Consumable Magic: A Ritual to Honor the Strawberry Moon

On June 24, the sky will be graced with the first full moon of summer, often called the Strawberry Moon by the indigenous peoples of North America. This full moon heralds the appearance of the first fruits of summer. Tiny, star-shaped strawberry blossoms transform into sweet, ripe, nourishing fruits.

For our ancestors, the beginning of summer was a time to rejoice in the vast abundance that the earth was about to produce. The lean season of winter was well and truly over, replaced by a period of prosperity and growth. They saw strawberries as a symbol that the best was yet to come.

The same attitudes still hold true for many of us today. Summer represents a time of respite when we take the time to bask in the sunlight, engage with nature, and reconnect with friends and family. Time seems to slow down a bit as the heat rises, encouraging us to savor the longer days.

[Read: “5 Ways to Chill Out.”]

This first full moon of summer is an excellent time to slow down and feel gratitude for the abundance present in our lives, knowing that this practice will help us recognize and attract more of those experiences in the future. The energetic seeds we plant now will grow and flourish throughout the summer season. Practicing mindfulness through ritual can help us nurture those seeds to bring about a generous harvest.

Consumable Magick for the Moon

Many of my favorite rituals revolve around food and seasonal eating. Food preparation may be the oldest form of spellwork. When we prepare food with love and intention, we reach back through time and capture a piece of the warmth and magick shared around the hearths of our ancestors. (In Wicca and other belief systems, “magick” refers to action taken to bring about internal transformation or external change.)

As magickal practitioners, we can take this a step further by combining specific ingredients with specific correspondences to create consumable magick.

Every fruit, veggie, herb, spice, seed, grain, and nut we put into our bodies has both nourishing qualities and magickal correspondences. This is the incredible power and alchemy of food—by blending the right ingredients, we create meals that are delicious, nutrient-rich, and constructed of powerful energy.

Strawberry Moon Ritual

Strawberries, in particular, have some particularly auspicious correspondences, including love, good fortune, prosperity, sensuality, and fertility. For this simple ritual, you may choose to focus on one or all of these things to help draw more of them into your life.

You’ll need:

• A candle
• Three to five fresh strawberries
• Pen and paper

- Light the candle and focus on the flame. Contemplate what you’d like to draw into your life. Could your friendships be stronger? Perhaps you’d like to enjoy your life more or wish you had more time.

- Pick up the strawberries and hold them in your hands. Close your eyes and think about how they feel against your skin, cool and prickly. Now, revisit what you want more of and think about ways that thing is already present in your life. This is the key to manifestation—acknowledging that we already possess at least some of what we want. Manifestation is just allowing it to grow.

- Allow these good memories and feelings to wash through you. Feel that energy flow into the strawberries, filling them until they pulse with energy. One by one, eat the strawberries, remaining focused on the beautiful, abundant feelings you’ve just conjured. Enjoy the fruit’s crisp sweetness, letting the energies flow back into you, now strengthened and infused with the strawberries’ energy and nourishment.

- While the feelings are still strong, journal about your experience. Make a list of all the memories, events, people, and things that bring you joy and why they bring you joy. Write intuitively until it feels right to stop.

- Fold up the paper and keep it somewhere you’ll see it first thing every day. One of my favorite things to do is to turn the paper into an origami animal or box and set it on my nightstand. Each time you see the folded paper, remember all the incredible things present in your life and acknowledge them anew.

As new abundance enters your life, you can repeat this ritual with any seasonal fruit, burning the old list and sprinkling the ashes across your doorstep as a mini ritual to repel negative energies from your home.

Check out more ways to savor the sweetness of the strawberry moon.