When did you last use your mortar and pestle? For me: earlier today when making masala chai. My kitchen alchemy will never be as delicious as the chai I had in India, but (imo) forever tastier than store bought concentrates.

Lexicon Entry: Mortar & Pestle

Category: Alchemical Tool. Domestic Relic. Agent of Transformation.

Across gothic narrative and imagery, the mortar and pestle often reside on the edge of domestic space between kitchen and laboratory, between cure and curse. They appear in witches’ cottages, apothecaries’ shelves, physician’s trunks, and forgotten pantries bearing the weight, or the stain, of whatever they were last used to crush.

At its core, this is a tool of transformation. What passes through is changed: seeds to powder, roots to paste, petals to perfume, memory to remedy. Or poison.

The mortar and pestle can act as narrative foreshadow: someone is preparing something. The question is whether it heals, or harms.

Stone remembers every root.

The pestle bruises more than herbs.

No one asks what was prepared last.

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Filed under: The Pantry

Keywords: #gothicobjects #kitchenwitchery #transformationtools

Image:Woman grinding something with a mortar while a child watches. Etching by Jan Luyken. Rijksmuseum Collection, public domain.