Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen Read Free Page A

jelly sandwich for lunch, and fresh tomatoes for dinner. This won’t be all that she’ll eat, of course; Marjorie will simply include these foods in her meals.
    The next morning, Marjorie lights a green candle in the kitchen. As the wick catches the flame and burns, Marjorie sees her self free from financial strain. She visualizes herself paying her bills on time and enjoying the use of more money. Marjorie doesn’t hope that this happens—she sees it as if it has already occurred.
    She continues to visualize as she pours water into a glass pot and measures the oatmeal. Once the measuring cup is full, she sets it on the kitchen counter and places her hands on either side of it. Marjorie visualizes as strongly as she can. She then adds the oatmeal to the water and cooks it as usual.
    As she’s waiting, Marjorie sections a grapefruit and pours a glass of low-fat milk. These foods aren’t related to her magical need; they simply provide nourishment.
    When the oatmeal has cooked, she moves the green candle to the kitchen table, spoons the cooked cereal into a bowl, pours a dab of maple syrup over it (another money food, she thinks), and looks down into the oatmeal. She may say this before she eats:
    â€œOats of prosperity and gain,
lift away my financial pain.
I’m flooded with prosperity;
This is my will, so mote it be!”
    Marjorie may also not say anything, but simply renew her visualization. Then she finally eats the oatmeal. With every hot bite she feels money energy pouring into her body. She also senses her body responding, welcoming both the nourishing food and its prosperous energy.
    Marjorie pinches out the candle flame and returns the taper to a kitchen drawer until her next magical meal. She repeats the same ritual for at least one food per meal. Though she’ll have the peanut butter and jelly sandwich at work, she’ll prepare it with the same care and visualization, and will eat it in the same way during her lunch break.
    As she wipes her lips, she decides to add money foods to her meals for at least a week to give the magic time to do its work.
    So that’s an example. What exactly did Marjorie do?
    â€”She recognized that she had a problem.
    â€”She found the tools (foods) that could help her solve it.
    â€”She tuned her own personal power to a prosperous pitch through visualization.
    â€”She also used visualization to attune the earth power contained within the oats.
    â€”She used a short, rhymed chant to strengthen her resolve and her visualization.
    â€”She moved the prosperous energy that resided within the oats into her body by eating them.
    The green candle that she lit is a physical manifestation of the change that she wished to make: green is an ancient symbol of growth, prosperity, and abundance. In our modern world, it is also a color of money and of the things that money can bring us.
    Folk magicians say that burning a candle releases energy into the surrounding area. The type of energy is determined by the color of the candle. By lighting the green candle, Marjorie added extra money-attracting energy to her ritual. The candle isn’t necessary, but it can be used if desired.
    Visualization is important in any type of magic. Most of us can visualize what we’ve already seen quite well. Close your eyes for a minute or two, and see in your mind’s eye a picture of a favorite food, your pet, or your next-door neighbor. Don’t just think about these things; try to see them as if you were actually looking at them.
    In magic, we use visualization to create images of the change that we’ve decided to make. It wouldn’t have helped Marjorie to visualize stacks of unpaid bills, to see herself scrounging in her purse for her last few pennies, or to picture being thrown out of her apartment. These are symptoms of her problem, and problems are never visualized.
    Instead, the solution to the problem and the outcome of the magical ritual is