By Lady Saoirse,
Bright Blessings,
There is a form of magic not everybody knows about: Food Magic. Today, we have a strange relationship with food. We either eat as little as possible in order to starve ourselves so somebody we want to be lovers with thinks we are “thin and desirable enough,” or we eat some fad diet that is toted by the media as the cure-all humans ate thousands of years ago before the evils of industrialization. We don’t eat for our health. No, we have pills for that. We don’t grow our own food, we don’t butcher animals for meat, nor do most people even know how to cook anything unless it comes in a box, can, or bag with easy-to-follow instructions on it.
This is how we have completely divorced ourselves from food and the ways it creates us down to a cellular level and there is very little emphasis on using food as a magical ingredient to build our lives.
In our house, it’s different and food is part of my daily magical practice. There are four ways I use food to make magic. I use it for our health, both physical and mental. I use it for celebrations and to build relationships with people. I also use it to bond with the earth and so I have a relationship with what I put on our plates to put into our bodies.
Those of us who do magic structure our magical working altars very carefully, banish regularly, and then throw whatever “tastes good” or is “quick and easy” into the vessel of our spirits, the very bodies we live in. Food can be used for so much more than just something to quell hunger conveniently. It’s for magic.
For Physical Health
I didn’t always eat for my health. I was raised NOT rich by a mother who for years worked full time. A single mom, mind you. We ate a lot of Chef Boyardee pizza and Campbell’s soup simply because mom was tired and did not have time or the energy to cook everything from scratch. As I got older, I had health issues because of these foods and I started to read all about why those foods were not good. I had to reduce sodium, increase fiber, and eat plenty of fruits, complex carbs, veggies, and protein. The best way to do that is by making food from scratch. Premade sauces and mixes are loaded with all the things that helped contribute to my mom’s cardiovascular issues and weight problems. She never listened when doctors told her to eat better. I did. Food can be medicine or poison. I use it as medicine.
For Mental Health
I do enjoy a good salad and I love veggies and high fiber foods. I love yogurt, daily red wine, and I make sure I eat a lot less sugar than I was raised to. However. I DO eat sugar. And chocolate. And biscuits and gravy. And coffee. And cake. There are some foods I eat for fuel and some foods I eat because they make me happy. I will never give up pizza unless I have to and truthfully, nothing else satisfies me emotionally quite like rice with butter sometimes. I am not a machine, nor is my husband. Sometimes, we have to eat food that makes us happy just for the sake of being happy from the food.
For Relationship Building
If I love you, I feed you. Always. I try to take a snack to share whenever I go to the shop where I am a reader. Why? Because it makes us all happy and it forges a connection. There is nothing I enjoy more than eating or drinking something yummy with the people I love. That’s why major gatherings like birthdays, High Days, and Anniversaries have special foods. When you are at a celebration and you eat with the other people who are there celebrating, it brings you closer together. If you have lovingly prepared food just for someone, it puts the energy of your love into the food, which they ingest and it literally becomes part of their body. So you, your love, and your magic mix with them to forge the cells that build their bodies, thus uniting you.
To Bond with the Food
I have grown my own food from seed to harvest, butchered rabbits, gutted and cleaned fish my husband caught, and even steamed live snails. I know what goes into food from seed or first breath, until it gets eaten by me. That changes our attitude toward our food. It gives a new appreciation for it and it makes us part of the whole process. The attitude we have as we plant, water, and cook the food is absorbed by it. This energy and magic bonds with the food and goes into the bodies of whoever eats it. That’s why I won’t eat food that somebody I feel has negative energy creates.
A relationship with food is its own kind of magic and it is one I recommend everybody cultivates. Not everybody loves to cook like me or has as much time to cook as I do but everybody can eat mindfully. If you have not had a chance to use the food you eat and feed other people magically, I highly recommend you give it a try. You might wonder why you have not done it before.
Blessed Be.
Lady Saoirse has studied magic and lore for most of her life but started walking her own magical path after being spiritually reborn in the desert. Today she is a High Priestess for The Temple of the Goddess, she is a psychic advisor and spiritual counselor, she is a member of the spiritual family at the Magical Druid in Ohio, and she shares her gifts as a Psychic and Content Writer for Spiritual Blossom. She has written for Mysticsense and PaganPages.Org emag.