Kitchen, Cooking

The kitchen has a maternal quality. It is traditionally the space of the mother or cook, and is a place where one usually feels comfortable; a room for nourishment and security. The hearth is a feminine symbol, associated with significant goddesses like Hestia; it was said that she was mild and just, never involved in conflict, and was the protector of the house. The kitchen/dining room is the center of the family. The earliest houses may have been built to protect the fire rather than the people. The words "hearth" and "heart" are believed to share the same root.

Vessel

Food is prepared with the help of heat in a vessel (see also Fire), and when it is ready, it is taken out of the vessel/oven as something transformed, something nutritious and useful. In this way, the kitchen serves as a kind of womb. (This can be compared to the universal story of the hero being swallowed by a monster, where the heat inside the stomach burns his hair, and he emerges reborn.) The vessel used in cooking holds similar symbolic meaning to the stomach. 

Affect

The heat of the kitchen and the oven’s connection to the stomach make this symbol sometimes associated with affects (emotions). The witch stirring her cauldron can express a negative aspect of "stirring up emotions"; she always has to draw others into her own affect and swallow them. This is also the shadow of the good mother—the nurturing and protective figure.

Enlightenment

In Yogabija, a 14th-century yogic text, it is said that there are two types of people: those who are “cooked” and those who are raw. (Roots of Yoga, p. 28.) People are "cooked" in yoga; the one who has been “cooked in the fire of yoga” “has yoga” and is free; the uncooked one does not and is a source of suffering. (Similarly, heating and awareness are related, just as cooling and unconsciousness are, as described in other Dream Image articels.)

The counterpart to cooking in dream contexts can refer to reflection; an interested observation and detached investigation; to stay awake with the “Vessel.”

Laboratory

The kitchen is also a laboratory where different ingredients are mixed and heated in a creative process to transform into something nourishing. In the kitchen, one works with vessels, heat, and content to achieve a goal, in a way that resembles the alchemist’s opus. The kitchen, therefore, is a place for transformation.

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