K is for Kitchen WTF

Another entry in the Pagan Blog Project

The Kitchen Witch. I feel like somewhere along the way this iconic image went from being a real thing to being some twit with a box of Betty Crocker muffin mix and a wand. Sort of like how I'm sure once upon a time Etsy actually had awesome hand-made crafty shit but is now a shitshow of remarkable WTFery.

Now, I'm certain there really are kitchen witches out there - people who are intimately familiar with the gardens they grow outside their homes or in window boxes, and who if you went to their house could whip you up a potion in three minutes flat that would cure your cold and restore your sexual potency. People who are basically Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic. (And fuck you, I think we all wish we were Sandra Bullock sometimes.) These people are living their quiet lives all across the world, doing magic mundanely and maybe posting arty photos of their peach cobbler on Tumblr.

And then there's the microwave set.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not about to mock people for being shitty cooks. I didn't cook for YEARS. I had to ask my sister how to make mashed potatoes. (Which I intended to eat a pot of. With nothing else. Yeah, I was like twenty-two, I was a pig.) I fucked up instant coffee. It was sad and pathetic, and I think the most we ever used the minuscule kitchen in our first Vancouver apartment was the time we ran out of laundry tokens and so hung all our underwear in it to dry.

So I'm not going to point and laugh if you burn water.

It's a brew!

I will point and laugh if you burn water and then call it a spell, though.

Look. We look silly enough, you guys. To normal people, magic itself is out there enough that you look like a bit of a ninny on a good day, what with your candles and arm gestures and all. But to then claim you're stirring love and good health into a pot of spaghetti-os... Yeah. No.

Kitchen witchery is not JUST intent. Yes, intent is very important in magic, but it's not the only thing. If it were, I'd be rich and surrounded by sex bitches right now, who would be gently filing the calluses off my feet. Kitchen witchery is all about well, shit you do in the kitchen, right? Cooking, making home remedies, that sort of oldschool wholesome thing. If someone tells me they're making gingerbread cookies with menstrual blood in them to bewitch a lover, alright, that seems like kitchen witchery. If someone is just thinking really hard at a box of oreos... not so much.

These examples I hope illustrate the disconnect that seems to go on with a certain type of people. It's almost like they're not Brit Trad Wiccans, they're not Recons, and they find Chaos Magic too anarchic. They're basically eclectic Wiccan-esque in terms of belief, but it's too much effort to bother much with the witchcraft side of things. So they look around for something that sounds legitimate and that they can easily say "well, sure, I do this daily" about. And we all need to eat, which means we all need to cook.

So. You're on your pagan message board or whatever, and someone asks "what the fuck are you?" and a whole bunch of people go, "kitchen witch!" And the explanation is that they think stuff while they cook.

I dunno, ya'll. I'm all for simple spellwork, but that just seems fucking lazy.

Grandma would not approve.
image from www.theblackcatcloset.com