Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen by Scott Cunningham Read Free Book Online Page B

citrusy? Purification is probably its best magical use.
    â€”Is the food sweet? Loving energies are probably locked inside it.
    Once you begin to think of foods from a magician’s view, the process of determining their magical uses becomes second nature.
    Some magicians will quibble about my selections for planetary and elemental rulers of certain foods, and will even point out that in previous books I’ve made different selections. Isn’t it cut-and-dried?
    No. After twenty years of study and practice, I’m still learning. As I increase my knowledge of the uses of plants (particularly diets) and of the dishes in which they’re used, I may reassign some foods based on this expanded knowledge.
    It isn’t wrong to say that carrots are ruled by Venus, or that bay leaves are better suited to Mars, but I choose to place them under the rulership of different planets. Don’t be confused by such seeming inaccuracies. They are minor matters. Just read, visualize, eat, and enjoy the fruits of food magic. ¶¶
    Some of the chapters, such as chapter 16 , aren’t quite arranged in the fashion described here. Please be flexible.
    [contents]
    Â¶Â¶ I had to mention this once again due to the number of letters I receive about the subject.

Chapter Eight
    Bread & Grains
    H umans have eaten bread for at least 8,000 years. 104 We have made it round, oblong, square, and triangular; flat as a pancake or fat as a loaf. Bread has been twisted into a symbol of the winter solstice, spiced, sweetened, garlicked, and filled with fresh vegetables. Though it has been made of every grain, it was the raised wheaten form that first inspired human and divine palates.
    Bread has long been worshipped as the “staff of life.” But in the West today, bread is usually encountered in plastic bags, presliced and stripped of nutrients, bran, and wheat germ. It is “fortified” with just enough vitamins to satisfy government standards and may be artificially flavored and preserved. Perhaps the greatest indignity to which our bread is subjected is being pumped with air. This creates what is known in the grocery trade as “balloon bread.”
    Not long ago, bread was a divine substance, directly linked with the goddesses and gods of the earths, lovingly crafted with grain and water. Flat, unleavened breads sustained millions of humans. Due to our forerunner dependence upon bread, these loaves also played important roles in birth celebrations, spirituality, and death.
    Before the advent of agriculture, humans gathered wild grains and hunted. This forced them to live nomadic lives in small family groups. Eventually women—who had always gathered grain—discovered agriculture. As fields were planted with grain, people began putting down roots. Life stabilized and civilization began. Grain, most often eaten in the form of bread or grain paste, 104 soon became far more important than meat.
    Earlier European civilizations dedicated grain to state deities: Inanna in Sumer; Ishtar in Babylon; Osiris in Egypt; Indra in India; Demeter in Greece; Spes and Ceres (from whose name we take our word “cereal”) in Rome; Xipe, Cinteotl, and Mayauel in ancient Mexico; and various forms of the corn mother throughout the Americas.
    Bread, the basic product of grain, was offered to the deities. Ishtar, Shamash, and Marduk were each given thirty loaves a day in Sumer. 24,51 Ra, Amon, Ptah, and Nekhbet received their share in Egypt. 29 Demeter, the Greek goddess of bread, grain, and agriculture, was also similarly honored. The Phoenicians stamped Astarte’s loaves with a horned symbol (linked with the moon) to deify the bread. 29
    The ancient Egyptians, whom Herodotus described as “the bread eaters,” probably invented leavened bread. Along with onions and beer, it became a basic part of their diet. 29, 104 The Egyptians offered bread to the deities and to sacred animals (including cats), and stocked