The House Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018
Prepare Food with Awareness
The Spirituality of Food
Food is such a presence in everyday life that it’s easy to forget it’s a spiritual thing as well as a physical thing. By clearing the mind and focusing on each movement and action you make during the process of eating, you can gain a better understanding of the spiritual nourishment provided by food. On a practical level, this practice also relaxes the mind and body, which in turn facilitates the consumption and digestion of the food, as well as deepening your appreciation for the taste and texture.
Eating simply to keep yourself alive denies the spiritual aspect of the act. By eating with awareness, you create the opportunity for that spiritual connection to reemerge in your life. To add dimension to the spiritual aspect of your relationship with food and eating, try the following:
✵ When you plan a meal, think about the various sources and origins of the different foods that you intend to involve.
✵ Consider how seasonally available food reflects the energy of the turning year and how internalizing that energy by eating the food in turn affects you.
✵ Take the opportunity to prepare and eat seasonally available foods and write down how your relationship with the season’s energy is affected.
✵ Take the time to prepare your food in a relaxed, aware, and focused manner.
✵ Do not multitask while eating; take the time to consume that food in a relaxed manner, savoring each bite and appreciating the energy.
✵ Try not to cook if you are angry, resentful, or afraid. The energy transfers to the food; the energy creates a less than supportive environment.
✵ Always sit down to eat. Honor the food and the people eating it by taking the time to sit and consume it.
✵ Before you begin to prepare food, take a moment to take a deep breath and exhale with awareness to bring yourself into the moment.
✵ To help you focus, bless the kitchen by lighting a candle as a representative of the sacred fire, itself a representation of the Goddess. Another alternative is to flick drops of water around the kitchen with your fingers to bless the space, if that works for you. You can put a pinch of salt in the water if you like.
Like other work in the kitchen, if your mind wanders when you set out to prepare food in a spiritual frame of mind or if you have difficulty focusing on the spiritual aspect, don’t stress about it. Try touching or standing at your altar or shrine for a moment before preparing food to serve as a visual reminder that it is a spiritual act. Lighting candles on the table or saying grace or a blessing can remind everyone of the spiritual aspect of eating too. At the very least, being in a neutral or positive frame of mind is key to creating and consuming food that is spiritually as well as physically nourishing.
Honor the spiritual energy of the food you eat by acknowledging its presence and participation in your own spiritual practice. Look upon the food you prepare and consume as a way to interact with the natural flow of energy, and respect your time spent eating food as an essential element within your ongoing dialogue with your spirituality. Like other natural objects, food has a great deal to teach you about yourself and your relationship with the world around you. Eating and preparing food offers you the chance to touch nature and celebrate your spirituality on a daily basis, without taking extra formal action. By simply listening to what the energy of food has to say to you while you consume it with awareness, you can appreciate the flow of energy and the affirmation of life, and you can further expand your home-based spiritual practice.
If you are interested at all in cooking on an open hearth, be it in a fireplace or outdoors, an excellent source is William Rubel’s The Magic of Fire: Hearth Cooking: One Hundred Recipes for the Fireplace or Campfire.