Hello, wonderful witches! I want to get to know you all better. So, I’m starting an introductions thread! Please say “hi” and share whatever you are comfortable sharing:
Name and location
Your spiritual path
What you do
Where you heard about Kitchen Witch
What you’re hoping to see more of in the newsletter
I’ll start! If you’ve been reading for a while, you already know some of this. I’m Jen, and a proud Chicagoan. My spiritual path is based in the power of energy, but I pull in from all sorts of traditions. I love to read tea leaves, work with my pendulum, and do candle spells. I almost never turn to deities for anything I do - but I love learning about them! As for what I do, in addition to Kitchen Witch I’m an author (seven books, my most recent is Historic Chicago Bakeries) and a full-time freelance journalist writing about travel, food, and history.
My name is Victoria de la Maza, I am from Madrid, Spain, and live in Charleston, SC. I write "Diary of a Serial Hostess" and love everything to do with great food, entertaining at home, and gatherings around the table. I do often think I must have some witchy in me! Great food is like a love potion, right? And while I stir a cauldron of delicious stew...
Victoria, we’re living opposite lives! I’m originally from Virginia but I live in Madrid. My partner is a madrileño, which is how I ended up here :) Do you miss living in Spain? I’ve only ever visited Charleston (and it’s beautiful!), but I imagine it’s quite different from city life in Madrid!
Hi! I am Therese, I live in Tucson, Az & I love interior design & currently work at Sam Levitz (sales)
I am passionate about yoga, meditation & all things witchy. The more I delve into the mystical and spiritual world, the more I understand myself and feel comfort, connection and balanced.
Hi, I'm Liv. I grew up in New Jersey, spent about 10 years in NYC, and I've been living in Rhode Island for the past 2 years. I'm realizing as I write this how East Coast it is for me to give such a detailed breakdown when all these places are so close to each other, but trust me, it's necessary.
I'm a witch of many different paths, but I focus on ancestral magic and divination. I love Stregheria (Italian witchcraft) and ancient Irish pagan spirituality - I wrote a piece on the Goddess Brigid for Kitchen Witch in March:
I work as a writer and social media manager in the blockchain technology industry. I'm passionate about diversifying STEM professions. I also love reading, history, and anything creative. and cats. I love my cats.
I heard about Kitchen Witch from the Magick Kitchen community - either their podcast or one of their events. I love everything I've seen from Kitchen Witch and I'm honored to have contributed to the great content here. As always, I'd love to read more from various witches from all different cultures around the world with recipes and rituals from their ancestral path.
Hi Liv! So glad to see you here. I loved your Brigid piece. :-)
What's your favorite divination method? Mine is tea leaf reading, but I also adore tarot and tyromancy (fortune telling with cheese).
Thanks for letting me know how you found out about me! Magick Kitchen is great. I've got a couple great cultural witchcraft pieces in the hopper - stay tuned! And please do pitch me if you have more ideas!
Hi! My name is Emily Rose and I'm also in Chicago!
I've been identifying as a Jewiccan for several years now. I was raised in a very liberal/progressive jew-ish household and then started practicing Wicca traditions in a community of femmes about 12 years ago.
I'm a poet, writer, bookkeeper, copywriter, cook, recovering restaurant owner and wearer of many (professional) hats. I also have a substack (https://eatwellenough.substack.com/) of essays with a recipe folded in.
I heard about you from my aunt!
I love ritual ideas and ways to deepen my practice. Especially things tied to representational magic. <3
Judaism is ripe with rituals, some of which feel very closely linked to Wiccan traditions: harvest festivals, a Festival of Lights, eating certain foods as symbols of meaning and promises of a “sweet and happy” new year, amongst others. It seemed fairly natural to tie in Wiccan spiritualism, especially in a Jewish home that prized finding our own path to meaning in a way that deprioritized the One God perspective of Jewish identity.
Passover, my favorite Jewish holiday, is one of the witchiest and most ritual laden holidays that we observe.
So, I observe the Wiccan sabbaths, consult with pendulums and tarot cards, have made incense, designed rituals and spells based on representational magic traditions, but also celebrate the secular and cultural meanings behind many Jewish holidays.
My father’s side of the family is also significantly Irish (Catholic) and I know we had at least a few witches on that side, as reported by my aunt (on that side) and family lore. She certainly participated in sabbaths and moon rituals in her life.
It felt like a very natural marriage once I learned more about Wicca and began my practice.
Hello Jen and fellow kitchen witches! I’m up in Bellingham Washington. I find a spiritual practice in my cooking when I’m able to eat in alignment with the seasons. I find it helps me stay grounded, feel less anxious and more connected to myself and earth. I do teach season eating as a part of my work, but the spiritual aspect is not always present in my classes or educational content.
In my work I create better relationships with food. This is accomplished through coaching services, classes, and my writing here on Substack. I also engage in a bit of food system policy work locally.
I believe I found this newsletter when I was doing some podcast research and looking for folks who uses the term “kitchen witch”. It’s not a term I knew until my friends started calling me one. 🤣✨🧹
Nice to e-meet you, Kamea! You're not the first person who's told me they didn't know the term until someone called them a kitchen witch, haha. Tell me more about your classes!
I'm Amy. I live in Anchorage, Alaska. I grew up as an evangelical Christian. I had some spiritual experiences that I now think are with a local deity and are centered around a particular water system in my area. The experiences started during my exit from a toxic marriage, and they eventually led me out of the church and the Republican party as well. I'm actually writing a book about all of that (Pious Magic: A Memoir of Disenchantment). Most of my spirituality is based on experiences, so I am still learning what to call the things that happen to me. So far, I have found the most similarities in shamanism, and I am exploring what that means. I also consider writing and creativity to be part of my spiritual practice, a way of uncovering and exploring the unseen. I write for a living. I haven't published any of my own work yet, but I do ghost writing, SEO-optimized blog posts, email newsletters for others. I also build and support communities on Mighty Networks. I *think* I found Kitchen Witch through a Substack search... I started following awhile ago, but I'm just now digging into it some more. After decades of believing spirituality and meaning were somewhere up there or in eternity or... really anywhere but here and now, I appreciate practices and writing that highlight spirituality in the everyday. You don't get much more everyday than food, which is why I love the Kitchen Witch. I particularly enjoy Jill's posts about food rituals in different cultures ("Fish Rituals from Bengal," the post on Hogmanay). I'd love to see more like that.
Welcome, Amy! Nice to have you here. My cousin and her family live in Anchorage as well! I’m glad to hear you escaped that toxic marriage (as well as the evangelism and republican party). It seems like we have a few things in common. :-)
Hi, Jen and Kitchen Witch community! I’m Kiki, and although I’m originally from Virginia I’ve lived in Madrid for almost six years now (I also lived in Chicago for a bit, Jen!). My full time job is in the medical field, but I write for fun about food and my culinary adventures in Spain over at Come como Kiki. I don’t know that I necessarily have a specific spiritual path, but I’ve always loved rituals and traditions related to nature and feeling grounded. I first heard about Kitchen Witch after attending a Zoom meeting for food writers on Substack. After checking it out, I decided to stick around :) Kitchen Witch is a great intersection of things that are interesting to me: food, spirituality, and history. I’m excited to see what’s in store for the future!
Woohoo! Glad you're here. (And for anyone reading, Kiki will have a piece in Kitchen Witch soon!) Where in Chicago did you live? I can't remember if we've talked about that, haha.
Welcome!! I don’t know what void magic is but I’m definitely going to look it up now. I’m also a word person — an old boss caught me reading the dictionary at my desk once, for fun, and she was so weirded out. 😂
Minnesota is where I call home. Living here is a love-hate relationship - I love to hate it. Mostly I just wish it was warmer for longer than 3 months of the year.
I practice Elemental - mainly Fire & Storm - Chaos - Sigil - and Sex Magick mostly. I’ve just started reading about Void Magick. I don’t fall into any Pagan or other entity so to speak. I surround myself with both light and dark because you cannot have one without the other (in my opinion).
I enjoy learning about Baltic, Basque, and Norse Mythology.. I haven’t worked with any deities yet- haven't decided if I will - but if I do, I would choose Gabija, Mari, Akerbeltz, Laima, Bragi, The Morrigan and Hecate.
My Sun is in Capricorn and my Moon is in Taurus. I'm naturally curious... about everything. I love to be outside with my dog, usually exploring in the woods. I love taking pictures of lightning, storm fronts, and sunsets. Fires, storms, taking my dog swimming, cooking/baking, reading, genealogy, researching/learning are some other things I enjoy. Owls, the Phoenix, Frogs, Coyotes, Peacocks, Wolves, and Ravens (not necessarily in that order) are my favorite animals. I also enjoy reading Tarot. I do most things under the moon, and Sigils are absolutely fascinating. .
I'm a word person - numbers and I are NOT friends - same goes with mornings. I used to keep a dictionary under my living room couch (before dial-up internet was a thing) growing up so that I could learn words I didn’t know while watching TV. I've always been a night person, I've never had a ''professional'' reading done, I don’t know why or if it’s even legit, but I think it would be cool to have a picture of my aura taken and my palm read.
I served 8 years in the Army. I spent time at Ft.Lee, Virginia - Ft.Jackson, South Carolina - Ft.Bliss, Texas - Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait - Camp Adder, Ali Air Base, Iraq & I've been to Germany, Ireland, Budapest, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar and just about every state in the US.
I've never seen the ocean, but I have been to the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates River, Ur, and I’ve been to the top of Safwan Hill, I’ve ridden in Chinook and Blackhawk Helicopters, I’ve thrown live grenades & shot grenades through a M203 grenade launcher.
I have a few different jobs that keep me busy. I do freelance research work, commissioned artwork (acrylic and epoxy resin decor), “professional” organizing, and landscape, fire, and storm photography.
I stumbled across Kitchen Witch looking for a manifestation spell =) Glad I did..!
Hello!
My name is Victoria de la Maza, I am from Madrid, Spain, and live in Charleston, SC. I write "Diary of a Serial Hostess" and love everything to do with great food, entertaining at home, and gatherings around the table. I do often think I must have some witchy in me! Great food is like a love potion, right? And while I stir a cauldron of delicious stew...
Victoria, we’re living opposite lives! I’m originally from Virginia but I live in Madrid. My partner is a madrileño, which is how I ended up here :) Do you miss living in Spain? I’ve only ever visited Charleston (and it’s beautiful!), but I imagine it’s quite different from city life in Madrid!
Hello!
I visit Madrid as often as I can... was just there for a month in April!
Yes, totally different but I love living in Charleston...
Love this! Thanks for reading! When did you come to Charleston from Madrid?
I have been living in the US for nearly 40 years! But in Charleston since 2019.- A looong time!
Hi! I am Therese, I live in Tucson, Az & I love interior design & currently work at Sam Levitz (sales)
I am passionate about yoga, meditation & all things witchy. The more I delve into the mystical and spiritual world, the more I understand myself and feel comfort, connection and balanced.
Hello, Therese! I also love interior design. :-) I just wrote a piece for Apartment Therapy about decorating with your planetary color!
https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/planetary-color-in-your-life-37205731
I think there's a real grounding aspect to the mystical. We learn to rely on our own/the planet's energy and that really brings us down to earth.
Glad to have you here!
Love this thread!
Hi, I'm Liv. I grew up in New Jersey, spent about 10 years in NYC, and I've been living in Rhode Island for the past 2 years. I'm realizing as I write this how East Coast it is for me to give such a detailed breakdown when all these places are so close to each other, but trust me, it's necessary.
I'm a witch of many different paths, but I focus on ancestral magic and divination. I love Stregheria (Italian witchcraft) and ancient Irish pagan spirituality - I wrote a piece on the Goddess Brigid for Kitchen Witch in March:
https://kitchenwitch.substack.com/p/this-saint-patricks-day-honor-the
I work as a writer and social media manager in the blockchain technology industry. I'm passionate about diversifying STEM professions. I also love reading, history, and anything creative. and cats. I love my cats.
I heard about Kitchen Witch from the Magick Kitchen community - either their podcast or one of their events. I love everything I've seen from Kitchen Witch and I'm honored to have contributed to the great content here. As always, I'd love to read more from various witches from all different cultures around the world with recipes and rituals from their ancestral path.
Hi Liv! So glad to see you here. I loved your Brigid piece. :-)
What's your favorite divination method? Mine is tea leaf reading, but I also adore tarot and tyromancy (fortune telling with cheese).
Thanks for letting me know how you found out about me! Magick Kitchen is great. I've got a couple great cultural witchcraft pieces in the hopper - stay tuned! And please do pitch me if you have more ideas!
Fortune telling with cheese?? I'm in!
I do workshops! Planning another one as we speak!
Hi! My name is Emily Rose and I'm also in Chicago!
I've been identifying as a Jewiccan for several years now. I was raised in a very liberal/progressive jew-ish household and then started practicing Wicca traditions in a community of femmes about 12 years ago.
I'm a poet, writer, bookkeeper, copywriter, cook, recovering restaurant owner and wearer of many (professional) hats. I also have a substack (https://eatwellenough.substack.com/) of essays with a recipe folded in.
I heard about you from my aunt!
I love ritual ideas and ways to deepen my practice. Especially things tied to representational magic. <3
Heyyyy! I love that your aunt told you about me. :-) I'm so curious about your Jewiccan identity. How do you combine the two?
Judaism is ripe with rituals, some of which feel very closely linked to Wiccan traditions: harvest festivals, a Festival of Lights, eating certain foods as symbols of meaning and promises of a “sweet and happy” new year, amongst others. It seemed fairly natural to tie in Wiccan spiritualism, especially in a Jewish home that prized finding our own path to meaning in a way that deprioritized the One God perspective of Jewish identity.
Passover, my favorite Jewish holiday, is one of the witchiest and most ritual laden holidays that we observe.
So, I observe the Wiccan sabbaths, consult with pendulums and tarot cards, have made incense, designed rituals and spells based on representational magic traditions, but also celebrate the secular and cultural meanings behind many Jewish holidays.
My father’s side of the family is also significantly Irish (Catholic) and I know we had at least a few witches on that side, as reported by my aunt (on that side) and family lore. She certainly participated in sabbaths and moon rituals in her life.
It felt like a very natural marriage once I learned more about Wicca and began my practice.
Thank so much for sharing all that! I'm absolutely fascinated and now I'm going to go read more about it. :-)
Hello Jen and fellow kitchen witches! I’m up in Bellingham Washington. I find a spiritual practice in my cooking when I’m able to eat in alignment with the seasons. I find it helps me stay grounded, feel less anxious and more connected to myself and earth. I do teach season eating as a part of my work, but the spiritual aspect is not always present in my classes or educational content.
In my work I create better relationships with food. This is accomplished through coaching services, classes, and my writing here on Substack. I also engage in a bit of food system policy work locally.
I believe I found this newsletter when I was doing some podcast research and looking for folks who uses the term “kitchen witch”. It’s not a term I knew until my friends started calling me one. 🤣✨🧹
Nice to e-meet you, Kamea! You're not the first person who's told me they didn't know the term until someone called them a kitchen witch, haha. Tell me more about your classes!
I'm Amy. I live in Anchorage, Alaska. I grew up as an evangelical Christian. I had some spiritual experiences that I now think are with a local deity and are centered around a particular water system in my area. The experiences started during my exit from a toxic marriage, and they eventually led me out of the church and the Republican party as well. I'm actually writing a book about all of that (Pious Magic: A Memoir of Disenchantment). Most of my spirituality is based on experiences, so I am still learning what to call the things that happen to me. So far, I have found the most similarities in shamanism, and I am exploring what that means. I also consider writing and creativity to be part of my spiritual practice, a way of uncovering and exploring the unseen. I write for a living. I haven't published any of my own work yet, but I do ghost writing, SEO-optimized blog posts, email newsletters for others. I also build and support communities on Mighty Networks. I *think* I found Kitchen Witch through a Substack search... I started following awhile ago, but I'm just now digging into it some more. After decades of believing spirituality and meaning were somewhere up there or in eternity or... really anywhere but here and now, I appreciate practices and writing that highlight spirituality in the everyday. You don't get much more everyday than food, which is why I love the Kitchen Witch. I particularly enjoy Jill's posts about food rituals in different cultures ("Fish Rituals from Bengal," the post on Hogmanay). I'd love to see more like that.
Welcome, Amy! Nice to have you here. My cousin and her family live in Anchorage as well! I’m glad to hear you escaped that toxic marriage (as well as the evangelism and republican party). It seems like we have a few things in common. :-)
If you ever get a chance to visit your cousin, I highly recommend it :)
Hi, Jen and Kitchen Witch community! I’m Kiki, and although I’m originally from Virginia I’ve lived in Madrid for almost six years now (I also lived in Chicago for a bit, Jen!). My full time job is in the medical field, but I write for fun about food and my culinary adventures in Spain over at Come como Kiki. I don’t know that I necessarily have a specific spiritual path, but I’ve always loved rituals and traditions related to nature and feeling grounded. I first heard about Kitchen Witch after attending a Zoom meeting for food writers on Substack. After checking it out, I decided to stick around :) Kitchen Witch is a great intersection of things that are interesting to me: food, spirituality, and history. I’m excited to see what’s in store for the future!
Woohoo! Glad you're here. (And for anyone reading, Kiki will have a piece in Kitchen Witch soon!) Where in Chicago did you live? I can't remember if we've talked about that, haha.
I lived in Edgewater, on Sheridan. I still miss the view of the lake from my apartment!
Oh, awesome! I live on the border of Andersonville and Edgewater. :-) Love this area!
Ahh, practically neighbors! So cool. Andersonville is such a cute neighborhood. I used to meet friends occasionally at m.henry for brunch!
M.Henry has the BEST brunch. That and Kie-Gol-Lanee, which has the best chilaquiles IMO. :-)
Ooh I love chilaquiles! I’ve never been to Kie-Gol-Lanee, but I’ll add it to my list to check out the next time I make it to Chicago!
Welcome!! I don’t know what void magic is but I’m definitely going to look it up now. I’m also a word person — an old boss caught me reading the dictionary at my desk once, for fun, and she was so weirded out. 😂
Hello...!!! My name is Aurora!
Minnesota is where I call home. Living here is a love-hate relationship - I love to hate it. Mostly I just wish it was warmer for longer than 3 months of the year.
I practice Elemental - mainly Fire & Storm - Chaos - Sigil - and Sex Magick mostly. I’ve just started reading about Void Magick. I don’t fall into any Pagan or other entity so to speak. I surround myself with both light and dark because you cannot have one without the other (in my opinion).
I enjoy learning about Baltic, Basque, and Norse Mythology.. I haven’t worked with any deities yet- haven't decided if I will - but if I do, I would choose Gabija, Mari, Akerbeltz, Laima, Bragi, The Morrigan and Hecate.
My Sun is in Capricorn and my Moon is in Taurus. I'm naturally curious... about everything. I love to be outside with my dog, usually exploring in the woods. I love taking pictures of lightning, storm fronts, and sunsets. Fires, storms, taking my dog swimming, cooking/baking, reading, genealogy, researching/learning are some other things I enjoy. Owls, the Phoenix, Frogs, Coyotes, Peacocks, Wolves, and Ravens (not necessarily in that order) are my favorite animals. I also enjoy reading Tarot. I do most things under the moon, and Sigils are absolutely fascinating. .
I'm a word person - numbers and I are NOT friends - same goes with mornings. I used to keep a dictionary under my living room couch (before dial-up internet was a thing) growing up so that I could learn words I didn’t know while watching TV. I've always been a night person, I've never had a ''professional'' reading done, I don’t know why or if it’s even legit, but I think it would be cool to have a picture of my aura taken and my palm read.
I served 8 years in the Army. I spent time at Ft.Lee, Virginia - Ft.Jackson, South Carolina - Ft.Bliss, Texas - Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait - Camp Adder, Ali Air Base, Iraq & I've been to Germany, Ireland, Budapest, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar and just about every state in the US.
I've never seen the ocean, but I have been to the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates River, Ur, and I’ve been to the top of Safwan Hill, I’ve ridden in Chinook and Blackhawk Helicopters, I’ve thrown live grenades & shot grenades through a M203 grenade launcher.
I have a few different jobs that keep me busy. I do freelance research work, commissioned artwork (acrylic and epoxy resin decor), “professional” organizing, and landscape, fire, and storm photography.
I stumbled across Kitchen Witch looking for a manifestation spell =) Glad I did..!