The House Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018

Bringing Spirituality to Your Kitchen
The Kitchen As a Sacred Space

Part of the trick to maintaining a home-based spiritual practice is to remind yourself frequently that your everyday life is a spiritual activity. The best way to do this is to establish a certain set of rituals to perform every day—some domestic activities that are set apart as ceremonial in some way and done with awareness and intent, not full-fledged ceremonial rituals in your kitchen. (Although if you want to do something like that, then go right ahead!) Regular tasks such as making coffee or setting the table are great opportunities to link a spiritual thought or act. It doesn’t have to be complicated; it can be as basic as using the task to remind yourself that what you are doing is spiritual, just as everything else you do during the day and night is spiritual.

Here are some suggestions for what you can do to add more spiritual awareness to your kitchen-based activities.

✵ Meditate: Meditation can be as simple as sitting down in a tidied kitchen (or at least one free of crumbs, juice spills, and a stack of dishes in the sink) with a cup of tea, doing a series of body-relaxing exercises, and then just opening yourself up to the energy of the room and your home. You can choose something to think about or just let your mind drift.

✵ Make offerings: If you have a kitchen altar or shrine, touch base with it at least once a day. Offerings don’t have to be big affairs; a pinch of an herb you’re using to season a stew, a candle, even just a touch and a whispered “Thank you for being here” can do the trick.

✵ Make housework spiritual by recognizing the sacred in the tasks: If you’re washing the dishes or mopping the floor, think about scrubbing the negativity away to reveal a pure and free object behind. Think of sweeping the kitchen like sweeping a temple: a clean place of worship or honoring is done out of respect for the deity or principle you’re honoring.

✵ Prepare food with awareness: Instead of throwing something together for a meal, take the time to be in the moment as you assemble it. (There’s more on this in Chapter 9.)

✵ Consume food with awareness: Some of us may associate saying grace before a meal with parental discipline, but it’s a lovely idea. One such example is the Japanese Shinto practice of taking a moment before eating to thank the people who raised, harvested, transported, and were otherwise involved with getting the food from its natural state to your table. Even if it’s a simple “Bless the hands that touched this food,” a phrase like this spoken in quiet thanks provides you with a moment to reconnect with the world around you and the energy it emits.

✵ Wipe counters: When you wipe counters down at night, think of clearing away all the clutter of thoughts and events that happened during the day, leaving both your hearth and your mind calm and balanced.

✵ Light a candle: There is something very calming and spiritual about lighting a candle. It’s a particularly fitting act for someone practicing hearthcraft, as the flame symbolizes so much about the practice. Try choosing a special candleholder and placing it on your kitchen shrine or somewhere particular in your kitchen, and lighting it before you begin work. Keep safety in mind when you choose where to place it. As you light it, visualize or speak aloud a welcome to the essence of the flame and the blessing it bestows upon your hearth. If a candle isn’t your thing or you want to try something different, see the following section on oil lamps.