicken instead of beef, and some people prefer to mix ground pork into their chili. Different onions give different flavors to the chili, and some people prefer garlic powder to using fresh garlic. Other add-ins include beer, tomato paste, green bell pepper, cumin, and a little bit of sugar.
Make Your Own Variations
One thing some people don’t know is that making your own variations of magic cooking recipes is one of the most magical things you can do. Recreating the past by doing a recipe exactly as it was taught to you is one way to honor the people who shared their food ways but taking the recipes further by adding your own touch will make the foods a living tradition that you contribute to.
To call something a tradition means it is something that is done the way it has always been, but to add your own signature improvement makes a tradition a living tradition, and something you add your own energy and magic to.
If you get a recipe for meatloaf from a parent who changed the meatloaf their mom fed them growing up, your changes will keep the family meatloaf tradition moving forward.
You might put fresh chopped tomatoes in yours or add a splash or milk to Worcestershire sauce for a unique flavor variation. If you do this, you will know three different family recipes for making meatloaf, and your kids, nieces, and nephews can learn your variation, and make variations of their own!
Conclusion
There are so many magical things you can use in your own practices, with the magic of food being just one of them. Some people call themselves kitchen witches, and others are garden witches. Some people don’t call themselves witches at all, but they know the power that food brings to magical practice, and they use them well.
Whether you use food to show love and friendship or to help heal and give comfort, food can be the most magical thing you bring into your personal practice!
