Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen (7 page)

Magical uses:
If you find it difficult to enjoy this grain, visualize millet as compact, concentrated money energy before eating.

An old German custom: eat millet on the first day of the year to bring riches into your life.
22

Oat

(Avena sativa)

Planet:
Venus

Element:
Earth

Energies:
Money

Lore:
In Scotland, cakes known as
bannocks
were baked and eaten at Beltane, the old Pagan observance of May Day. Oat cakes are still eaten during some contemporary Wiccan rituals.

Magical uses:
Use only whole-grain oats.

Remember Marjorie from
chapter 2
? We can prepare and eat oatmeal first thing in the morning to bring money and prosperity into our lives. Other magical possibilities include oat cookies and oat bread.

Pretzel

Planet:
Sun

Element:
Fire

Energies:
Protection

Lore:
You may be surprised to see this food listed here, but pretzels have a long magical history.

According to legend, the winter solstice was observed with a special bread in Europe during the Middle Ages. This bread was circular, in honor of the sun, but twisted at the center to form an equal-armed cross symbolic of the four seasons. This was called a “bret-zel” or “pretzel,” and was a familiar festival food denoting the rebirth of the sun in European folk religion.

Our pretzel is the direct descendant of these early breads. Its shape reveals Pagan origins, although it has been slightly altered. The salt seems to be a later addition.
29

Magical uses:
Though pretzels can be enjoyed at any time, eat them on the winter solstice in honor of the sun. Also, pretzels are appropriate to protective diets due to their planetary ruler, the salt, and the bread's twisted shape.

Rice

(Oryza sativa)

Planet:
Sun

Element:
Air

Energies:
Money, Sex, Fertility, Protection

Lore:
Rice is to Asia what corn is to the Americas. It has been laboriously cultivated and eaten in the East for thousands of years. Linked with deity and served at every meal, rice was and still is a vital staple food for many peoples.

More than half of the world's population regularly eats rice. It's of central importance in China, Japan, and throughout the Pacific area. Because of this, numerous rituals and customs have been attached to rice.

Among some peoples, if a man and a woman eat rice out of a common bowl, it is a binding declaration of marriage.
31
In China, rice is thrown at newlywed couples to confer luck and many children. This is the origin of our similar custom.
3

The Japanese, who still revere rice, eat it with red beans (
azuki
) to bring good fortune. Interestingly enough, these are the same beans added to shaved ice (a flavored ice treat) enjoyed in Hawaii; and red beans and rice is an old Cajun luck food in Louisiana. In Japan, red rice, produced by cooking a special type of rice with azuki beans, was once eaten on the first and fifteenth days of each month for good luck, as well as on birthdays and festivals. Red is a color of joy.
54

Wasting rice, to a Japanese, is an inexcusable action. In feudal times, rice was used as money to pay salaries, allowances, and retainers.
120

The Japanese used rice to startle and scatter “evil spirits.” In the past, one spirit in particular was believed to disturb babies who cried in the night without apparent cause. A bowl of rice was always placed near the infant. When trouble began, the mother or father threw a handful of rice from the bowl onto the floor. This frightened away the spirit and allowed the child to peacefully sleep all night.

Ancient magic clings to rice. In cooking rice, if a ring forms around the edge of the pot, the owner will become rich.
22
Cooked rice, mixed with sugar and cinnamon (a common treat), is believed to “make a man skillfull in his relation with the ladies.”
59

Magical uses:
Though white rice has outstripped brown rice in popularity, choose the brown variety for the best nutritional and magical effects.

Rice cakes, those cute circles of pressed, puffed rice, are a deliciously simple way to bring rice energy into your life. Hold a plain rice cake in your hand and visualize money, enhanced sexuality, fertility, or protection. Eat the cake while retaining the visualization.

Before cooking brown rice (never use the quick-cooking type), pour some of the rice to be used onto a clean, flat surface one grain thick. While visualizing, use a finger to trace an image of your needed change in the rice (a heart for luck, a dollar sign for money, and so on).
†††
Cook and eat this charged rice.

Rye

(Secale
spp.)

Planet:
Venus

Elemen
t: Earth

Energies:
Love

Magical uses:
The familiar taste and smell of rye bread comes from the caraway seeds used in its creation, not from the rye. Rye, however, is a powerful addition to diets designed to increase your ability to give and to receive love. Caraway fits in here as well.

Tamales

Lore:
Tamales (corn meal wrapped around a filling and cooked in a husk) were used in Zuni healing ceremonies. These tamales were presented as gifts to the shaman about to perform the ritual. Prayers accompanied the offering of the tamales. Those receiving them returned the gesture with further prayers.
111
Tamales are still offered to the deities by contemporary Huichols in Mexico.

Tortilla

Planet:
Sun

Element:
Fire

Energies:
Spirituality, protection

Lore:
Tortillas are a standard Mexican food. They are still made in the same way as they were during Aztec times. Round, containing sacred corn, tortillas are an indispensible part of the Latino diet.

The Huichols of Mexico also offer tortillas to their deities. Tortillas made of yellow corn are believed to be more satisfying and to give more energy to the body than those of other colors.
109

Magical uses:
Corn tortillas are best. Wheat tortillas, which were first made in northern Mexico, simply don't have the same symbolism or energies as corn tortillas

If you buy tortillas prepackaged, check the label. Choose only those that contain no artificial preservatives. They can be made at home (any good Mexican cookbook has directions) or, in many U.S. towns, can be purchased at tortillerias.

Warm tortillas, with butter or cheese, are wonderful foods at any time, but are particularly satisfying after intense magical workings. They instantly nourish the body and refuel it.

Round tortillas can also be added to spirituality diets. Warmed and spread with garlic butter, corn tortillas are a delicious part of a protective diet.

Wheat

(Triticum
spp.)

Planet:
Venus

Element:
Earth

Energies:
various (see below)

Lore:
Wheat has long played a part in the human diet. After rice, it's the second-most commonly used grain for human food, and was first cultivated during the Neolithic age.
120

The Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Greeks, and Romans all worshipped harvest deities associated with wheat. Wheat is particularly a symbol of the Mother Goddess. She taught the secrets of agriculture to women, the grain's first farmers and cultivators.

In ancient Greece, newly married couples were pelted with sweetmeats and grains of wheat.
31
The Romans crowned brides and grooms with wreaths of wheat and with lilies to symbolize purity and fertility
.
75

Magical uses:
Whole wheat is best for magical (and nutritional) purposes. Bleached wheat has had more than its vitamins, minerals, and bran removed: it also lacks magical energy. Though white bread was eaten by the Roman upper classes, it's a spiritually dead food.

Eat wheat-based foods (breads and all dough products) to bring prosperity and money into your life.

Before baking a loaf of bread, use a sharp knife to ritually incise a symbol of a specific energy that you wish to bring into your life. Do this with visualization. Various types of wheat bread have diverse energies and magical uses. Here are some of them:

Twisted breads
(any bread-recipe book contains directions) are fine additions to protective diets. The more twists, the more protection. Visualize as you braid the dough.

Egg breads
are baked and eaten, with visualization, to promote physical fertility.

Saffron bread
enhances spirituality. To a lesser extent, so too do all round loaves.

Sprouted bread
is excellent for increasing psychic awareness.

Pita bread
(also known as “pocket bread”) is a fine spirituality food.

Seven-grain bread
(or its eight-grain cousin) is a fine money attractant.

Dill bread
promotes love.

Garlic bread,
created by slathering slices of bread with garlic-flavored butter, is a delicious and powerful addition to protection diets.

Most European countries produce
sweetened breads
for use during spring festivals (which are now connected with later Christian holidays such as Easter). Sweetened breads are discussed in
chapter 9
.

[contents]

Chapter Nine

Cakes, Sweetened Breads,
Cookies, & Pies

H
umans have always eaten sweetened foods. Honey has been in use since at least 8000 b.c.e. Cave paintings of humans gathering honey attest to this.
71
Date syrup and grape syrup were also commonly used throughout Meso-potamia and the Mediterranean region for sweetening purposes.
29
Until fairly recently, only India and Hawaii used sugar as their major sweetener (see
chapter 13
for further information about sweeteners).

Sweetened breads and cakes have always been linked with religion and folk magic. The history of these foods is a journey through dozens of cultures and peoples around the globe.

Babylonians baked cakes for the goddess Ishtar in the shape of male and female human genitalia, and served them during fertility festivals.
12
Selene was honored with crescent-shaped cakes; Hermes with those in the form of a herald's rod.
93
Cakes marked with the images of the horns of the moon were offered to Astarte.
29
The Greek goddess Artemis was honored each month with round cakes, upon which burning candles were placed.
124

In China, moon cakes are baked in honor of the autumn moon festival. A small table is placed on a patio and piled with the round cakes and fruit. Family and relatives eat them in sight of the lunar orb.
3

In Teutonic Europe, sweetened breads were formed into the images of humans and animals and were offered in place of living sacrificial victims. The twisted breads now made in Germany have a religious and magical origin. They were made and given to the goddess Holle by her worshippers to avoid her punishment: rumpling of the hair.
93

Serbian Gypsies transferred the power of edible cakes to their symbolic form. To cure headaches cakes, roosters, suns, knives, snakes, and acorns were embroidered upon the affected person's clothing. These symbols dispelled the evil eye, once believed to be the true cause of headaches.
14

All cakes and sweetened breads are ruled by the planet Venus and the element of water, and so are imbued with loving energies. Today, cakes and sweetened breads are still important symbolic foods at birthdays, weddings, and religious festivals throughout the world. Here is some of this magic.

Birthday Cakes

Offering a special cake to a person enjoying a birthday is a custom of obscure origin, but almost certainly is meant to magically ensure that the recipient won't suffer poverty or hunger during the coming year. Birthday cakes may also be related, in some way, to astrology, for the sun is (obviously) in the same position in the zodiac on the day of birth every year. Small candles might have originally been placed upon the cake in the shape of the person's zodiac sign. Created from sacred foods (grain, butter, sugar, and eggs), cakes are uniquely linked with the divine and are perfect gifts on birthdays.

Why do we write on special-occasion foods, such as birthday cakes? This involves the idea that the act of eating words (even those created out of icing) magically transfers the energies represented by those words to their eaters. “Happy Birthday” and “Good Luck” carefully written on cakes were originally more than kind gestures—they were ritual assurances of just these things.

Some scholars claim that our modern birthday cakes, topped with candles, are related to those once created for Artemis.
124
The lit candles are reminders of the sacred fires of this goddess. Additionally, when a child woke on its birthday, German peasants lit cake-borne candles.

Blowing out the candles and “making a wish” are obviously remnants of forgotten magical rituals—perhaps those performed to gain the favor of Artemis. The next time you're presented with a candlelit cake, visualize your wish as you blow.

The color of the candles is important. Use white candles for protection and purification; pink for spiritual love; red for sexuality; blue for peace and healing; purple for healing and spirituality; green for growth, abundance, and money; yellow for clear thinking, and orange for energy.

Round cakes represent spirituality, while square and rectangular cakes symbolize prosperity. If you make a cake for a friend's birthday, put much love and positive energy into it. Ice it with appropriate symbols, and words, visualizing all the time. If you wish, place the candles on the table around the table, instead of on top of the cake.

All-natural cakes, sweetened with honey, frosted with honey icing, and containing whole grains, can be served to those who forgo conventional “junk foods.” Fresh, chopped fruits can also be added while keeping their magical energies in mind (see
chapter 11
).

Wedding Cakes

The history of wedding cakes is quite long. These nuptial goodies have their origins in the ancient custom of couples ritually eating sacred foods during the marriage rite. At some times and in some places, a couple needed only to eat or drink food together to be married.

It seems that the wedding cake is descended from the Roman
confarreatio.
This special cake was crumbled over the bride's head during marriage feasts to ensure fertility and plenty during the couple's life together.
31
The cake was, of course, sweetened with honey. Guests kept pieces of the cake, much as wedding guests of our own time take home slices for “good luck.”
46
In the Victorian era, unmarried English women placed pieces of wedding cake under their pillows for dreams of their future husbands.
82

Some American Indian tribes made cakes for marriage celebrations. An Iroquois bride, for example, baked a cornmeal cake and gave it to the groom. This was an important part of the ceremony.
31

The roses so often found decorating wedding cakes today are symbolic wishes for love. They are probably the modern form of the crystallized rose petals and violets that were once placed on the completed cake.

Such an important part of an important ceremony is still fraught with superstitions: the bride should never make her own wedding cake; neither bride nor groom should taste it until the appropriate time;
46
the bride should keep a piece of the cake (as long as she has it, she'll have the love of her husband); spice wedding cakes denote a spicy relationship.

In 1861, the wife of Horace Mann wrote
Christianity in the Kitchen
, a curious conglomeration of information based on the theory that an unhealthy diet hindered morals. Among her astounding conclusions: since wedding cake is difficult to digest, it is immoral and un-Christian.
104

Is it just a coincidence that the two substances most often used to flavor wedding cakes, chocolate and vanilla, are both powerful love stimulants?

Sweetened Breads

The major difference between cakes and sweetened breads is that the latter usually contain yeast, whereas cakes do not. As soon as the art of leavened bread-making became popular, honey or date syrup was certainly added, along with spices and other ingredients, in order to produce a pleasing variety.

Sweetened breads are still baked during religious festivals in Europe (especially for Easter) and Mexico (for All Soul's Day). Certain cakes baked for Halloween and Christmas are quite popular in Scotland, and German
stollens
are well-known. Pre-Christian Brits baked cakes for spring festivals. One of these breads is still with us today, in a conveniently sanitized form.

Hot-Cross Buns

Long before the advent of Christianity, Europeans celebrated the coming of spring with rituals dedicated to the sun and to the earth, which were viewed as symbols of the God and the Goddess. The spring solstice, which falls on a day between March 21 and March 24 each year, was a welcome breath of life after the chilling months of winter
.
29, 44, 114

In these rituals, some of which were dedicated to Eostra (from which our word “Easter” is derived), small, sweetened buns were baked and eaten to encourage the returning fertility of the earth. These ritual breads, created with carefully stored grain and honey, were marked with phallic symbols as visual representations of the sun's fertilizing influence upon the earth and humans.
29, 44, 114

As Christianity spread across Europe, the uses of these Pagan breads was altered by the new faith. The phallic symbols, regarded with unnatural horror, were transformed into more “seemly” crosses.
‡‡‡
125
Hot-cross buns became a part of Easter celebrations and were dedicated, if a bit tardily, to the Christian story of resurrection. The conversion was so complete that hot-cross buns were even given to religious pilgrims traveling through English villages.
119

Perhaps not curiously, hot-cross buns retained their mystic energies in the popular mind. They were eaten on Good Friday to bring a year of good luck. They were used to cure certain illnesses. Hung in the house, they guarded it from fire and evil of all kinds and were said to last indefinitely without getting moldy. (In Cornwall they were hung from the bacon-rack.)
114
Sailors believed that having one on board prevented shipwrecks, and hot-cross buns were even placed in granaries to keep out rats. A modern American superstition states that placing a hot-cross bun in a cupboard on the spring equinox ensures that “you'll know no hunger for ages.”
46

The magical properties ascribed to the simple hot-cross bun are memories of a time when they were much more interesting symbols firmly linked with the old Pagan religions of Europe.

Pan de Muerto

On November 2, All Soul's Day, many Mexicans visit family graves to perform a ritual rooted in pre-Christian times. Along with orange marigolds, they bring a special sweetened bread baked only for this occasion.

This joyous time includes a feast in which the dead are invited to participate. The feast affirms the inevitability of death in the minds of the living and reaffirms the value of the departed. This is quite a healthy ritual.
83

In the United States, All Soul's Day (a Catholic holy day) is exoterically celebrated as Halloween, with its attendant masquerades, parties, and occult themes. Some of the European-based motifs have been transferred to Mexico, but the honoring of the dead is of ancient, pre-conquest origin.

In late October, bakeries throughout Mexico and the southwestern United States offer
pan de muerto,
“bread of the dead.” I've long relished the unique flavor of this specialty food. If you have Mexican bakeries (
panaderia
) in your part of the world, check them during this month for pan de muerto. If they don't have it, ask for it. If you still can't find any, make some yourself next Halloween—and revere.

Pan de Muerto

1 teaspoon anise seeds

3 tablespoons water

1 package dry yeast

1
⁄
2
cup warm milk

3
1
⁄
2
cups sifted, all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup melted butter

6 eggs lightly beaten

1 tablespoon orange flower water

Grated rind of 1 orange

1 egg, beaten

Coarse or red sugar (for topping)

The night before, place anise seeds in 3 tablespooons of water in a pan. Bring to a boil, turn off heat, and let stand overnight. On the following day, strain out seeds and discard. Sprinkle yeast over warm milk to soften. Add anise water to the yeast. Add enough flour to make a light dough. Knead and shape into a ball. Let stand in a warm place until doubled in bulk (about 1 hour). Sift together the remaining flour with salt and sugar. Beat in melted (and cooled) butter, eggs, orange flower water, and grated rind. Knead on a lightly floured board until smooth. Add the dough ball. Knead together until smooth and elastic. Cover with cloth and let the dough rest for 1
1
⁄
2
hours, or until doubled in bulk.

Pinch off 2 walnut-sized chunks of dough (for decoration). Divide remaining dough and shape into round loaves. Place on greased baking sheets. Roll out some of the reserved dough with a rolling pin into 4 thin ropes about 5 inches long. Stretch out ropes, flattening ends until they resemble bones. Allow to rise. Cross two bones on each loaf, attaching with beaten egg (to resemble crossed bones). Roll remaining dough into another thin rope. Cut off small pieces, shape into teardrops, and attach to loaf with beaten egg between bones.

Remember, as you do this, to recall the symbolism of the season—the deepening of winter and the lessening of the earth's fertile energies. Recall passed loved ones and friends with happiness, not sadness.

Cover lightly with a cloth and let stand until just doubled in bulk. Lightly brush loaves with beaten egg. Sprinkle with coarse sugar (or red-dyed sugar). Or, leave plain. Bake in preheated 375°F (190°C). oven for about 30 minutes. Yield: 2 loaves.

Cookies

Cookies are sweetened, distant relatives of the flat breads served by our Neolithic predecessors. Cookies have always been baked into specific shapes for ritual and magical purposes.

Sugar Cookies

Many of us have eaten cut-out sugar cookies at Yule. As mentioned in
chapter 7
, bell-shaped cookies were once eaten for protection and to drive away evil. Cookies in the shapes of animals represent the sacrifices that were once offered to the goddesses and gods.

If you make simple sugar cookies, cut them into specific shapes representing your magical goals. Such cookies make strong magical tools. Remember to visualize as you mix, cut, and slide them into the oven (see Symbols,
page 341
, for more ideas).