Supermarket Magic: Creating Spells, Brews, Potions & Powders from Everyday Ingredients

By Michael Furie

The Tools of Magic are in your supermarket's aisles!

Finding the ingredients for your spells and potions doesn't have to be expensive or difficult. Supermarket Magic provides clear instructions for working simple and powerful magic with everyday essentials.

Perfect for witches and all practitioners of natural and herbal magic, this easy-to-use guide explains how to whip up brews, powders, and oils using inexpensive items that can be conveniently purchased at your local grocery store. Learn all the basics of magic including ethics, meditation, timing, and charging techniques. Discover handy shopping lists and clear instructions for working a wide variety of quick and effective spells for harmony, health, love, money, protection, psychic abilities, clearing, cleansing, and more. Let your supermarket aisles become a treasure trove of magic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Dec 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9780738738710

Michael Furie

Michael Furie (Northern California) is the author of Supermarket Sabbats, Spellcasting for Beginners, Supermarket Magic, Spellcasting: Beyond the Basics, and more, all from Llewellyn Worldwide. A practicing Witch for more than twenty years, he is a priest of the Cailleach.

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About the Author

Michael Furie (Northern California) has been a practicing witch for more than fourteen years. He began studying witchcraft at age twelve, and at age seventeen officially took the oaths of the Craft. An American Witch, he practices in the Irish tradition and is a priest of the Cailleach.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Supermarket Magic: Creating Spells, Brews, Potions & Powders from Everyday Ingredients © 2013 by Michael Furie.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition © 2013

E-book ISBN: 9780738738710

Book design by Bob Gaul

Cover design by Adrienne Zimiga

Cover illustration by Anne Wertheim

Editing by Laura Graves

Pentagram art by Llewellyn art department

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

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Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Section 1: Shopping and the Witch

Introduction

Chapter 1: For Better or Worse: Navigating the Supermarket

Section 2: Magical Fundamentals

Chapter 2: Magical Basics

Chapter 3: Magical Ethics

Section 3: Supermarket Spellbook

Chapter 4: Clearing (and Cleansing)

Chapter 5: Harmony

chapter 6: Healing

chapter 7: Love, Lust, and Beauty Magic

chapter 8: Luck

Chapter 9: Money

Chapter 10: Protection

Chapter 11: Psychic Ability and Divination

Chapter 12: Sabbats and Esbats

Chapter 13: Miscellany

Bibliography and Suggested Reading

Section 1

Shopping and the Witch

Introduction

I get out of the car, find a shopping cart (hopefully one without a squeaky, wobbly wheel), and walk into the grocery store with only one thing on my mind: magic! I know that sounds like a silly notion, but it really isn’t. A grocery store is a great place to find a wide variety of ingredients for powerful spells. Herbs, spices, oils, foods, and drinks are all gathered in one easily accessible place; no searching out expensive, odd ingredients in various occult shops or traipsing through the woods desperately trying to find the correct root, herb, or fungus. You have literally thousands of magical ingredients at your disposal without any of the hassle of trying to obtain them individually from various sources. Much has been written in the past about herb magic and some things have been written about food magic, but precious little has been written about how to work powerful magic with ingredients exclusively from the supermarket.

Magic, in order to continue to be relevant in our lives, must evolve and grow as we do, and also as our culture grows, changes, and expands. The supermarket, then, being our modern marketplace and (almost) apothecary, offers us a fantastic and ample supply of items to use in magic, to the exclusion of difficult-to-obtain and exotic ingredients. No longer should anyone feel forced to sift through endless mail-order, Internet, and catalog sources searching for just the right herb or oil when such a wealth of magical supplies exists so close to our own homes. The possibilities are practically limitless.

I spent some time toying with what to call this book. Some other possible title ideas were I Can’t Find Weird Ingredients, HELP!, I Live With People and I Don’t Want Them to Know I Do Magic, and I Can’t Afford All the Fancy Stuff, Help! Any of these names would be appropriate for this book because it covers a wide variety of ingredients, ideas, and spells you can perform at home after a quick trip to your local supermarket to pick up all the necessary items. These spells are modern and will require no complex preparation or ingredients, nor will there be any grand, overly involved rituals needed.

I prefer a simple approach in all I do. Witchcraft is drawn from the magic of the common folk; not the wealthy aristocracy. Most witches of the past were never able to afford brass hanging censers, copper pentacle platters, and ritual swords; they used what they had. In keeping with that spirit, we should use what we have available to us: a large variety of herbs, oils, candles, and foods at our local markets. Not that fancy or expensive tools and ingredients are bad, far from it; it’s just that they are sometimes difficult to find and of course they are expensive. When I was first starting out, I used a kitchen knife as an athame and pretty much only worked with herbs, oils, and candles I could buy at the supermarket. I lived in a small town where exotic herbs were impossible to get, and there weren’t any occult supply stores within at least fifty miles, so except for the few herbs I was able to mail-order, the local grocery store was my witch shop. A handmade wax pentacle, a chalice I was lucky to find at a thrift store, my kitchen athame, a stick for a wand, a clay cauldron-shaped pot my mother gave me, and ingredients from the supermarket made up my entire collection of witch supplies—and they worked very well. To this day, oregano is my favorite magical herb.

If you are already an experienced witch or magical practitioner, I hope this book will add to your practice, but if you have never cast a spell, chapters 2 and 3 focus on explaining all the basics of magic and spell casting, making this a complete volume of both theory and practice. The book is broken down by intention, and for each magical intention several options are given. This type of magic could be described as kitchen witchery since it is a rather use what is available and what works approach to casting spells. While it is worthwhile to invest your time in the acquisition of specific ingredients, and definitely worth the trouble of making candles or performing full scale rituals, it is not always possible to do so. In that case we need simple, effective spells that can be used whenever needed.

[contents]

Chapter 1

For Better or Worse: Navigating the Supermarket

When I was a kid, I loved to go shopping. Of course, when you are a child, things often seem a lot more adventurous than they really are. As an adult, grocery shopping is usually a weekly two- to three-hour ordeal for me, as I have to stop at four different stores to gather all the essentials. As a witch, being around large groups of people can be a bit of an emotional minefield; all those people, most of whom are hurriedly searching for their needed items, just fill me with anxiety. I have made the mistake of going to a supermarket on the day before Thanksgiving twice in my life, and it has become a goal of mine to never, ever do that again. That crowd was just unbearable!

Despite some flaws, such as crowds or narrow aisles, supermarkets can be wonderful treasure troves of magical ingredients. They have herbs, candles, oils, food and drink, things like cheesecloth which can be used for charm bags, and sometimes even incense sticks or oil diffusers, which bring added magical atmosphere. Properly prepared, a witch can have a calm, pleasant shopping trip and load up on all sorts of magical essentials. Granted, some stores are larger than others and to get all the ingredients for a spell may take more than one stop, but none of the spells included here contain any overly exotic or rare ingredients. Of course, if you live near one of those mega markets, everything will probably be right there.

The first time I walked into one of those gigantic, warehouse-type supermarkets I was genuinely awe-struck; I could not believe how many different products were all brought together in one place. Granted, the place was about the size of a football field and they were loading crates of food onto the shelves using an actual forklift, but it was still all in one building. Personally, I feel that the rise of the mega warehouse supermarket is a mixed blessing. While it is wonderful to be able to buy such an incredible variety of food in one place, having to work our way through over a hundred people just to get a bag of potatoes, a box of cereal, and some yogurt is a huge drawback. Luckily, there are still smaller mom and pop markets out there, and the energy in many of them is so much softer. They are usually much easier to shop in and what they may lack in variety, they more than make up for in relaxed atmospheres. Of course, if you’re like me and you have to do weekly grocery shopping at the big stores for your family, it is a good idea to have a magical game plan to help insulate you from some of the potential frenzy.

Witches are by nature psychically sensitive people and though this has many spiritual advantages, our sensitivity can make it difficult to handle being in large crowds. Most of the witches I know avoid large groups of people for this reason, which can make grocery shopping in megamart-type stores exceedingly stressful. For me at least, establishing a bit of a routine is helpful, as is shopping in off hours. I always write my shopping lists the night before I intend to go to the store, and I try to write down the items in the order I find them in the store. I’ve been in there so many times, I can picture the layout in my head as I make the list. The first time I went to a store and almost no one was there was an amazing experience. The huge supermarkets here are open twenty-four hours a day, and I ended up having to buy a few things at eleven o’clock at night. I walked into the store and it was like a ghost town. It was so quiet and empty. The only people in the whole store were the employees stocking the shelves. It’s a fun experience to shop in a giant supermarket when it’s practically empty. For safety’s sake, it makes more sense to shop in early morning off-hours, like with the small breakfast crowd from 6am to about 9am, than it does to shop around midnight or later, but either way, the stores are usually much less crowded.

When the stores aren’t full of people it is so much easier to shop slowly and browse. That’s when you can find all sorts of new things to try. I had never tried quinoa until just last year, and I love it; I happened to find it in the store one day when it wasn’t too crowded and I was able to look around for a while. Grocery shopping can actually be a lot of fun if you have the time and there aren’t a ton of people in the store. I don’t mean to imply that people are bad or that when shopping in a large crowd, the people will be mean or anything. I’m just saying that a significant portion of the stress many people feel when grocery shopping stems from the glut of psychic energy around large groups of people. Witches and psychics tend to feel this discordant energy more than the average person.

Being a realistic person with a hectic schedule, most of the time I end up having to shop during the busy hours. I figure that most of us are in the same crowded-supermarket-stress situation. That being the case, a good defense against the psychic pandemonium is shielding. In my book Spellcasting for Beginners there’s a spell in the Verbal Magic chapter for creating a psychic shield of protection. I include it here, as it is a good idea to surround yourself with a magical safeguard to help block all that chaos, if there is any. This spell should be cast before you head to the supermarket.

Protection

If you feel in need of protection, visualize yourself surrounded by a bubble of white light that condenses and solidifies into a shining, mirrored orb that repels any and all negativity and danger. As you visualize, chant the following:

Shield of power, protect me from harm,

From threat of danger, negativity, and storm;

Glowing power, mirrored might,

Keep me safe with your magic light.

This spell really does help, though it may have to be repeated more than once if the crowds are too big. The last time I went shopping, the store was packed, so I had to repeat the spell silently to myself four times as I went through the aisles.

Another similar spell to help the overall shopping experience is something I like to call an Anti-Anxiety Orb. This spell is for those times when you forget to work a protection shield before you go into the store and the anxiety has already crept in. Like the standard shield above, it can be repeated and strengthened as needed.

Anti-Anxiety Orb

Find a place to stop for a moment and imagine a thin thread of cool, electric-blue light coming down from above and entering your body through the top of your head. Imagine this thread continues straight through the middle of your body, down to your feet. Now, imagine that the thread is expanding within you and pushing out all the stress and anxiety. See this light expanding until it has become an orb around you and you are fully cleansed of the anxiety and protected from any further psychic disruption. To seal the spell, say this chant to yourself:

Anxiety banished, stress cast away;

Calm returns, here to stay.

The key to this is starting with the

Reviews for Supermarket Magic

[cassie.peters1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This has some great ideas but I expected it to have more recipes than it did. It was a quick read and I will keep it for reference.

[tldegray-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A very chatty and casual reference book good for the novice practitioner. I think the idea of getting ingredients from the supermarket is not a new one but it may be something that the novice practitioner might not have thought of.

The early chapters cover basic spell casting and ethics, which is a good addition to any book like this. The creations are basic--to the degree of recommending chamomile tea with honey as a brew to cause peace. If you're familiar with kitchen witchery or old wives' tales, you won't find much new here.

(Provided by publisher)