Well, I can tell you what I mean by Kitchen Witchery. I cannot tell you if this is the same thing that other people mean by it.

I mean: My spirituality and my priestesshood and my magick are based around the concept that my home is my temple, all in it are consecrated and holy, and each action that I do is a portion of the ritual of my life.

I mean: Practicality is my watchword. Symbolism is great, but effectiveness is even greater. Rather than find myself stymied by, say the improper time of the moon, I alter my working so that it can be effective at this time of the moon. Rather than bemoan the fact that I can’t use candles, I’ll use crystals instead. Recipes are guidelines; so are spells. The important thing is knowing the principles so that you understand why using cold water will lengthen (perhaps terminally) the time your bread will take to rise, or why calling on Kali-Ma to bless an infant might be … counterproductive.

I mean: my sphere is the sphere of the home: food, health, relationships, community: on all levels. A person could take Kitchen Witchery into politics, on the grounds that what s/he is doing is improving the community at a political level; likewise military or law-enforcement. A person could likewise carry Kitchen Witchery into a medical or an activist career.

I mean: fancy is nice, Enlightenment is good, but a sound soul and a full belly are my direct goals, for myself and for the people who ask me for help. My butcher knife and a handful of iodized salt will work just fine: I have other uses for my money than paying other folks to carefully craft silver swords by the light of the waning moon in October.

And I mean: because of my relating the scales up and down, this is the true source of my impatience with Revenge and with the statement “Do what you wanna do” and with Luv Spells. You watch a family closely: you watch the shifting alliances with siblings, and their angers and reconciliations — or failures to reconcile; you watch who folks fall in — and out — of love with, and the pain, and the results; you watch the efforts to put food on the table and pay the housing; and you come to realize that permanent pain is not a viable solution to anything.

I hold with Abraham Lincoln on this one: “Always treat your friends as though they may one day be your enemies; and your enemies as though they may one day be your friends.” In my effort, as a Kitchen Witch, to assist in the formation and cleaning and fine-tuning of community, this thought is my constant guide.

–Mama Rose,
September 1997.