Herb
Bark worth a war — the warmest and most commercial spice in any cupboard.
These are associations the community holds, not settled fact — the more a reading is shared, the bolder it sits.
For centuries Europeans had no idea where cinnamon came from, and Arab traders had every reason to keep it that way. Herodotus passes on a story about giant birds building nests of cinnamon sticks on inaccessible cliffs, harvested by leaving out lumps of meat too heavy for the nests to bear — a marketing exercise of genius that stood for the better part of two thousand years. The actual answer is Sri Lanka, and the Portuguese, Dutch and British each fought to control it.
Two spices share the shop name. True cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum, is pale, layered and delicate; cassia is darker, thicker and what most supermarkets sell. Craft rarely distinguishes them, though it matters for the safety note below.
Practice uses cinnamon for speed and heat: money workings, success, quickening a spell that has stalled, and a great deal of prosperity work in the American folk-magic strand where it is blown across a threshold or a till. Its association with warmth and generosity is fairly universal, and — for once — needs no folkloric explanation at all beyond the smell.
Readings practitioners have offered, ordered by how many recognise them. Take what serves, leave the rest.
Carried forward
Herodotus, Histories (5th century BCE)
Herodotus reports that cinnamon sticks are gathered from the nests of great birds in Arabia, by a trick involving heavy joints of meat. He is repeating what traders told him, and traders had excellent reasons to lie about the source of the most valuable bark in the world.
Carried forward
Common in contemporary practice
Blown across a threshold or the door of a business for money and quick luck, and added to workings that feel slow. It is treated as an accelerant rather than an ingredient in its own right.
Credit what you carry. Much of this comes from living traditions, and some of it from traditions that are closed — held by particular peoples and not offered for general use. Where you know whose practice a reading came from, name them; where you don't, say that too.