Your Kitchen is a Temple | Elevating Kitchen Witchcraft

This article is a follow up on my recent video essay I published on my Youtube where I propose that all of us are plant practitioners already working the Alchemical Magnum opus every day. I want to expand on this idea further and really solidify it as one of the cornerstones of what I would like to pass on to everyone.

You can watch the full video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-lm7cQf2SM

The Historical Roots of Exoticism in Magic

The modern spiritual practitioner's gravitation towards exotic ingredients, especially in the West, can be, I believe, traced back to the publication of many occult texts that form the basis of modern magical practice. This is predominantly due to high magic (as opposed to “low” magic or folk magic, which concerns itself more with local fauna and flora and everyday life and was passed down orally) starting with the PGM (Papyri Graecae Magicae). This sort of “high magic,” or formal way of practicing magic, was predominantly practiced by the rich, the aristocracy, and mostly men, who did not have to deal with the everyday management of the household, be it personally, or through managing a large staff, like their wives would. These practitioners had access to money and resources, and using the best of the best, the most expensive ingredients and tools, was a status symbol.

Never forget needing a girdle of lion’s skin three inches broad to be dressed correctly for your workings according to the Ars Goetia.

A Culture of Waste and Status

This mentality of flaunting wealth can be traced back to these eras and these same people even outside of magical circles:to manicured grass lawns, which became popular among the rich to show that they did not need to utilize their land to feed themselves and grow food, and instead could have vast grounds lying fallow and dedicated to aesthetics. It, by design, is a culture of wastefulness and decadence. These same practitioners were the ones who had the literacy, time, and resources to write and publish these classical grimoires, and so what their practice looked like is what is left for us to follow and build our own occult practice upon. Who of these men of power would concern themselves with researching and utilizing "poor people's plants" in their practice, when they could surround themselves with imported, expensive, and strange foods, plants, ingredients, incenses, and materia?

Inherited Bias and the Modern Spice Aisle

We as a society have inherited this generation after generation, with some changes but not very substantial ones. The push for local, abundant, cheaper, or sustainable materials is a relatively new wave of thinking on a larger scale that I would like to push for even further. We as a community are getting better at prioritizing less rare ingredients in our magic, the rosemaries, lavenders, mints, and herbs that you can purchase in the spice aisle of your local grocery store, and that is great. But this is because we still have a lot of literature available down the centuries about these plants, which have been used as medicine, spice, and incense or perfume in those same eras that I mentioned earlier. They are still steeped in the aura of magic and esoterica through magical herbalism, early Wiccan authors, and more modern ones as well.

The Blind Spot for Everyday Allies

What these authors who have shaped our modern practice neglect to stress are plants that are of an everyday, existential, life-giving nature, because they have not been steeped in the mystique and esotericism of old. And hence, we see them, we use them, but we do not think of working with them within our practice outside of offerings or, to a limited degree, ingredients. Off the top of my head, I remember a few spells using garlic and onion, but again, “using” them as “ingredients,” not working with them as spirits or partners in those workings.

Our brain does have the tendency to stop actively noticing things we see or encounter on the daily, as a feature of saving brainpower for spotting danger rather than as a bug of being mindless. So, if I were to put a spread in front of you featuring, for example: frankincense, palo santo, sage, roses, onion, garlic, and mugwort, and asked you to prepare a cleansing and protective ritual, I am pretty sure what you would reach for among the first things, and it wouldn’t be the garlic or onion. Probably.

The Strength of Local Networks

To return to the notion of working with local plant spirits: plants that grow around you have a network, a strength together. You beseech the spirit of mugwort through a dried sprig and you can tap into the energies and aid of all mugworts that you have encountered or that are around you. You reach for a piece of imported exotic wood and it is just a dead stick with no friends or siblings around to lean on for aid.

To give you my favorite thing, an ad absurdum example: You eat in your favorite local restaurant. The food is great, the prices are acceptable, the ingredients are top, and the chef is amazing. Take that chef and plop him across the world and ask him to cook you your favorite meal from his menu. At the very least, he will struggle to source the right produce at an acceptable quality, to find it at a good price, to find a kitchen where he can cook, and a place where he can serve you.

I believe something similar is happening to imported plants. You plop them into a place they don’t know, where they probably can’t even grow at all, where they have no friends or relatives, no resources, and no way to root, because it is a dead, dried piece of a plant. And you ask it to do whatever it needs to do. You will probably get some results, just like that chef will manage to feed you, but it will not be the best result you can get.

Elevating Kitchen Witchcraft

Kitchen witchery nowadays, I believe, has fallen into the category of "fluffy" witchcraft in the overall perception of the magical, esoteric, and occult community. In my opinion, that is partly because of the oversimplification and the abstract nature of current online content that favors easy, least-effort-possible methods and entries into the witchcraft label, which has been seeing a surge in popularity in popular culture over the past decade. My intention here is not to put down the notion of kitchen witchcraft; the opposite, in fact. The idea that your kitchen is and should be a temple seeks to elevate this practice and propose it to the wider magical community as a new conscious standard.

The Kitchen as a Literal Temple

The kitchen is a literal temple where we take part in everyday life-saving, life-affirming rites and rituals, where we feed ourselves, our family, friends, and loved ones, and literally keep ourselves alive, healthy, and protected from illness, disease, weakness, and more. What I seek to do in this series of video and essay offerings is to give you the idea to treat this space, and the work of planning, preparing, and eating your food, as an act of spirit work with the aid of the most loyal, selfless, and important plant spirit allies you can ever work with and to show that, in fact, you are already taking part in this practice. Doing so intentionally and mindfully can only elevate your practice to new heights.

Add your magical herbs to your brews and stews, but include the potatoes, carrots, celeries, garlics, onions, lentils, chickpeas, rice, and others into your working. Work with their attributes and strengths to add potency to your meals. You already know what they are like, what they do, and what they can bring to your craft, their effects, and their attributes. You don’t need a book or a guide to tell you what you already know. Trust your intuition.

The Work of Individual Elevation

We may have tended to overlook them because they are rarely, if ever, featured in Witchcraft 101 literature, grimoires, and resources. Reels and TikToks about how the emulsifying power of semolina starch can help you bring things in your life together will probably do much worse than the thousand videos about blowing cinnamon for prosperity have, and so we don’t talk about them. Elevating fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and legumes to the status of valued magical helpers is the work we all must do individually.

Introducing Fructifera Botanical Oracle

These and many more are the reasons why I created the Fructifera Botanical Oracle. A lot of the feedback I have received about the previous decks was about insecurity; many of the practitioners who bought them felt like they didn’t know enough about the featured plants to confidently use those decks. And so, I set out to create a deck full of plants we all know so intimately, and which oftentimes lack resources describing their magical correspondences and meanings. I did this to show and prove to you that you do not need to rely on someone else's education, experience, UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis), or knowledge to be able to communicate, commune, and divine with plants. You only need to sit down, listen, and notice what they bring up in you:what words, phrases, and images they bring. This may be more comfortable with plants we already rely on every day.

A First Step Toward the Temple

If you would do just one small thing to change your point of view today, I would suggest this:

When you sit down with your meal, or when you cook it, first name the allies that are making the meal possible. Potato, corn, bean, pea. "Thank you for being a part of my journey and making it possible every day." Or something else that comes to your mind. Any sort of acknowledgement is a great first step.