The Art of the Kitchen Witch
The Kitchen Witch at Home
By Onomaris
Kitchen witch is a very open term - it covers all sorts of things but usually seems to be the catch-all phrase for people who whip stuff up in the kitchen. Magical meals and sensuous scents. Most of the kitchen witches I know are in actuality something else - Wiccan, Druid, Asatruar...they use the term 'kitchen witch' to refer to the non-religious magical aspects of their lives. The momentary, temporary things they do on the spur of the moment or to add oomph to a ritual.
But a kitchen witch can be so much more. It's a wonderful term for the eclectic Pagan who uses magic to enhance his/her life and performs most of that magic at home during the daily course of life. It's a term that crosses all boundaries in Paganism and a simple way to intoduce friends and children to the wonder of magic without the religion. It's also a nice meeting point between earthy Pagan, hedonistic Pagan, and techno-Pagan.
This series of articles will be looking kitchen witchcraft within the home and garden. And I'd love to hear from you about how you incorporate witchcraft into your life, simple spells and recipes, learning experiences, and everything else.
The kitchen is often called the heart of the home - and it's probably the most over-referenced in kitchen witch articles. But it is simply one of the many rooms in your home. So let's leave the kitchen to last and start elsewhere... the bathroom. This is more important than people often think. It is the collecting place for almost all the grime of your life and a such it easily becomes an unbalanced place that drains your energy. The lighting, the ventilation, the location, the color...all these things affect the energy within a room and so often the bathroom suffers in these areas. How many bathrooms are lit with fluorescent bulbs, a dingy cream or yellow, and dusty in all the corners? How often does the grime build up in the bath and a yellow ring grow around the sink plughole? Does your toilet have an odor? Is the trash can overflowing? Are the towels a little past their wash-by-
date and the face cloths discolored?
The bathroom is a room ruled by water - as such it should be filled with flowing energy, refreshing and restorative. This is a place to connect with our past, present, and future. A place to cleanse our bodies - and spirits - and freshen up. A place to eliminate waste. But so often we let our bathrooms stagnate. And this is foolish. How well can you cleanse your body if the place you use is stagnant? And how refreshing will the energy of such a room be? Instead of washing away the dirt of the day you end up adding to the burden you carry.
We tend to hurry in and out of the bathroom which I feel is a great pity. Here are some suggestions to create a room that will calm you down even if you need to hurry:
First the practical matters. Clean the room thoroughly - wipe out the corners to get rid of the gathered dead skin cells and body hair. Clean the mirror. Wash the shower curtain. Drip some lemon oil on an old cloth and wipe over the surfaces to disinfect and leave it smelling fresh but not sweet. Try using matching or complimentary towels (they don't have to be frilly) and add some reading material. Put up a picture or a poster of a landascape (water-based scenes work well).
Wash the towels and face cloths regularly - add a few drops of tea tree oil to the final rinse. It kills the bugs and helps kills odd odors. A cup of vinegar in the rinse will also help brighten whites and kill moldy smells.
Add some potpourri, incense, or scented candles. Go for scents that suit your personality as well as being calming. If you loathe flowery smells, fill a basket with pinecones, bark, dried lemon and orange peel, and seed pods. Add a few drops of some masculine essential oils such as bergamot, lemongrass, pine, juniper, and sandalwood. You could place a few cones of sandalwood incense and a couple of chunks
of myrrh resin up on the windowsill or in the cupboard - pleasant and non-feminine smelling, this incense will release its scent without being lit or looking 'pretty'.
Switch the shower out for the occasional bath (or if you hate baths, try sitting in the shower and meditating once a week). Add 10 drops of rosemary oil and a tablespoon of salt to the water. It's a sharp, pleasant smell that awakens memories and metaphysically cleanses. Invest in some organic herbal toiletries. Not those flowery and fruity ones. Go for products that use essential oils and have that 'natural' look and feel to them. Soaps with oatmeal and lemon. Shampoos with teatree and lemon. Conditioners with almond oil and
rosemary.
These things will help change the bathroom to a room that promotes peace and healing. When you use your bathroom to prepare for a ritual or for work, you can do so knowing you have increased the energy you are walking out of the house with...and washed away the grime - both physical and metaphorical.
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