Eat Your Magick: Honey & Bergamot

The Eat Your Magick series invites you to engage with the powers of the Earth and wisdom of Tarot archetypes through common foods and spices you likely already have in your pantry.

When I began work on Elemental Power Tarot, I had already been working with kitchen magick for a very long time, more seriously in recent years with my dear friend, chef Courtney McBroom. We had that true complimentary partnership where we each possessed a high level of skill in an area the other had little to no knowledge of. She had never picked up a Tarot deck and my cooking repertoire was … limited. However, I did have a pretty good selection of herbs around that I used in spells and she used in cooking. So we started some experiments that continue to this day. It is because of these experiments that I felt it imperative to add an apothecary item - a magickal ingredient that helps awaken the wisdom of the archetype - to each card of the Major Arcana of Elemental Power Tarot.

As we look forward to Aquarius season and celebrate the beginning of the new year, let us dive in to the foods I’ve matched with The Star (the card associated with the sign of Aquarius) and The Fool (the card associated with Aquarius’ ruler, Uranus) - honey and bergamot.

Honey is the first food humans used to make life taste sweet. We’ve been eating it as long as history has been recorded and surely long before that. It never spoils. Ever. The hope for a better tomorrow following an ancient unbroken lineage of creation and nurturing promised by The Star is perfectly made manifest in the physical realm by honey. You can use it in spells to carry this energy onto candles and altars and every time you eat it, you can carry this energy right into your body.

Bergamot is a little citrus fruit that we most commonly encounter in earl grey tea - its brightness is so intense that we rarely find it roaming about our plates on its own. That concentration is exactly what makes it such a wonderfully joyful influence on the spirit. That radical trust and presence of The Fool can be scary, particularly for those more set in their ways or who require a higher level of stability and predictability in their lives. Bergamot helps to soothe these anxieties and show us the sunny side of trust in an unseen benevolent force in the Universe.

When you want to draw the wisdom of The Star and The Fool into your life, look to honey and bergamot. As we head into a new year still beset by pandemic and sweeping economic insecurity, we can use all the hope and joy we can get.