Tyromancy: Why Cheese is Magic After All

Cheese is magic. From a few ingredients — milk, salt, a coagulant, possibly some friendly bacteria, heat and time — we can make hundreds if not thousands of cheeses. But the making of cheese isn’t the only kind of dairy magic. Cheese has a long history of being used for religious and magical purposes and it’s not simply a practice in the past. Kitchen witches are using cheese in their work in several ways, including tyromancy and mindful cooking. We talked to two kitchen witches about the use of cheese in their practice.

Cheese Magic

Going back to Ancient Sumeria, people gave offerings of cheese to the Goddess Inanna. Cheese has shown up as a means for fortune telling, offering to otherworldly entities, and been used for spells in texts over many centuries. Today’s kitchen witches use cheese too. So what exactly is a kitchen witch? Dawn Aurora Hunt, owner and CEO of Cucina Kitchen Witch, defines kitchen witch as “Someone whose spiritual practice focuses on home, family, and nurturing of those things through food.”

Fortune Telling and Cheese

Tyromancy is the art of divination by cheese. Jennifer Billock, Cheese Professor contributor, kitchen witch and editor of Chicago’s Kitchen Witch, became interested in the practice, after a lifelong interest in fortune telling, beginning with tarot card readings at the age of 15. She got interested in reading tea leaves and started looking into other kinds of fortune telling with foods and drinks. That’s how she learned about tyromancy.

In her research, Billock learned that the practice is not new, but dates back to the 2nd century when Artemidorus Daldianus, a professional dream interpreter complained that cheese diviners (among other diviners) threatened the work of real diviners, presumably like himself. She found another mention of tyromancy in French Renaissance writer Francois Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (1653) where the text mentions a series of different divinations including cheese: “By tyromancy, whereof we make some proof in a great Brehemont cheese which I here keep by me.” It has shown up more recently in pop culture including the Netflix show Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts and the video game of the Witcher.

For Billock, she practices tyromancy by looking at the shape and the number of holes, the pattern of mold, the set depth of the holes and other features. She says it’s pretty similar to other forms of divination, like reading tea leaves or basically anything where you’re looking at food. For example, a heart means love; a baby means a big change is coming. The biggest thing is having some texture to the cheese so there is something to look at. Need a recommendation or two? The Cheese Professor recommends Bleu Mont Bandaged Cheddar, Asiago DOP, Manchego 1605, Pleasant Ridge Reserve, and Bleu d’Auvergne which are all cheeses with variations in their paste, or interior beneath the rind.

Magical Ways with Cheese

Billock notes that there are many ways cheese has been used for fortune telling beyond her own practice. One method was making a fondue-like dish where two cheeses are melted together in white wine or dry apple cider. Someone would use a long stick to immerse a morsel of bread into the mixture while keeping a question in their head. Then they would bring it up to a candle to see what shape it casts on the wall, which would “provide a short and easily understood answer.” Read more about the not-so-magical rituals of a fondue party.

In another example, in the Middle Ages, practitioners would write down the names of people they wanted to date on separate pieces of cheese. Whichever piece molded first was their ideal partner. Another practice, Billock noted, was putting answers to questions on pieces of cheese and putting them in a cage with a hungry rodent, whichever piece was eaten first would indicate the answer.

Regardless of the method, Billock notes that there’s no need for powers to read cheese. “Anybody can do it,” she notes, “Pick up a piece of cheese, see what you’re looking at and use your imagination, right. This sounds really weird to say but tune into the energy of your cheese.”

Billock offers tyromancy workshops and readings for people who are interested, both in person and online.

Cooking Cheese with Intention

Tyromancy is not the only way that cheese can be used in witchcraft. Dawn Aurora Hunt, owner and CEO of Cucina Kitchen Witch, uses cheese in a different way in her work. She began practicing as a witch at the age of 18 and at around the age of 21 she felt the presence of spirits when she was cooking for herself and/or others.

Hunt notes that other kitchen witches can do similar work by making soap, tinctures, and more but her practice focuses on the culinary uses of natural ingredients, herbs, and staying connected to the seasons and Mother Earth through food.

Hunt identifies the different energies of food. For instance, garlic has protective energy. She explains, “When I’m using garlic, I want to visualize protecting my family, protecting my wealth, protecting my job. I can use it in that way while I’m sauteing garlic in the pan with spinach. Then I’m going to throw that with pasta and eat that for dinner!”

She likens cooking with intention to visualizing someone while making them a birthday cake or imagining them blowing out birthday candles. It doesn’t have to be for a guest, but also for yourself. Says Hunt, “You focus your energy on the food, and then you physically take that food into your body,” nothing that this is a form of self-care.

The Energy of Cheese

Grilled Cheese sandwich cheese pull photo Whitney Maka Barney

Cheese and dairy hold a lot of interesting energy, Hunt explains. “It holds joyful energy. It holds nurturing energy, because cheese comes from milk, which feeds a child and a mother makes milk to feed a child,” she says. If she’s working with cheese, she visualizes the energy. For example, grilled cheese and mac ’n cheese are commonly seen as comforting foods. But Hunt says that it’s more than just nostalgia for our favorite foods when we were kids. There’s special comfort and joy in the ingredients themselves.

Hunt also mentions carving a desire or word into cheese before shredding it or cutting it up for a dish and shares that it’s essential with any kitchen witchcraft (and honestly any witchcraft) obtains consent (although whether she is asking the cheese for consent or the people she is serving dinner is unclear).

Hunt explains that whichever ingredient she wants to harness more energy, she’ll focus more of her visualizations on. “If the base is joy, nurturing, and comfort, coming from the energy of the cheese, then I’m adding love for the tomato, prosperity for the bacon. I’m surrounding it with bread for my grilled cheese sandwich. That bread is friendship and kinship and togetherness. I am creating a circle of friendship, kinship and togetherness around joy, love and prosperity,” Hunt says. This is a quick everyday practical spell recipe where cheese brings it all together.

Finding Your Own Cheese Magic

Cooking in a pot outside — Photo credit Rajat Kuma Singh

Like Billock, Hunt notes that kitchen witchcraft is easy and practical. It’s a way of nurturing your body and others. There’s lots of books out there, including Hunt’s own works, but she cautions against taking advice from social media like TikTok. Some of the information is not accurate. She recommends talking to your local witchcraft/occult bookstore or talking to people in the community who already do it.

It all comes back to mindfulness, says Hunt, “Being able to take a moment to be mindful of the practice of preparing food, and eating food, whether it’s alone or with others. Once that awareness is there, things begin to shift...”