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yourself.
    â€”Give the food time to do its work. We didn’t create our problems overnight, so we can’t expect them to disappear overnight. Eat foods linked with your magical change for at least a week until they’ve had time to take effect. ‡‡
    That’s about it. Every food at every meal doesn’t have to be geared toward your magical goal. As long as you eat with purpose and visualization, magic will be at work.
    [contents]
    â€¡â€¡ This is one of the questions I’m asked most often about all forms of magic: “How long should I do it?” There’s no set answer. Continue until the change has manifested. That’s it!

Chapter Seven
    Festival Foods
    F ood has played a significant role in human celebrations of all kinds. In earlier times, the earth and its bounty were connected with goddesses and gods. Fruit, seed, root, and flower were all manifestations of divinity.
    Throughout Western Europe, the times of planting, flowering, maturation, and harvest were observed by the common folk with festivals that celebrated the fertility of the land. Foods came to be associated with certain seasons and days. Some of this old food lore has survived to this day in a suitably whitewashed form. §§
    The human diet was once routine and unimaginative. Grain cooked in every conceivable manner made up the bulk of the food consumed by persons who sometimes worked sixteen hours a day just to survive. Save for the upper classes, meat was a luxury.
    Specific days of the year, however, were set aside for riotous feasting. Every resource was called upon to provide a memorable meal or two that lingered in the mind until the next feast day.
    These days were largely determined by astronomical phenomena and agricultural cycles, which were and still are closely linked. Planting and harvesting prompted the people to feast, as did the coming of spring, summer, fall, and winter. Persons living in harmony with the earth used its seasons as a natural calendar that structured their otherwise routine lives.
    These festivals were more than times of heavy eating after the work had been finished. Such feasting revels were religious as well as secular in nature. In the frenzied baking, cooking, and eating was a real thanksgiving to the mysterious powers that created and watched over the fertility of the earth.
    Only on such spiritual days (and nights) did the people expand their diets to include all manner of festive foods. Only then could they truly enjoy the fruits of their intensive food-producing labors.
    These festival days are still with us. Some of them are sacred in the old Pagan sense of the word (see glossary ). Others are seemingly secular rites with religious roots. This chapter is a guide to food magic throughout the year, with suggestions of dishes we can eat on feast days that attune us with the energies at work within the earth.
    If you decide to prepare and eat any of these foods, do so with the meaning of the holiday in mind. Remember that these dishes link us with the endless cycle of the earth’s fertility. Eat with knowledge and peace.
    Most of these celebrations actually began on the night before the festival date. This originated during the age of lunar calendars. Beltane rituals, for example, were performed on April thirtieth and continued into the actual day itself. This practice dates to the time when lunar calendars were observed.
    We’ll begin our journey at the festival of Yule.
    Yule
    (circa December 21)
    Yule—the winter solstice—is an old solar ritual that has been preserved in the Christian observance of Christmas. Its origins lie deep in the past, in the Mediterranean lands of the sun. The birthday of Mithras, an ancient solar deity, was celebrated on the winter solstice. Later, this holiday was brought to Europe, and an astonishing collection of folk rituals became associated with it.
    Yule occurs during the depths of winter. Though some of us live beyond