What is Kitchen Witchery?
Kitchen witchery is magic that uses witchcraft to infuse food and beverages with magic and spells. It uses ingredients, colors, and herbs as the carriers of spellworking. It can be used to place a specific intention in food like “May this food help me hold strength and connection as I go about my day,” or used to create a specific mood such as “a relaxed fun event.”
Kitchen witchery can also be seen as acknowledging our connection to the earth and the way it sustains us, reconnecting us back into the web of life. Our bodies are made from the earth through the minerals and things that we eat, and we can call on that relationship through kitchen witchery.
Kitchen Witchery as Ritual
Kitchen witchery can also be more elaborate. It’s a type of folk magic that can be used not just with humans but also given as food offerings to the spirit world. There are folk magic practices throughout Europe of food offerings to house spirits and Deities of the home.
An example is Hecate’s Deipnon which was celebrated at the dark moon. Ritual food was taken out to the house threshold or a crossroads and offered to Hecate and the restless dead. It also helped clear the house and people of anything that they didn’t want to carry into the next moon cycle.
You can also create a meal to have with the spirits if you choose. Día de los Muertos feasts are a common example, but I’ve also seen these types of spirit feasts during initiations and rites of passage.
Infusing Magic into Beverages & Food
Kitchen witchery can be as simple as stirring an intention into your morning beverage or your food. This is a very easy practice. You just charge water, tea, coffee, or whatever you drink. It's ideal to do this first thing in the morning. As I'm pouring the beverage into the glass I'm going to drink out of, I say my intention or I say my intention as I'm stirring it.
I find it's helpful to use an intention for the day that is about what you want to embody. It might be patience, calm, confidence, iron-clad boundaries, cooperation, working with others, or efficiency. Whatever you need for the day.
Then imagine yourself drinking that in as you drink your beverage. And that’s it. If you like a bit more ceremony you can say something like “It is so” or “By the power of three times three, as I will it so mote it be,” and stir your beverage nine times. Or draw a pentacle over it with your finger or charge it with your hands or breathe into it. Just do whatever feels easy to you. If you make it complex you probably won’t do it.
You can do this with any food you are cooking. Add the intention while you’re cooking, or once it’s done, or even as you set it on the table.
The Basics of Kitchen Magic
If you want to go deeper you can do more than just charge the meal. Foods, just like everything else, have magical properties and you can do some research on that.
Using herbs to layer in magic is probably the easiest and most common way of creating magical food.
Common Magical Herbs
I like to use herbs that are easily available from my garden or the store.
Ginger: Enhances magic and speeds results, prosperity, love, and success.
Cloves: Speeds results, protection, fire magic, abundance, used in love magic or love glamours.
Mint: Mental clarity, boosts intuition (especially dream magic), water magic, stimulates conversation.
Cinnamon: Enhances magical energy, speeds results, prosperity, enhances intuition, protection, fire magic, and helps call spirits.
Nutmeg: Luck, money, and health.
Basil: Protection, prosperity, soothes disagreements, love magic, banishing, and fidelity spells.
Rosemary: Protection, fire magic, clearing, memory, and mental clarity.
Thyme: Right action, right timing, or changing the speed of time, ( my personal take) enhances health, clearing, courage, and protection from nightmares.
Marjoram & Oregano: Joy and celebration, prosperity, and protection.
Garden Sage: Wisdom, enhances resolution of disagreements, enhances a long life, wisdom in old age, clarity, and protection.
Bay Leaf: Protection, luck, victory and success, initiation, and prosperity.
Dill: Glamour and love magic, prosperity, protection from harmful magical people, protector of babies, and air magic.
Fennel: Air magic, clear thoughts and communication, protection.
Roses: Glamour, love, and beauty.
You can add the intention by stirring in the herbs in a clockwise (sunwise) direction and speaking your intention aloud, asking the herbs to release their powers into the food. I like to rub herbs between my hands to wake them up before adding them.
Using Color Magic
Or you can use color magic in the plates or the food. I used to work with a community-based spell called the Red Dragon Dinner. It was a spell that was created to call for a cure for AIDS. It was later expanded to include breast cancer and any type of blood disease.
The plates, food, and decorations were all red. Everyone wore red clothes and came with joyous stories to celebrate the lives of those who were struggling or who had passed.
We had a red drink, and at the end of every story someone would say “All hail the Red Dragon,” and people would respond with “All hail the red living blood.” This spell originated in the Midwestern gay male and witch community.
Hosting as a Sacred Act
A lot of us have people over for the holidays, whether they are witchy holidays or traditional cultural holidays. Maybe you're inviting people who don't know each other and you want the event to be fun.
You could try adding in herbs that are warm or give mental clarity to encourage conversation, or add herbs associated with love and beauty if it’s a romantic meal or a gathering with people who are very dear to you.
If you are having people over who are difficult, you might want the first thing served to have protective herbs in it. I like rosemary bread. It’s just like making garlic bread only you substitute finely powdered rosemary and salt for the garlic. You can also paint a protective sigil or symbol with water or rosemary tea on the table before people arrive.
Soup: The Ultimate Cauldron Magic
One of the easiest ways to do kitchen witchery is by making soups because you can add almost anything.
You don’t have to spend hours making broth, although I like to make mine from scratch because it has better flavor. A lot of us are busy and don’t have time for that. I mostly don’t either, but when I can, I do.
Making broth allows you to call on the strength of the bones of whatever animal you're using, if you're using meat. If you're using vegetables, you can call on the fiber of the vegetables to provide strength, sustenance, and support. This is the baseline in a soup spell that anchors it and supports everything else you add.
You can purée greens with an immersion blender and hold the intention of emotional movement, not a big blowout, but flow and ease. Greens are strongly associated with water and healing. You can put sigils or symbols on top with a chopstick or spoon and then stir them in before serving.
Orange soup can be yam, squash, or carrot. These colors combine well with fiery herbs like cinnamon, curry, ginger, cloves, turmeric, or chili powder. These make it sweet and warm for companionship or stimulating for creativity and lively conversation.
Tree Nut Correspondences
I also put magic into things with nuts. They are the concentrated essence of an entire tree, so you're getting a lot of magic in a small package.
Nuts can be used in stuffings, desserts, breads, or sprinkled on salads. You can charge them as you chop them or toast them in a dry frying pan and put your intention in then.
Common Magical Nuts
Almonds: Beauty and “it was a wonderful evening” energy.
Hazel: Wisdom and a little divination.
Walnuts: Knowledge, especially for lively, information-filled conversation.
Kitchen Witchery Strengthens Your Spellwork
I teach a lot of in-depth magic that is complex, especially around things like group rituals. But I find that the things that actually teach you to do magic are the simple daily witchcraft practices of hearth and home that can literally take a minute or two.
You don’t always have to be doing spells. A lot of the practices that I do are magical, even if they’re just mundane tasks, and they help me stay connected, remind me to check in magically, and build my magical muscle.
Blessings on your road,
Colette Gardiner
© Copyright ~ Colette Gardiner Golden Web LLC 2025