00:22:29.480I mean it's so scary to me in a way that this core practice of feeding our communities
00:22:41.580gathering our people feeding them you know using our knowledge to ferment to store
00:22:51.420to nourish and to keep our secrets about how we understand the land that so often
00:23:00.660makes us a target but it's this very act of gathering and feeding that is seen as
00:23:07.780seditious or dangerous or dangerous we spoke of that kind of duality of things and it's that
00:23:15.040everything that was done in the kitchen you know the feeding the fueling the nourishing the caring
00:23:22.040for infants uh it all got just just flipped on its head didn't it you know the you know feeding
00:23:30.220the community in a cauldron became brewing you know malevolent magic caring for infants became
00:23:36.780killing babies and eating them and you know smearing their blood so that we can fly and you
00:23:41.880know everything just got twisted in that strangest kind of way and
00:23:45.360just that it's part of that whole story of these things being devalued or undervalued or
00:23:56.820twisted into things that they were never intended to be that is both both fascinating and horrifying
00:24:06.240and again there's a strange double edge of things being distorted yeah melissa you're in the united
00:24:14.000states where that twisting is happening in a different way than in canada and the uk how do
00:24:20.340you how do you feel about that these days what twisting do you mean specifically um i the the way
00:24:27.540that women and queer people and trans people become the enemy or become held up in a Christian
00:24:37.240language as witches you know the way that the way that our our uniqueness and our magic and
00:24:44.520our refusal to be a part of an existing system makes us targets again and again and how do we
00:24:50.660how do we survive and resist and can the kitchen help us it's a huge question take us there
00:24:54.780i'm gonna come up with the answer that fixes it uh well here's what i'll say um i mean it's0.98
00:25:01.360i mean if anybody could do it it's you so take this big fucking question0.83
00:25:04.700okay um here's what i'll say uh it's been the same technology used to suppress people again0.98
00:25:11.840and again and again what we're looking at is someone who's outside the dominant you know
00:25:16.340social class or social grouping has knowledge which is essential for the survival of the
00:25:23.000community. Whether we're talking about food, whether we're talking about the knowledge of
00:25:26.320how to relate, whether we're talking about the knowledge of allowing, like the knowledge to
00:25:31.120know yourself enough to know who you are and what you want is actually very radical in the society
00:25:36.180that tells you you're only allowed to be a couple of things. And so, you know, it's because it's
00:25:41.580essential to society that it gets attacked, but it's because it's essential to society that it
00:25:46.500will never actually be snuffed out. Any attempts to suppress the queer, the magical, the feminine,
00:25:53.060all that stuff doesn't actually succeed in eradicating much because these things are
00:25:58.500actually so important to upholding society, to making people happy that they don't go anywhere.
00:26:04.940So all the attempts to squash it, just remember that they're futile. All these years, women1.00
00:26:09.400haven't gone anywhere. All these years, queer people haven't gone anywhere. You go underground1.00
00:26:14.320like the mycelium of a mushroom, you know, but you're still there. Um, and so my, it doesn't
00:26:20.520actually feel in my world, like we have this tension, you know what I mean? I live in a world
00:26:25.260where queer people are centered, where trans people are centered, where, uh, women's voices
00:26:29.520are centered and all that stuff. And it's just, um, it doesn't feel that way in, in my, in the
00:26:35.220America that I live in, uh, it doesn't feel that way. It really feels like I'm in a, an area where
00:26:41.120there's a lot of mushrooms to go back to the mycelial, you know, uh, metaphor. I'm in an
00:26:45.580area where there's a lot of people above the ground. Uh, and that is a good thing. Um, I never
00:26:50.640worry that it's gone. I'm just really, really pleased to be where the mushrooms are. If that
00:26:54.800makes sense. It does. And, you know, we, we recently spoke to, uh, Ialosa Akalatunde who,
00:27:01.860who said the same thing, like they've been trying for thousands of years and we're still here. So
00:27:07.260like don't worry yeah don't worry too much about it I do want to go back to this sort of notion
00:27:13.200of misunderstanding that I think demonizes witches a lot like um Sarah you mentioned
00:27:20.080Macbeth's witches and you know one of the lines there is eye of newt and so you think of like
00:27:25.100you know witches like harvesting you know eyes from you know lizards or whatever and it's like
00:27:30.960horrifying and grotesque but eye of newt is like mustard seed so it's like people will say you're
00:27:37.900this because you used eye of newt in your spell or in your cauldron but it's just freaking mustard0.92
00:27:45.360seed and to me like that's so much of what witchcraft is it's like oh you're a witch it's
00:27:50.700like yeah i just like i stir my pot in in the direction that i want like there's not that much
00:27:56.600danger to it except for this which I also I had to look it up because um it's from um
00:28:04.360the Portland chapter of WITCH so Witch PDX and their manifesto says a single witch is a dangerous
00:28:13.840outlier a coven is a force to be reckoned with an international circle of witches is unstoppable
00:28:21.520And I think that that's the scary thing about the gathering is the gathering.
00:28:28.620When there's more than one witch, the more witches there are around a cauldron, the scarier it is for those who would like to keep the status quo in place.
00:28:40.580So, yeah, I think that that's what's terrifying to the status quo is not the gathering of witches, but like the gathering period, the gathering of dissidents.
00:28:48.140the knowing that when we work together we're stronger than when we're working separately
00:28:53.160does anyone want to talk to like the kitchen as like the meeting place we think the living room
00:28:58.900maybe is but we always end up in the kitchen everybody who's ever been to a party knows that
00:29:03.740we always end up in the kitchen so can we talk about like gathering and being a dangerous force
00:29:09.080to be reckoned with while we're doing these domestic I'm using scare quotes here sort of
00:29:15.280domestic tasks? I'm going to be super short because I do have something to say on this one.
00:29:20.580I love the way that you put this, that it doesn't matter what the witches are doing around the
00:29:25.180cauldron. It doesn't matter what you're brewing. You're terrifying just by virtue of being there.
00:29:30.040So, okay. So what's scary about that, right? It doesn't matter what we're doing. We could be
00:29:33.900making flower crowns, but what's scary about that is the knowledge that's in the brain.
00:29:37.980it's it's what we possess in a hidden sense that makes us scary that's why the cauldron's also
00:29:45.340terrifying because that's also in another occulted thing you never know what's in the
00:29:49.020cauldron it's just bubbling and you're hoping it's a good thing in there and there's just someone
00:29:53.420stirring what's terrifying is not what could possibly be in the cauldron it's the knowledge
00:29:57.300that person possesses the cauldron largely exists as a symbol for a lot of us in the modern world
00:30:02.000you don't have a cauldron you don't have a cauldron i don't have a cauldron uh and so it exists as a
00:30:07.180subconscious symbol for us. And I think what that symbolizes for us as witches is the hiddenness
00:30:12.760of the knowledge that we possess. You mentioned the eye of Newt thing, like that comes from the
00:30:18.860PGM, right? From ancient Greek stuff. A lot of times in the PGM documents, they would write the
00:30:24.420names of their herbs in these hidden herbal codes. This exists as a fence. The purpose for this
00:30:29.740is to keep people who are not part of the in-group from being able to read the documents.
00:30:34.400and whenever you have knowledge that is again essential to the running of the community but
00:30:39.900you're not sharing it with the people in socio-political power you're a threat you're
00:30:45.240basically someone who possesses like top secret information and isn't giving it up and that is1.00
00:30:51.540for a bulk of human history the only power that women and the poor had was I can take care of0.97
00:30:57.900myself I can take care of the community and I'm not going to tell you how to do it and so it is
00:31:03.360the part of us that gets demonized it's also our strengths it's also our ace card that we can play
00:31:08.620any time against the oppressor right so that's that's an important thing i think to note um just
00:31:13.680wanted to touch on that quick yeah beautifully said absolutely it's that idea that uh those in
00:31:19.960power love to demonize the very thing that you know terrifies them so much which is the power
00:31:26.660of you know the other the hidden the kind of the downtrodden um and just you know whenever looking
00:31:34.300back into the kind of the history of witchcraft it's like just any book ever that was written
00:31:38.760probably by a man about witchcraft just take it with just the most huge pinch of salt because
00:31:44.720it's just all just basically complete crap but it's you know it tells us something about what
00:31:51.060they thought and and how they they saw and feared these these people and these women but uh0.86
00:31:57.080yeah it's it's it's always fascinating you know even now you know when you talk about
00:32:02.200the stories of witches people they think of the cauldras they think of the the uh flying on
00:32:08.060broomsticks and things and it's uh fascinating to see the stories and the fears that have endured
00:32:14.180for various reasons yes i love that you brought up the grain of salt too because um melissa maybe
00:32:20.240you can speak to this this is an ancient um and a latin saying that it comes from a cum granis
00:32:27.680solwis so we've been saying like take it with a grain of salt for thousands and thousands and
00:32:32.780thousands of years and and again this is like this um this symbolic act it's it's food but we're not
00:32:39.660talking about food we're not talking about like actually putting salt in a book before you read
00:32:44.360or something like that but um this notion of flavoring things differently so that we interpret
00:32:51.300them differently I love it I don't have a question attached to that I just got really excited about
00:32:56.740this notion of adding salt to things metaphorically to like be cautious and maybe like you know keep
00:33:05.080your keep your critical awareness with you yeah be mindful it's going to be imperfect when it
00:33:11.360arrives to you is kind of how I think of the salt thing. And I like that it kind of infers
00:33:17.740that truth isn't static, right? The truth isn't one thing. And that even partially diluted,
00:33:22.400it can still be useful to us. So much of, I mean, so much of your book, Sarah, is the mythology
00:33:27.840and the folklore. And even though that stuff is not like literally true, it is still incredibly
00:33:33.660valuable. So much of witchcraft and the witch archetype exists within that like, that storytelling
00:33:38.880telling place between true and untrue. And so I like that part of the take it with a grain of salt
00:33:44.260too. Yeah. I like too that both in folk stories and in recipes, these are places where we hide
00:33:53.920in plain sight, right? We put our knowledge into places where we can kind of slip below the radar
00:34:01.720a little bit um with that in mind can we talk about recipes can we talk about like things
00:34:09.580we make or can make or ways we can make that um maybe gather people or that help our own
00:34:16.740friends mutations at this time what are recipes you do that make you feel your magic and and
00:34:23.300before you answer that I want to just mention a tweet I read recently where the person was like
00:34:28.280my most prized possession is my grandmother's handwritten collection of recipes they are
00:34:35.060terrible I love this notion of like whether the recipes are good or not it's like it's part of
00:34:43.700your history you know we we maybe all make our you know spaghetti sauce the way our mom made it
00:34:49.520whether that's right or good even whether it even tastes good so um back to Risa's question but also
00:34:57.160with this mind of like keeping our our histories and our genealogies through this method of cooking
00:35:03.880I think you know following any any recipe that has been passed to you whether it be from family
00:35:09.480or friends you know that is an ancestor magic in itself so whether whether the recipe is rubbish
00:35:15.920or whether you follow it exactly it's already something to just be to be passed on a recipe
00:35:21.800and that it's a story in a sense you know so that story has been passed on which is beautiful and
00:35:26.740for me personally I am absolutely shocking at following recipes I've never managed to follow
00:35:32.740a recipe precisely but I'm okay with that I have accepted such a thing but for me it's the magic
00:35:39.560of bringing people together so I come from a long line of feeders that's just what we do you know
00:35:46.740we want to make sure everyone is very well fed so for me it's it's the magic of just bringing
00:35:52.380people around a kitchen table and and the kind of a little bit of the kind of history of that
00:35:59.620i suppose like celebrating uh reminiscing telling the stories remembering people um
00:36:05.180so recipes can be awesome but also they can also they don't have to be the whole of the magic
00:36:13.460for for me for my autumn equinox ritual i think i i don't know if i say this in the book
00:36:19.540specifically, because I do talk about my autumn equinox rituals there. I've got one specific
00:36:24.560recipe that I think is useful for sharing that other people might like. One of the things that
00:36:29.140I do for the autumn equinox, again, because I don't really celebrate Mabon in the traditional
00:36:33.000way, is I do so much magical work involving the forest that's near where I live. I live in New
00:36:38.240York City, but there's actually old growth forest like a block from my house. So I'm in like the
00:36:41.840best part of the city for witches to be in. And I'll never tell you where that is because I don't
00:36:47.100want anyone to find out. But so, so much of my work is walking through the woods and engaging
00:36:53.980with the spirits that are there, the spirits of the land. And I'm about to enter into the time
00:36:57.740of the year when they all go away and they all go underground, which is what that they do. That's
00:37:02.760the lives that they live. And I'm stuck here by myself and it sucks. So fall time and the autumn0.99
00:37:08.860equinox is kind of like one of my last chances to get out there and make my offerings and to really
00:37:14.780be among those spirits while they're in like the last bits of their potency and their power when
00:37:19.280they're really available. Um, they're probably gone like after Halloween, you know, once like
00:37:23.920the earth is really cold. Um, and so I have a recipe in my book for, uh, they're like little
00:37:29.960apple cheddar, rosemary hand pies. Um, they're so easy to make. And I was thinking about offerings
00:37:35.980that are like traditionally always accepted. Like, uh, when you look at different time periods,
00:37:40.940apples are usually always good because they're they're very nutritionally beneficial they're
00:37:45.760delicious and it's generally believed that spirits like stuff that we like um rosemary is also a
00:37:51.220plant that i've never seen it recorded to have a negative use it's one of those plants that's so
00:37:56.060medicinal that people see it as a helpful plant and who doesn't like cheese um cheese has been
00:38:01.900used as an offering for spirits since the ancient world everyone loves cheese even gods and goddesses
00:38:07.020love cheese so that's that's the idea behind those and these are little things that you can
00:38:11.460like slip in a tree hole you can bury them underground you can uh do whatever it is you
00:38:16.520normally do with your offerings uh you can also like share them with your coven in ceremony you
00:38:21.260can have them you know you can bury half eat half share it with the earth literally like there's a
00:38:26.280lot that can be done with them uh it's it's offering technology so that takes the shape of
00:38:29.800your practice but it's a recipe that i think is like cut and paste anyone can use this uh in any
00:38:35.240way that works for you, especially because we're at the time of the year where reconnecting with
00:38:38.780those spirits is going to be important. I love the classic ones that you know that
00:38:44.000every spirit is going to be stoked, especially the apple. I think that that's so true in our
00:38:49.280experience. Amy wrote a beautiful ritual about an apple that was like core in me, just playing
00:38:54.500with that magic and in healing from a shitty, shitty experience. So I always remember the
00:39:00.480feeling of that apple and eating it and burying it and it's like one of those moments where magic
00:39:05.720became so real and rooted in healing from something and I think yeah kitchen witchcraft
00:39:11.400is so much of that it's where magic really becomes tangible and you can actually you can do
00:39:16.000like physical healing and magical healing simultaneously I mean like people will say
00:39:22.300that you can do that with reiki and other stuff but like you can feel it happening in kitchen
00:39:26.140witchcraft you can like trace it chemically in kitchen witchcraft which is pretty neat
00:39:30.080um so so yeah that's that's one of the unique things about this discipline is it can do both
00:39:34.600yes and we live so much inside that space of like the practical and the magical in one action and
00:39:41.640that was kind of the thrust of the apple spell was this idea of like processing some using square
00:39:46.860quotes again processing something and then letting it go you know we think of that as like events
00:39:51.580traumas what relationships but when you eat something that's exactly what you're doing so
00:39:58.020So this apple spell was like a symbolic act of processing something with our bodies and then literally letting it go.
00:40:05.260I mean, I won't get into the gory details of how our bodies do that, but we do.
00:40:09.160We let go of the parts that we don't need and our bodies keep the parts that we do need.
00:40:15.880And I think that that's just such a wonderful symbol of how we can go about our lives.
00:40:20.760yeah and that's ancient magic right the macrocosm microcosm thing where the ritual is you playing
00:40:26.340out something that you want to happen in the macro that's old time magic I mean exactly yeah that's
00:40:31.820good stuff yeah so Sarah as a yogi um can you talk about this like the relationship between yoga
00:40:40.480and kitchen witchcraft obviously the body is probably the meeting point there but can you
00:40:46.060get into like how these two disciplines sort of came together for you good question good question
00:40:55.380but the very first book uh i wrote was it was a yoga book it was called yoga for witches and
00:41:00.540there was just a kind of a tiny little section in it about kitchen witchcraft um and many years
00:41:08.280later my publisher would be like oh hey should we explore kitchen witchcraft a bit more and and
00:41:12.840thus was the beginning of Kitchen Witch that became this you know I thought it was just going
00:41:16.860to be a book of you know a few recipes and stuff and then quite suddenly I was hit with this fact
00:41:22.160that you know there is a whole kind of history to magic in the kitchen that I just you know
00:41:28.260had not seen a book about so kind of to go back and uh and then me and Melissa did it like at the
00:41:33.860same time we were like bam let's follow these lines so that was that was awesome that was a
00:41:37.900good a good you know beginning of the year when like both the books came out was awesome um
00:41:41.960I've digressed slightly um so going back to part of the philosophy of yoga and it is a mini
00:41:49.780a mini branched path uh you know just a small part of it is kind of what you see on Instagram
00:41:54.760which is you know lycra clad bodies doing something fancy on a beach um which is a great
00:42:00.200part of yoga but you know it's not all of it um but a lot of it is uh about kind of listening
00:42:04.860to the body and respecting the body and there are other beautiful ancient Indian practices such as
00:42:12.180Ayurveda and kind of seeing the body as a whole and looking at you know your energy and your spirit
00:42:20.840and we are more than just our physical bodies and how can we honor that in in what we consume
00:42:27.380um so ayurvedic medicine is is one of the oldest um ancient practices of of medicine that we kind
00:42:35.780of still listen to today but um just in the kind of very day-to-day sense of kind of following the
00:42:43.460ideas of yoga with food it's that idea of listening to your body nourishing your body and uh and being
00:42:51.000kind to your body um which it seems like such a simple premise but especially you know today in
00:42:59.020today's world where it's you know intermittent fasting and get beach body ready and lose those
00:43:06.420pounds just the idea of being nourished being fed you know it just feeds that hungry witch within us
00:43:14.660you know it's like we are we are furious and we are cranky when we are hungry so let's just
00:43:21.280nourish and feed ourselves and then maybe we can go out and be and take flight in whatever way that
00:43:26.880means for us so it feels like a little a little tiny rebellion just to uh to feed and fuel
00:43:32.020ourselves properly um so that's magic in itself um and I fear I haven't really answered the0.99
00:43:41.120question I've gone off on one a little bit there but uh just just eat food and fuck diets and0.96
00:43:47.500that's magic so let's do that uh you know I've got kind of a I've got a question for you Sarah0.98
00:43:55.380and I hope it's okay if I ask kind of a bitchy question oh ask me a bitchy question it's about0.80
00:44:01.060not about you at all um a salty question I believe is how the Americans say yeah that's kinder0.68
00:44:06.640something salty I'm a lot of Gemini placements here so I unfortunately can't stop myself but
00:44:12.260was any part of your book inspired by how bad the other kitchen witchcraft books are
00:44:19.260it's a good salty oh it's a good salty question was any part of because that was such a an
00:44:26.920inspiration for me and I wonder if that's the case for you because I'm glad to see more depth
00:44:32.180given to this subject uh i've there was a lot of it was pretty a famine out here of information on
00:44:40.040kitchen witchcraft before new authors started writing and uh i wonder if you uh felt that
00:44:46.500frustration as well in your research it's a really good way of putting it um the famine of uh i think
00:44:52.700what it was is that just i started that idea of like okay i'm gonna i'm gonna write a book about
00:44:57.820kitchen witchcraft where the hell do I start and just I had this collection of books and I was like
00:45:02.540they're kind of all the same like and they were all I mean them suck but they were very much0.57
00:45:10.380similar in the fact that they were following the Wiccan specifically the Wiccan wheel of the year0.53
00:45:14.720which is fine but it's a very you know very specific wheel um and it was recipes and there
00:45:19.900was nothing digging down into the roots of like yeah kitchen kitchen which is a it's quite a
00:45:26.720positive association a little bit maybe it has these kind of quite twee and cutesy connotations
00:45:33.160you know cinnamon cookies and pretty aprons and things and you know the little actual charm that
00:45:37.900kind of hangs in people's kitchens so there was kind of it was lovely that oh hey here is an
00:45:43.560archetype of the witch that isn't you know mean and cruel and ugly um but where did this come
00:45:49.560from and then actually the joy was really diving deep into just a sumptuous history of food magic
00:45:57.400that runs back to you know our earliest feasting time so it was an excellent opportunity and it
00:46:03.060really pushed me into that I can't write another recipe book you know that's just a recipe book
00:46:08.380because it's been done it's been done a lot so I think we were kind of we were pushed into doing
00:46:13.280something more and I think ultimately that was awesome otherwise you know so that's good
00:46:18.540yeah follow-up question um oh I'm sorry did you have something to say no I just wanted to say
00:46:23.240like the first kitchen wit I'll use scare quotes again the first kitchen witch book that I got this
00:46:27.840was years before we started the missing witches project I opened it up and it was like hot dog
00:46:33.040casserole something which I'm you know I'm not above you know using what you have and doing what
00:46:38.920you have but I was like hot dog casserole and then a whole section of the book I guess it just hadn't
00:46:43.620been bound properly fell out and hit me in the foot and it actually really hurt
00:46:48.860bad kitchen witch books I was like oh because I put it on the shelf and never
00:46:55.860opened it again I was like this book is clearly out to get me
00:46:59.460it just popped into my head when you're like bad kitchen witch books I was like oh
00:47:06.960i guess what i mean when i say bad i mean like overly simplistic right they do all kind of say
00:47:15.320the same thing and and none of them there's no historicity provided there's no root well and so
00:47:21.480here's my follow-up question for you sarah because this was definitely true for me and i want to see
00:47:25.100if it's true for you i'm just comparing our research process cool when you were done with
00:47:29.300your research and when you were actually writing the book did you find that kitchen witchcraft was
00:47:33.320something different than you thought it was yes absolutely I started off with it you know I started
00:47:38.600off writing a book with something completely different in my head and it about halfway through
00:47:43.520I think I was just writing and this happens with a lot of my books I'm kind of writing
00:47:46.420I'm halfway through and there's something like oh shit that's what this is all about like I
00:47:51.360suddenly it is kind of revealed to me what this journey was all about and it was you know it was0.97
00:47:56.460that whole you know the hidden history of women you know the stories of the the witches that were
00:48:01.780just kind of forgotten and the massive undervaluing of those who nurture and feed and so yeah absolutely
00:48:09.580it you know came to be something completely different that I started off with and you know
00:48:14.680just a few minor breakdowns when it was just like the weight of all that and the fact that it hadn't
00:48:19.680really been done before I was just like yeah there's so much how am I ever going to do this
00:48:24.780all justice like how am I going to tell all these stories because they need to be told and you know
00:48:31.680so it i had my moments when i was just like it's just too much i can't believe the weight of this
00:48:37.700and it's because no one else has like really written about it from this perspective before
00:48:41.920i was also like am i doing it right like is this is this what people want uh or should i just put
00:48:48.880the apron back on and do the cosplays thermite versions kind of yeah i think a lot of the a lot
00:48:54.860of the books are like this food you know food folklore has really been dismissed for many years
00:48:59.160and now academics are you know finally taking it seriously but who not yeah exactly who are these
00:49:04.780people because i haven't found no one so when they say finally it's like just now literally right now
00:49:11.340it's becoming a thing but um yeah i mean someone's got to start somewhere so we
00:49:16.720got in there and started the started the groove if you were planting seeds with future researchers
00:49:23.960in this field imagine there are people who will listen to this who are all over the world some of
00:49:30.480them are like little mycelia like not safe for them to be out where they are at all there's a
00:49:37.780lot of people in our coven who have that experience there are people um but who are like incredibly
00:49:43.140wise incredibly educated in their way um ready to contribute to this great work that we are all a
00:49:50.980part of what what are the seeds you would plant what are the questions you would be like can you
00:49:55.200help us investigate this can you tell us about this from your perspective can you help us research
00:49:59.200this like what are the questions that you were left with after writing these books go ahead
00:50:02.860melissa to start well um i'd be like if there are any traditions of culinary magic in your family
00:50:10.240in your religion in whatever small sect you practice put them out there in the world please
00:50:16.700contact someone needs to be researching this in a serious way and actually getting these specific
00:50:21.860spells down so that we can do more than say witches for thousands of years have stirred
00:50:26.340cauldrons um because that sentence doesn't really have any information in it you know what i mean
00:50:30.000uh it's more useful to be like you know in 154 bc they use bread to curse the government here's
00:50:34.840the specific spell that's the kind of stuff that research is what i want more people to be doing
00:50:39.280i don't know about you sarah but it felt like i was just in there with like a pick like just going
00:50:44.860through every grimoire being like, just mention food once, please. And they do, but they're just
00:50:50.200so hidden in the back and nobody talks about it at all. So I would like for other researchers to
00:50:57.040be assisting with this because it doesn't feel like there's a lot of other people doing this
00:51:00.560work. And it is so important because it's something that shows up in every culture where there's food,
00:51:05.700because it's something that shows up time and time again in history. It's weird that it's not
00:51:10.280taken seriously? But I think you said it yourself, like the image is frilly aprons and we're going
00:51:16.080to make biscuits. You know what I mean? Why would that be taken seriously by a male-dominated world?
00:51:20.940When we think of magic, we think of ritual magic, which is so exciting. You're summoning spirits
00:51:25.440and you're doing all the real magic stuff. Who's usually doing that stuff? Who's writing those
00:51:29.820books? Men. Rich men with money to publish. Not us. And it almost feels like the tools of1.00
00:51:37.120kitchen witchcraft are too crude to be taken seriously, you know, in a world that really
00:51:41.200just wants the spectral spirits and, and, you know, other, I don't know, it might seem a little
00:51:46.680less exciting on paper, but it's not like, I was reading a spell the other day from ancient Greece
00:51:51.960where you make a bread and you feed it to someone who lied to you. And if they did lie, they'll
00:51:55.460choke on it. Like, that's pretty cool. You know, and there's just, there's not a lot of people
00:52:01.680looking at the guts of it like that. And so I know it seems like we're just making biscuits,
00:52:06.500right and I think that when we are able to peel back the cottagecore motif uh that like I think
00:52:12.560a lot of neo-paganism gave us and we're able to actually look at a corpus of history of kitchen
00:52:18.120witchcraft we're going to really see that knife as a magic wand more than anything else you know
00:52:22.680what I mean and we're going to see that this is one of the only places in history where we gave0.85
00:52:26.220women weapons and didn't supervise them uh the kitchen is where women have been armed and the0.96
00:52:32.380only place they've been allowed to be armed for thousands and thousands of years and poor people1.00
00:52:36.320and, and other folks who are dismissed in history, not just women. Uh, so I think that when we get
00:52:41.580more research, we're going to see the pointy end of kitchen witchcraft, which is what I want the
00:52:45.300world to see. I love that your description of the ceremonial magic so much, that was so much
00:52:51.620our experience that drew us into doing this work was that we, we were just like young, like young,
00:52:58.360we were old but we were baby witches we were curious we were trying to find this history
00:53:03.500and we just kept finding these rich white dudes who had self-published and called themselves like
00:53:09.160the mother of witchcraft or whatever we were like what is happening but then you know I also kind of
00:53:16.120love it because because of again this idea of hiding in plain sight right like go for it get
00:53:22.700your furry capes on and do what swing your scepters off you go just leave me and the girls1.00
00:53:34.440and the queers to do our shit over here go ahead put on they're always doing swinging the1.00
00:53:40.640attract who's attracted to that leave us be yeah no question just to like0.99
00:53:52.760do you do you wanna um i don't remember the question just to totally second what melissa
00:54:00.720said yes so beautifully um but yeah the the stories the songs you know i spoke earlier about
00:54:09.640the Hympton Inkasi which is this beautiful song that priestesses sung but it was also kind of the
00:54:14.520recipe of the making the beer and when I read that I was like oh fantastic I'm gonna I'll do
00:54:20.020a whole section on amazing kind of songs that women sung around food and things and obviously0.96
00:54:25.260I was completely deluded because they just didn't exist so I was like well shit there goes that
00:54:29.280amazing plan I had for that you know chapter because you know they weren't written down and0.94
00:54:34.200Actually, you know, the Hempton and Kazi was kind of an outlier, you know, joyful that it still exists.
00:54:40.840But so it, you know, it's going to be much more asking the questions of families, of ancestors, of grandmothers, great grandmothers, you know, people that work with the food and things to to kind of uncover and draw out because yet that these things weren't written down.1.00
00:54:59.360so um the work to kind of pull it out is going to be uh a big thing but exciting so yes just
00:55:08.040basically seconding everything Melissa just said what everyone I've found in the research kind of
00:55:13.260like innately knows a little kitchen witchcraft I don't know if you found this but when I was
00:55:17.080asking around because I did need to ask around I was like help me this research is hard no one
00:55:22.540apparently ever wrote this down and I'm the first person to go looking for it so which is not true
00:55:27.780uh but it felt that way uh and everyone I asked like all the occult friends were like oh I know
00:55:33.700an alchemical candy recipe or oh did you know there's a hummus recipe in the Picatrix or you
00:55:39.280know oh and so there's this little hidden stuff everywhere it's ferreted away it's in everything
00:55:45.160and everyone already knows about it but no one is collating it and talking about it isn't that
00:55:51.420weird it's I suppose it's in a way it's very fitting because it is you know it's drawn from
00:55:57.140these ancient oral histories where people didn't write these things down but uh now we want to so
00:56:03.640but even now no one's talking about it you know what I mean like even if yeah when you ask them
00:56:08.360they've got it they're like yeah yeah my grandmother used to make a mint tea or you know
00:56:12.100she used to make me this specific recipe when I was feeling unwell so everyone kind of knows it
00:56:16.340but maybe you have to ask the right questions to kind of draw it out of people or you know yeah
00:56:22.060because no one is contextualizing it as kitchen witchcraft or witchcraft at all everyone's like
00:56:26.720oh it's a folk charm and is it just because of the mundanity of food is that really it like
00:56:32.760because herbs are mundane candles are mundane but we don't seem to think of those as too mundane
00:56:38.940to be magical for some reason food is just on the other side of that line where people are eating
00:56:44.380soup it's just too boring so that's every day to be magical like when you're a witch nothing is
00:56:51.260mundane first of all when you become when you claim the identity of which you relinquish the
00:56:55.600mundane. There is no mundane. There's only the magical world. Everything that exists that was
00:57:00.600mundane before now has the magical perspective overlaid it because it's coming out of your
00:57:04.980eyeballs. So I don't know, like, it's just weird to me that magical people, even still in today's
00:57:10.540world are still marginalizing kitchen witchcraft. We think of this as something of the past where
00:57:14.740women are much more oppressed than they are and much more marginalized than they are.0.96
00:57:18.460We're still, we're still doing that. We're still marginalizing kitchen witchcraft as mundane,0.81
00:57:22.460as every day as the work of the home which is not where magic lives that needs to be in our ritual
00:57:27.420container and you know whatever we think magic's supposed to be um kitchen witchcraft kind of
00:57:31.860rebels against that all the time right it tells us magic isn't what you think it is it's actually
00:57:36.380everywhere all at once constantly like you know so well said i think it exists in a lot of places
00:57:45.000in a lot of cultures in a different language framing too right where we're not going to call
00:57:49.660it magic like i just in our book we talk about uh there's one of two traditional sake brewers
00:57:58.680in japan that are left out of the hundreds and they're doing it the same way for 500 years
00:58:04.120and a core piece of the process is the song they sing to the fermentation as a part of keeping
00:58:11.620everyone it's the recipe but it's also gratitude it's also singing to the microbes it's also
00:58:18.160it's also animism it's also part of under like every piece that is alive in that process and
00:58:24.020it's not um thought of as magic or witchcraft but it is in an ancient animist tradition which is
00:58:31.520so core to what we feel too looking around that nothing is mundane everything is alive and
00:58:36.720everything is we could call it magic they might call it holy or something else but
00:58:40.900what are those places where it's hiding yeah there there's so much of our i mean from agriculture
00:58:47.880to you know um cooking everything so much has been co-opted by capitalism which i think has a0.88
00:58:54.540lot to do with this sort of um demeaning of diy you know and even all of our as we go around the0.90
00:59:02.100year there are certain things that we have to have food wise like um new year's eve is champagne1.00
00:59:09.460and easter is a cadbury cream egg and valentine's day is a heart-shaped box of chocolates and
00:59:16.240and these are things that we buy these these aren't things that we make and so I think that
00:59:21.140there's always that push to like just buy it and witchcraft again is like the antithesis of just
00:59:27.640buy it it's like the DIYist so I mean why do we I mean I know why but I'm gonna ask anyway like
00:59:34.840why does capitalism demean so much of what we do in our homes or devalue do you want to take
00:59:44.700it's when Sarah or me um I could start off and then you can uh we'll see how we go um I'm trying
00:59:53.220to think now of I was putting I had like a spare collection of fairy tales um from the book that I
00:59:59.660was going to put into kind of a little kind of Christmas kind of things a lot of them were kind
01:00:03.160of like about winter which is not that's damn cool um and it just it was lovely how these kind
01:00:10.080of stories kind of captured a little bit of the kind of enchantment and again that idea of kind
01:00:16.040of drawing around the hearth fire and telling our stories and and how the the magic of the season
01:00:21.060was nothing to do with something that you were buying something that you were gifting to people
01:00:26.600it was much more about um you know coming home to the hearth fire connecting to your family and
01:00:33.560your friends and um yeah the art the art of storytelling I guess is kind of a remnant to
01:00:39.900that idea that there is there is more to these festivals whichever ones it is that we are
01:00:45.320celebrating there's more to them in terms of gratitude and celebration and abundance and
01:00:52.480joy than than anything that we might be able to purchase at this time so um but again that's kind
01:01:00.880of uh to many people you know it's dismissed as sort of oh it's a bit rural it's a bit kind of um
01:01:07.240scrappy it's you know kind of uh this kind of uh rustic way of doing things um which is
01:01:17.260interesting because that makes it kind of sound lesser when in fact it's like well maybe
01:01:20.540I value this festival in a way that's not about buying something particularly so yes
01:01:27.340I love that and that's completely true yeah um I'm thinking a lot about the writing from
01:01:33.620Sylvia Federici and also um Sarah Lyons is one of my colleagues here in New York she also writes a
01:01:38.960lot about capitalism and witchcraft together she put out revolutionary witchcraft a few years ago
01:01:43.300I don't know if you guys read that one it's so good and she's got a new one coming out which
01:01:46.800talks about this quite a bit talks about the history of magic quite a bit and both of those
01:01:50.780authors in Caliban and the Witch from Sylvia and Sarah's books talk about how uh the subjugation
01:01:56.340of women and the rise of capitalism go hand in hand. And also particularly the marginalization0.92
01:02:01.520of the domestic sphere is a direct result of the origins of capitalism. So we don't have capitalism
01:02:07.660without the marginalization of the domestic and the marginalization of any work that does not
01:02:13.360directly bring capital into the home. So when we talk about DIY and you making your own soap and
01:02:18.900you taking care of yourself, it might save you money, but it's not bringing capital in. And so
01:02:22.800it's not important and so the work of women doesn't bring capital in it just takes care of1.00
01:02:28.300the house and keeps it running and is essential to its function but it doesn't bring in capital0.97
01:02:32.180and so it's easy to marginalize and that's been that way for hundreds of years starting in europe
01:02:37.480and unfortunately sweeping across the entire globe uh so that's that's my idea of why um and
01:02:44.020and so like especially now that witchcraft is kind of in the not the mainstream but like the
01:02:50.740B-list mainstream. Vogue is writing about witchcraft. New York Times is writing about
01:02:56.020witchcraft, but it hasn't really had a day in the sun. And we now see witch fluencers and stuff0.89
01:03:03.860pop up everywhere. And even scam business is trying to capitalize on this. That's what I'm
01:03:07.820trying to get at. There's a lot of trying to capitalize on witchcraft now, even though it's
01:03:12.900something that resists capitalization. We now have people trying to sell us magic more than we ever
01:03:19.660have in the decades that I've been doing it. Um, and so to make your own stuff for most of human
01:03:25.780history, but especially right now to be doing DIY, to be doing kitchen witchcraft, to be doing stuff
01:03:31.600where you're not paying money for someone else's expertise all the time. Like I understand it's
01:03:36.580beneficial to take classes and to trust people who know more than you, but when you never trust
01:03:40.760yourself enough to make your own tools and to make your own decisions, um, being able to do that now
01:03:46.400is much is very revolutionary I guess that's what I'm trying to say as revolutionary as it has been
01:03:50.640throughout history because we're still dealing with capitalism we're still dealing with the
01:03:54.060marginalization of the domestic um so it's important for us to be doing that now even not
01:03:59.520as witches but as anti-capitalists you know yes I think that yeah that I mean that's that's kind
01:04:06.140of what we're doing it's 2022 you know I I personally grew up in the 80s where DIY was I
01:04:12.700mean you didn't really have a choice you know you they we didn't have dollarama didn't exist you had
01:04:18.860to go to a specific craft store even to get the felt that you wanted to make your hand puppet or
01:04:24.240whatever but now click click it's literally two clicks and in two days you can have anything you
01:04:30.960ever dreamed of arrive like in wrapped in plastic at your door so I think that in 2022 it's like
01:04:38.540almost like the witch's objective to like try and fail and and make bad recipes
01:04:44.580exactly what you're talking about how many people try to shortcut that failure and just buy the
01:04:51.660thing so they never have to confront being bad at making it even if it makes more sense for their
01:04:57.020life to make it themselves even if they want to make it themselves if they want to try uh not
01:05:01.320doing that shortcuts all the feeling bad stuff uh in our world you don't have to feel negative
01:05:06.160emotions if you don't want to, right? You can always buy happiness somewhere else. Uh, so I
01:05:10.980don't know. I feel like that's also part of the witch archetype, right? That confrontation with
01:05:15.600Jung's idea of the shadow. I mean, there's no historical witchcraft shadow magic, right? But
01:05:19.580there is, we have this now, uh, and I feel like the witch lives in confrontation with the shadow
01:05:24.020or constant integration and reintegration with the shadow. Um, so we need that stuff too. We need
01:05:29.240negative side as well um yeah i mean yes to all of this um but i that's some of the things i'm
01:05:38.280going to hold with me from this conversation especially because i do keep our our listeners
01:05:42.200in mind who've told us that they aren't in safe places where they can be out as witches i think
01:05:47.000that this is some of the things that have really been like sparks for me from this conversation
01:05:52.600or about how we magic happens even in the the the fucked up recipe that magic happens even
01:06:01.320in the gathering of people you know that you don't have to you don't have to you can wear0.60
01:06:06.540masks that are comfortable to you you don't have to you don't have to take on the word witch but
01:06:13.740just in gathering your people in feeding your people in and in making the mistakes of like
01:06:20.680trying and failing that those things are going to bring you closer and building communities around
01:06:25.800diy building communities with men with queer people build your communities around trying to0.97
01:06:32.120learn how to do stuff um but those are places i think where we can have very fertile magic without
01:06:38.360being out and that i think change comes from that um are there things that you can offer you often
01:06:46.040sometimes at the end of these conversations we ask is there a ritual is there is there something
01:06:51.940you're doing in your life is there something that listeners can carry from you going forward from
01:06:57.900today especially knowing they're listening at the equinox i'll give that one to you sarah i have to
01:07:03.660think oh oh thanks uh give that one to me because we can insert melodic pause here but yeah
01:07:11.020um so something to take away with us i guess um for the kind of coming season
01:07:18.860or if we could improvise a ritual between us we can take it that way too but if there's
01:07:24.060something that comes to mind okay i've got one oh no sorry you go for it no go go go
01:07:29.820have that brain synchronicity today um okay i've got one uh i talk about this a little bit in the
01:07:36.500autumn equinox entry for my book but i don't really go deep on it i'm not going to go super
01:07:40.780deep on it today because everyone's practice is going to look different. I'll just tell you how
01:07:43.840I do it. To me, this is a really important time of the year to be making spirit packs and to be
01:07:50.880reaffirming our spirit packs. If you don't work with spirits, maybe we can talk about this as
01:07:55.380making packs with the lamp. Maybe find something you do believe in, even if it's something like
01:07:59.540the moon. And even if you don't know what you mean by that belief, maybe you're very green like that
01:08:04.320and you're drawn to it, but not enough to really know why. That too is wisdom and information.
01:08:09.960Follow that. And what I would suggest as a ritual going forward through the lean season, so make a commitment, maybe from the autumn equinox to the winter solstice, to have a regular practice where you make offerings.
01:08:23.720that's it it doesn't require more of you show up say hello and break bread share a meal with
01:08:31.500the moon with the forest with the gods that you actually know their names of with your ancestors
01:08:35.680do it regularly whether that's on a particular lunar phase whether that's a particular day of
01:08:40.480the week something like that and commit to it i find that regular practice helps you go deeper
01:08:47.220and if we don't maintain the regularity and the schedule we can't get as deep as we ordinarily
01:08:52.100would. So make a short-term commitment. I, as a Gemini, you know, need a short-term commitment.
01:08:57.900So I relate to that and see if what that gives to your practice, what information you get out
01:09:03.880of that exchange, like what gnosis you receive through that. And that even in the simplicity
01:09:08.280of it is a kitchen witchcraft practice because it's organized around the food as the modality
01:09:13.480for magic. The food is how you are communicating with the spirit. There might also be orational
01:09:18.900stuff but the primary modality is through snacks um so that would be the ritual that i would give
01:09:24.180to people i think that that can really be assistive in reframing what you think kitchen witchcraft is
01:09:28.980um and should also get you somewhere with your magic yes i i love this notion of um you know
01:09:37.200breaking bread with the moon i absolutely am going to do that um especially because we talk
01:09:43.220of it all the time like we talked about the autumn equinox like you can believe whatever
01:09:48.100you know there there's a philosopher maybe ortega who said that we don't choose our beliefs our
01:09:54.060beliefs choose us so we're leaving that unknown country open you know some maybe we're not even
01:10:01.180choosing what we believe maybe we're being chosen but we know that the moon exists yes regardless
01:10:07.260of what we believe or are forced to believe we know that the moon exists and so i i love this
01:10:11.980Like, even if you don't know what it means to you, like you said, like, you know that it exists.