Supermarket Magic: Creating Spells, Brews, Potions and Powders From Everyday Ingredients

12/13

SUPERMARKET MAGIC

Publication date: December 2013

Price: $15.99 U.S.; $18.50 CAN

Pages: 288

Trim size: 53/16" x 8"

ISBN: 978-0-7387-3655-6

Original Trade Paperback

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MICHAEL FURIE

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Supermarket Magic.indd 1

7/15/13 11:23 AM

Supermarket

Magic

About the Author

Michael Furie (Northern California) has been a practicing

Witch for over fourteen years. He began studying witch-

craft at age twelve and at the age of seventeen officially took the oaths of the Craft. An American Witch, he practices in the Irish tradition and is a priest of the Cailleach.

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creating Spells, Brews, Potions & Powders

from Everyday ingredients

Supermarket

Magic

michael Furie

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Supermarket Magic: Creating Spells, Brews, Potions & Powders from Everyday
Ingredients
© 2013 by Michael Furie. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Edition

First Printing, 2013

Cover illustration by Anne Wertheim

Editing by Laura Graves

Pentagram art by Llewellyn art department

Llewellyn Publications is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending)
978-0-7387-3655-6

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Llewellyn Publications

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Section 1: Shopping and the Witch

Introduction / 3

Section 2: Magical Fundamentals

Chapter 2: Magical Basics / 19

Chapter 3: Magical Ethics / 43

Section 3: Supermarket Spell Book

Chapter 4: Clearing (and Cleansing) / 61

Chapter 5: Harmony / 79

Chapter 6: Healing / 93

Chapter 7: Love, Lust and Beauty Magic / 121

Chapter 8: Luck / 147

Chapter 9: Money / 159

Chapter 10: Protection / 173

Chapter 11: Psychic Ability and Divination / 187

Chapter 12: Sabbats and Esbats / 197

Chapter 13: Miscellany / 261

Bibliography and Suggested Reading / 267

Section 1

ShoPPing and

thE Witch

without a squeaky, wobbly wheel) and walk into the

grocery store with only one thing on my mind; magic!

I know that sounds like a silly notion, but it really isn’t.

A grocery store is a great place to find a wide variety of ingredients for powerful spells! Herbs, spices, oils, foods, and drinks are all gathered in one easily accessible place; no searching out expensive, odd ingredients in various

occult shops or traipsing through the woods desperately

trying to find the correct root, herb or fungus! You have

literally thousands of magical ingredients at your disposal without any of the hassles of trying to obtain them individually from various sources. Much has been written

in the past about herb magic and some things have been

written about food magic, but precious little has been

3

4 Introduction

written about how to work powerful magic with ingredi-

ents exclusively from the supermarket.

Magic; in order to continue to be relevant in our

lives, must evolve and grow as we do and also, as our cul-

ture grows, changes, and expands. The supermarket then;

being our modern marketplace and (almost) apothecary,

offers us a fantastic and ample supply of items to use in

magic, to the exclusion of difficult to obtain and exotic

ingredients. No longer should anyone feel forced to sift

through endless mail-order, internet and catalog sources

searching for just the right herb or oil when such a wealth of magical supplies exists so close to our own homes. The

possibilities are practically limitless.

I spent some time toying with what to call this book.

Some other possible name ideas were, “I can’t find weird

ingredients, HELP!” or “I live with people and I don’t

want them to know I do magic” or “I can’t afford all the

fancy stuff, help!” Any of these names would be appropri-

ate for this book because it covers a wide variety of in-

gredients, ideas, and spells that you can perform at home

after a quick trip to your local supermarket to pick up

all the necessary items. These spells are modern and will

require no complex preparation or ingredients, nor will

there be any grand, overly involved rituals needed.

I prefer a simple approach in all that I do. Witchcraft

is drawn from the magic of the common folk; not the

wealthy aristocracy. Most witches of the past were never

able to afford brass hanging censers, copper pentacle plat-

ing with that spirit, we should use what we have available to us; a large variety of herbs, oils, candles, and foods at our local markets. Not that the fancy or expensive tools

and ingredients are bad; far from it, it’s just that they are sometimes difficult to find and of course they
are
expensive. When I was first starting out, I used a kitchen knife as an athame and pretty much only worked with herbs,

oils and candles I could buy at the supermarket. I lived in a small town where exotic herbs were impossible to get

and there weren’t any occult supply stores within at least fifty miles, so except for the few herbs I was able to get mail-order, the local grocery store was my witch shop. A

handmade wax pentacle, a chalice I was lucky to find at a

thrift store, my kitchen athame, a stick for a wand, a clay cauldron-shaped pot my mother gave me and ingredients from the supermarket made up my entire collection

of witch supplies and they worked very well. To this day,

oregano is my favorite magical herb.

If you are already an experienced witch or magical

practitioner, I hope this book will add to your practice,

but even if you have never cast a spell, chapters 2 and

3 focus on explaining all the basics of magic and spell

casting, making it a complete volume of both theory and

practice. This book will be broken down by intention and

for each magical intention several options will be given.

This type of magic could be described as kitchen witch-

ery since it is a rather “use what is available and what

6 Introduction

works” approach to casting spells. While it is worthwhile

to invest your time in the acquisition of specific ingredients and definitely worth the trouble of making candles

or performing full scale rituals, it is not always possible to do so. In that case we need simple, effective spells that can be used whenever needed.

navigating the

Supermarket

When I was a kid, I loved to go shopping. Of course,

when you are a child, things often seem a lot more

adventurous than they really are. As an adult, grocery

shopping is usually a weekly two to three hour ordeal for

me; having to stop at four different stores to gather all the essentials. As a witch, being around large groups of people can be a bit of an emotional minefield; all those people,

most of whom are hurriedly searching for their needed

items, just fills me with anxiety. I have made the mistake of going to a supermarket on the day before Thanksgiving

7

8 Chapter 1

twice in my life and it has become a goal of mine to never, ever do that again. That crowd was just unbearable!

Despite some flaws such as crowds or narrow aisles,

the supermarket can be a wonderful treasure trove of

magical ingredients. They have herbs, candles, oils, food

and drink, things like cheesecloth which can be used

for charm bags and they sometimes even have incense

sticks or oil diffusers which bring added magical atmo-

sphere. Properly prepared, a witch can have a calm, pleas-

ant shopping trip and load up on all sorts of magical es-

sentials. Granted, some stores are larger than others and

to get all the ingredients for a spell may take more than

one stop, but none of the spells included here contain any overly-exotic or rare ingredients. Of course, if you live

near one of those mega markets, everything will probably

be right there.

The first time I walked into one of those gigantic,

warehouse-type supermarkets I was genuinely awe-

struck; I could not believe how many different products

were all brought together in one place. Granted, the place was about the size of a football field and they were loading crates of food onto the shelves using an actual forklift, but it was still all in one building. Personally, I feel that the rise of the mega warehouse supermarket is a mixed

blessing. While it is wonderful to be able to buy such an

incredible variety of food in one place, having to work our way through over a hundred people just to get a bag of

potatoes, a box of cereal and some yogurt is a huge draw-

For Better or Worse: Navigating the Supermarket 9

back. Luckily, there are still smaller “mom and pop” mar-