The Magic of the Kitchen: 7 Books for the Modern Kitchen Witch
With Thanksgiving coming up, many of us are about to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. For some, there’s something magical about what happens there. For kitchen witches who infuse their magic and intentions into their cooking, this isn’t just about making a meal for their loved ones. This is where the line between making dinner and making magic gets blurred.
Kitchen witchery isn’t about complicated rituals or hunting down exotic ingredients. It’s simpler than that. It’s about paying attention to what you’re already doing, like noticing the care you put into soup when someone isn’t feeling well, or how baking bread can make a house feel like a home. The magic is in the intention.
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned witch looking to expand your practice, here are 7 books to add to your collection.
1. The Kitchen Witch: A Year-Round Witch’s Brew of Seasonal Recipes, Lotions and Potions for Every Pagan Festival by Soraya
Organized by season, it offers a practical framework for aligning your kitchen with the wheel of the year. Each of the eight festivals includes recipes featuring seasonal ingredients and staples you’re likely to already have on hand. The autumn section, in particular, explores cooking with root vegetables, working with apple magic, and creating meals that ground and protect as the dark half of the year begins.
2. A Kitchen Witch’s Cookbook by Patricia Telesco
Patricia Telesco’s A Kitchen Witch’s Cookbook combines over 300 recipes with practical magical wisdom, blending global cuisines and historical traditions into one essential guide. Each ingredient is chosen with intention: apples for peace and health, apricots for romance, and horseradish for protection and fiery energy. With extensive appendices on kitchen deities, ingredient correlations, and global festivals, this classic makes kitchen witchcraft both approachable and deeply nourishing.
3. Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen by Scott Cunningham
Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen serves as a delightful introduction to kitchen witchcraft, where cooking becomes a spiritual practice. The book emphasizes that food carries magical energy, and every ingredient can be used for personal transformation and intention-setting. It offers twenty-seven recipes and magical menus tailored for various goals, such as love, protection, health, and prosperity.
4. The Natural Witch’s Cookbook: 100 Magickal, Healing Recipes, and Herbal Remedies to Nourish Body, Mind, and Spirit by Lisanna Wallance
In this cookbook, author and herbalist Lisanna Wallance guides you through recipes infused with ordinary magic found in the kitchen and the power of herbs and ingredients with real healing potential. You’ll learn to make tasty meals, tonics, masks, ointments, and more, with effects ranging from anti-inflammation to immunity boosting to energy boosts, and even longevity.
5. The Kitchen Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Kitchen with Natural Ingredients, Sacred Rituals, and Spellwork by Skye Alexander
Alexander’s comprehensive guide explores the magical properties of over 100 common ingredients, making it a must-have for kitchen witches at any level. Blending practical cooking advice with magical correspondences, the book shows how everyday meals can become intentional spells. It also offers guidance for holiday cooking, including selecting and combining ingredients to honor gratitude, abundance, and family connection.
6. The Book of Kitchen Witchery: Spells, Recipes, and Rituals for Magical Meals, an Enchanted Garden, and a Happy Home by Cerridwen Greenleaf
Cerridwen Greenleaf’s approach to kitchen witchery extends beyond the stove to cover the entire home, guiding readers through creating altars, growing magical gardens, and cooking with intention. Organized around magical living, this book emphasizes making everyday life sacred. Greenleaf offers a practical guide on brewing healing teas, crafting protective sachets, and preparing meals that nurture body and spirit, with recipes inspired by global traditions to grow any kitchen witch’s practice.
7. The Hearth Witch’s Compendium: Magical and Natural Living for Every Day by Anna Franklin
Covering everything from cooking and seasonal celebrations to cleaning magic, home protection, and garden witchery, this compendium highlights the need for understanding kitchen witchery as a holistic practice. Franklin offers practical guidance for honoring tradition while creating your own seasonal and domestic spells.
Although there are many books, these seven offer different entry points and approaches. Most importantly, they share a common understanding that feeding ourselves and others is sacred work, that the kitchen is a place of power, and that the most potent magic often happens in the most ordinary moments.
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