The House Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018
The Energy of Food
The Spirituality of Food
When you handle something, part of your personal energy is transferred to it. Your base energy is affected by your emotional state, which acts as a lens or a filter through which your personal energy passes and is thereby affected by it. This is important to remember all the time (it’s one of the reasons you’re not supposed to handle sacred objects without being properly prepared), but it’s particularly important to remember when you handle food.
The common saying is that you are what you eat, but it is also true to say that you eat what you are or, more precisely, who you were when you prepared your meal. And if you’re eating a meal prepared by someone else, you’re consuming some of their energy too. (This may make you look at eating out in a different way, especially if you do it a lot because you think you can’t cook, or it seems inconvenient, or you don’t enjoy your kitchen.)
The spiritual dimension of food and food-related activity nourishes the soul through the exchange of energy. Preparing and consuming food spiritually is an act of appreciation for the here and now. Consuming food spiritually can involve thinking about the food’s sources, its connections, its associations to the season, its place in your life, and the impact its energy has on yours, among other things. The spiritual appreciation of food is subtle, but it nourishes and strengthens your connection to the spiritual aspect of the world around you.
Everyone eats. It’s one of the basic physical needs. A personal spiritual connection to your food gives it another dimension beyond the basic physical relationship of fuel to consumer, however. The very least food can do is deliver the basic calorie package with its vitamins and nutrients to the consumer. It only makes sense to enhance it by handling it with awareness at every step of the process in order to maximize its spiritual potential. Why would you not want to provide the maximum amount of good the food could do for those to whom you serve it? Why would you not use food as a spiritual expression and mode of communication? Because your energy affects food at every stage of the process of preparation and consumption, it’s important to be aware of your energy while you do it.
As touched on in Chapter 8, there are ethical issues that surround using food as an undeclared vehicle of change for people other than yourself; it may be interpreted as magical manipulation and a trespass upon someone’s free will, without the subject’s consent. This is a good rule to keep in mind. How you prepare and consume food has a spiritual impact upon you and those you feed.
Food does possess its own energy, and generally this will be the predominant energy it carries. The energy of every person who has handled it will add to it, however, modifying and shaping the innate energy to various extents. An offering of food to a deity is an offering of the food’s energy, but it is also a sacrifice of the physical benefit that might be obtained from it. (Theoretically, the spiritual reward for the offering outweighs the sacrificed physical benefit!)
Food and the Seasons
In today’s world, you can eat strawberries in January and cherries in November. We’ve forgotten that once upon a time people had to seize the opportunity to enjoy seasonal food within a limited time frame. As different fruits and vegetables became available, the changing of the seasons was reinforced in the mind of the community. The energies felt during the different seasons can also affect the energy of your spiritual heart and in your home, so paying attention to them is a good way to further nourish your spiritual hearth and keep your home a place of comfort and renewal.
You can explore the seasonal and spiritual aspects of food today by shopping regularly at a farmers’ market. Week by week, the produce available will vary in supply and quality. By familiarizing yourself with what is available at different times of the year in your region, you can gain a better understanding of those energies and how they impact the energy of the food you prepare. Bring a selection of that seasonal produce home regularly and prepare those items, sensing their energies as you touch them and taste them.