January/February 2006 Living Now
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 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 candlelight. 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 assimilable 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 single bite of one of a lovingly prepared meal, and a connection with the universe is 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. Food appeared as a tangible manifestation of the Anima Mundi, the world soul. In fact, for most of our long history humans believed that to consume life of any kind was literally to "eat God," to consume and assume the manifest flesh of Spirit: a pantheon on a plate!  To the ancestors of every race, a feast was a ritual partaking of the Agape, the sacred meal. They likewise affirmed the intrinsic wholeness/holiness in every element of unperverted Nature. They recognized that the most integrative and satisfying truths in life come not as rational conclusion, but as spiritual revelation, as epiphany. They knew— as we are obliged to learn— a ritual approach to our dinners that heightens meaning while deepening sense of value. Every meal, a magical, spirit filled rite. Every food, a source of connection.

There was a time in the not so distant past when all devotional rosary beads were made out of real rose petals, hand rolled and sealed with lampblack. Instead of tasteless communion wafers the priests served real and wholesome chunks of bread, broken from a common loaf. Wiccans make their ceremonies more real by hand feeding each other bread and mead. It is this depth of authenticity, relevance and nourishment that feeds the most powerful religiosity: "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!  Cooking opens up the door and invites us into the experience of sacred space. 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.

Jesse Wolf Hardin is an acclaimed teacher of Earth-centered spirituality, living seven river crossings from a road in an ancient place of power. He is the author of five books., and performs on the GaiaTribe CD "The Enchantment" www.cdbaby.com/gaiatribe. The drawing above is from his book Gaia Eros: Reconnecting To The Magic & Spirit of Nature (New Page 2004). He and his partners teach Gaian Spirituality at their riverside sanctuary, hosting students and guests for studies, counsel, retreats, quests, resident internships and the annual Wild Women’s Gathering:  The Earthen Spirituality Project & Sweet Medicine Women’s Center, Box 820, Reserve, NM 87830 www.earthenspirituality.org