KITCHEN RITES:
A Taste For Magic

By Jesse Wolf Hardin
There’s an element of magic in cooking. And a loving cook is a magician.
Magic, after all, is the spell behind every successful recipe. No matter how basic its designs or mundane the presentation. No matter how often it’s been served or how quickly consumed... and it’s one of the missing ingredients in any culinary
flop. The element of sorcery is evident in a flaming glaze flambé at midnight, and when we’re ushered into a state of enchantment by the designs of foodstuffs
artfully arrayed on the plate, their colors swimming about under the influence of allspice and candlelight. There’s certainly magic afoot whenever sunlight does that ol’ soft-shoe across the drying dishes. Whenever our delighted cook leans towards the window facing the river, to better spoon moonbeams into the blueness of her bowl. And when an eagle calls, just as she concludes her daily dinner’s blessing. Watch her lift a spatula in the air like a magic scepter, followed by a trail of tiny exploding
stars. A gentle motion of her hand, and she calls forth the spirit of flying doves from a steaming pot pie, evokes the essence of laughing children residing in homemade cookies and milk, raises swaying sheaves of wheat from the holy ground of her wholesome crusty bread.

Not that the essence of the magical is restricted to such singularly exquisite moments. There is utter magic in the way that organic molecules reconfigure themselves, making the transition from soil to plant, to animal and to human, and inevitably back to soil again. There’s magic in our digestive systems, a partnership of bodily acids and bacteria rendering food into a puree of nutrients. In the way smells transport us through an ether of mirage-like memories and immediate desires. The way that tiny single-celled yeast plants inspire bread dough to heave and rise. The way that the sun’s rays are swallowed up by the glistening leaves, sweetened with the tree’s best intentions, and then squirted into the chambers of a pulsing orange. The effects of the orange on our tongue. The bodily mending made possible by its vitamins and its minerals. The inevitable smile on the face of any kid who eats it.

A magic potion is that which enchants and charms, inducing a state of heightened perception, raising the sensation of smells and tastes to a fevered pitch. It dissolves the line between excruciating awakeness and sensuous sleep, daytime visions and nighttime dreams. They say it only takes one dusting from the Fairy Godmother’s silk box, or a splash of holy water, or a drink from the sacred ram’s horn... for the heart and senses to overcome the rational mind. A single bite of one of a lovingly prepared meal, and mighty revelations may thunder in. A connection with the universe made. Great things suddenly possible, and yet nowhere one needs to go... for all that matters is right here, right now.

We give thanks with every breath to the fertile, hallowed ground we live on and eat the bounty of. Thanks to God or Goddess, to Gaia, to the Holy Spirit in any language, by any name. For tens of thousands of years, on all parts of the globe, food was held to be sacred. Sacred not just because we required it to live, but because we recognized
in it an expression and bodily extension of the divine whole. Every meal, a magical, spirit filled rite. Every food, a source of connection.

The root of the word “religion” is “binding together.” Handling, smelling and eating of the same foods we are bound in exquisite experience as well as corporal purpose. We bond with the food, with the earth that supplies it, with the gentle hands that planted or fed or transported it. We bond with one another through shared experience and shared tastes. We bond with our families, our communities and ecosystems, bond with all that is.
No matter how modern or mundane, every kitchen in the world offers an opportunity for revelation: self-knowledge, self love, empowerment, connection and enchantment! Learning to prepare and relate to food is no chore, but rather a rite-of-passage, a test that no one else can take for us, a sacred quest for the reclamation of our own sentient souls. Cooking opens up the door and invites us into the experience of sacred space. We can each rise from the womb of the kitchen as from a birthing hut. Our fears and illusions, hesitation and self-doubt are all that gets in the way of our being forever altered by this mealtime litany: re-formed into our original selves, revealed as responsible celebrants of miraculous life, as agents of Gaian process, as playmates and vehicles for omnipresent Spirit! As cooks, eaters, and committed praise givers!

Let us open our mouths to new tastes, our minds to new ideas, and our hearts to love. And let us open our eyes wide.... to the day to day miracle of our numinous lives. Remember the magic of your kitchen
this holiday season.

Jesse Wolf Hardin is an acclaimed teacher of Earth-centered spirituality,
and the author of five books including Gaia Eros: Reconnecting
To The Magic & Spirit of Nature and performs on the GaiaTribe CD “The Enchantment”. He and his partners teach Gaian Spirituality at their riverside sanctuary. The Earthen Spirituality
Project & Sweet Medicine Women’s Center, Box 820, Reserve, NM 87830. mail@earthenspirituality.org