Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Moar on Kitchen Witchery

Let us continue with our discussion since austensibly, this is what this blog is supposed to be about.

It's okay to have untargeted kitchen witch practices.

Look, I'm the first to say my pew! pew! pew! is lacking. I think if you have a blog though that is magically focused (and if it's not then it's moot, n'est-ce pas? You can talk about whatever you damn well please then!), then you need to tie it together for your readers.

I thought thegreencall made a beautiful point about bread baking. S/he doesn't *have* to say and then I used cinnamon and drew sigals, blahblahblah. S/he could talk about how and why it's a kitchen witch meditational practice to zir, that's perfectly valid! Talk about why whatever is you're doing - baking, cooking, cleaning, sewing, whatever is a magical experience for you. This is a free form essay, you're not being graded, whatever reason you have for it being a magical experience for you is right. There are things in everyone's life I think (I hope!) that are magical to them but not targeted for results. It's good to have and share those experiences too.

You need to know how to do this stuff. That does not mean you need to do it all the time.

I had suggested a base education in house wifery, but that doesn't mean that you're responsible for it all the time in some kind of psychotic Valium laced Stepford scenerio. I know how to do laundry, but Jow does it in our household. If he ever said, do your own fucking laundry, I could.

If you know how to clean your house sparklingly clean but chose to not live in a constant Miss Martha police state, that's okay. If it's part of your strategy as a hearth witch, well then you must be a clever kitchen witch! My house would not pass Lakshmi inspection at all times (or really like 29 days out of the month) either. If you have the means to send out your laundry or order take out every night, rock out. You just need to know how to perform these functions should you ever need to. It's sort of like knowing how to do long division. It's good to know how to do by hand, but the gods made calculators for a reason.


Sometimes, simple is best.

I suggested a basic practice in kitchen/hearth witchery for people who work primarily in "higher" magic because like a proper dilettante, I believe in being well rounded. And frankly sometimes if you need to do something on the fly, it's a lot easier to pour some salt into a bowl and spit into it than to do a long formal practice. I also think it's good to know simple magic in order to be able to obtain simple things. You need fifty bucks to make your bills this month? You could do something v. formal or you could do something quick and get on with your life. Formal magic often requires a lot more time, energy, and effort. And there are certain things that are better suited to those practices, but you need a quick little something, low magic just seems like a better way to do so.

Furthering the math analogy, you may become so accustomed to Calculus and using a calculator to do so, you forget how to do basic level math. This is not going to help you when it's your job to do bistro math for the table 'cause you're the math chick and you left your cell phone at home.

Some of what I suggest needing to know may seem unnecessary and sort of Mr. Miyagi, but look at it from a kitchen witch's perspective: You claim to be a kitchen/hearth witch, I'm supposed to trust you to do a love spell for me using hearth magic, but . . .you don't know how to take care of your hearth which functions as your temple, your magical work space? Fill in your own mechanic/gyno joke here.

Discuss!

3 comments:

Jay said...

Hi Deb, thegreencall is a he! :-) I've been enjoying discovering this blogging cabal and been thinking about starting up a blog as my LJ is well, LJish (i.e. informal, more personal and mostly locked).

Your posts on hearth magic finally pushed me over the edge to start up my own blog. I've got a couple of posts up on hearth magic, please feel free to check 'em out if you're interested!

Anonymous said...

I love your posts on so many levels....fantastic, honest, charming, magical...wonderful......

Anonymous said...

This has been on my mind lately. I've found myself needing a long time (depends on how inspired or bored I seem to be) to plan a ritual out which is good for general high magicky stuff, but it kinda sucks in the quick and dirty Dpt.
Well there are things you can do in short notice, but they are rather boring and besides, getting your hands dirty with materials is much more fun!

I've found hoodoo to be extensive in the sense that the materials have specific result-oriented correspondences rather than the usual generic elemental/planetary attributions which is very cool.

My only hangup is the whole saint/bible thing that seems to go along with many of the practices.

So do you have any *practical* elemental/witchcraft/folk magic books that don't deal with hoodoo/palo/santeria to suggest?

Although I'm not your stereotypical CM practitioner I can't seem to work really simple spells (What do you mean, *just* burn this leaf and say out loud this three sentence "poem" ?). I'm also must be doing something wrong with simple candle spells. I get very mixed and weak results from them.

brother george.

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