In the correspondence traditions ginger is a hot, fiery and stimulating root, associated with fire, with power and with the quickening of any working: it was added to charms to give them speed and strength, and used in spells for money, success and love, on the principle that its heat kindled and hastened. In parts of the Pacific ginger was chewed and used in ritual and healing practice. Its symbolism follows plainly from the sensation it gives, a warmth that spreads and rouses, so that the spice of the warmed body became the spice of energy, drive and the heating-up of fortune. A homely kitchen root, ginger carries a consistent meaning of warmth, vigour and force.
Ginger was also one of the first Asian spice plants successfully transplanted to the New World by European colonists: Spanish growers introduced it to the Caribbean in the sixteenth century, and Jamaica in particular became, and remains, a significant producer of ginger prized for its quality, so that a plant whose ritual and medicinal reputation was built in Confucian China and ancient India came, within a few generations of European contact, to be grown commercially on the far side of the world. Jamaican ginger's reputation for superior flavour and heat is still cited by chefs and spice merchants today, a modern commercial echo of an introduction now approaching five hundred years old.