The practice of folk magic utilizes a variety of tools to empower simple rituals. These tools include visualization, candles, colours, words, affirmations, herbs, essential oils, stones, and metals. Other tools, fashioned by our hands, are also used, but these are merely power-directors. They contain little energy save that which is provided by the magician.
Another magical tool is at our disposal, a tool that contains specific energies which we can use to create great changes in our lives. This tool is all around us. We encounter it every day without realizing the potential for change that exists within it; without knowing that, with a few simple actions and visualization or two, this tool can be as powerful as the rarest stone or the costliest sword.
The Source of Power in question is Food
This isn’t a new idea. From antiquity, humans have honoured food as the sustainer of all life, a gift from the unseen deities who graciously provided it. Food played an important role in religious rituals for most cultures of the Earth as they entered the earliest stages of civilization. Its essence was offered up to the deities that watched overhead, while its physical portion, if not burned, was shared by the priestesses and priests. Food became connected with rites of passage such as birth, puberty, initiation into mystical and social groups, marriage, childbirth, maturity, and death.
Not only was food linked with all early religions; it was also understood to possess nonphysical energy. Different types of food were known to contain different types of energy. Certain foods were eaten for physical strength, for success in battle, for easy childbirth, for health, sex, prosperity, and fertility.