used in a bath to re-energize your being and aid in a ritual of clearing and cleansing your energies of negativity by soaking in it
used to clear and cleanse an object or area
store in a white glass bottle
Rain from thunderstorms, tornadoes or hurricanes
Used to empower spells for moving things forward such as letting go of the past and moving forward in life
used to help move a project forward and get beyond current blocks in life
used to change a pattern or habit you don’t like
store in a blue glass bottle
Sun and Rain
Used to balance energies when feeling weighed down
helps gather your thoughts when they are flighty and scattered
store in a dark green bottle
Hail storm
collect in a metal bowl but dont let it sit in the bowl for more than 6 hours
allow the hail to melt before bottling it
store in a black or dark brown bottle
used to dispel psychic attacks or negative energies
best used for black magic to get rid of your enemies or negative forces that stand in your way
Spring Rain
used to empower new ventures such as new relationships, new business ventures, a new job
rain collected on the spring equinox or the first rain after the spring equinox is good for empowering spells for relationships
stored in a light green bottle
Summer Rain
used to encourage growth whether it be personal, spiritual growth or growth of a business venture or relationship
used to break bad habits
great to water indoor plants
rain collected on mid-summers eve and day is especially mystical
store in a sky blue bottle
Fall Rain
used for giving thanks and showing gratitude for the abundance the year has given you
store in an orange or fall colored bottle
Winter Rain
can be used for blessing a person, relationship, family or object
can be used to bless an event such as a birth, wedding or new business venture
to be able to survive the hardships of winter one is able to survive the hardships of life
Full Moon Rain
Used to honor the Goddess
a small glass can be added to a cleansing bath
add a couple of drops to your bath before an important event or ritual
used for a blessing during a full moon ritual
used for blessing a child or pet
rain collected during the full moon according to that season will have the energies of that moon according to month and season
clean altar spaces and other things by putting an ounce of rain water into your cleaning products
also very good for divination
Waning Moon Rain
good for getting rid of things, banishings, and purging negative energies
used like a banishing oil
also can be added to your bath for relaxation, clarity or promoting self love
use to prepare for lunar rituals
anoint your money with it to increase your wealth
anoint yourself to increase your psychic awareness
New Moon Rain
good for workings in which something needs to be brought in
used when starting a new project
Waxing Moon Rain
used to bring in good energies and blessing
used at the start of a new project or a new beginning
Rain collected from trees or roses will have different energies depending on the type of tree or color of the rose you collect it from
Use 1 cup of rain water to 1 tub size of water
For rituals use 1oz of rain water in a glass bowl or cauldron, to add effects to the water pour over crystals energized with your intent
For a spell place all your spell items in your bowl or cauldron and add 1tablespoon of rainwater
For cleansing or anointing ritual take 1/2oz of rainwater into a glass bowl and as you recite your incantation dip your fingers or wand/athame into the water then mark your physical body, the mark can be any spiritual symbol that has meaning to you
To anoint a tool, pout 1oz of rainwater onto the tool as you state your incantation to empower the tool for its intended purpose.
Note: if you do plan on using any of the recipes on your skin, make sure it is heavy diluted in a carrier oil such a almond, jojoba or coconut. Some oils can cause major skin irritating and should not be applied directly to skin. Be safe, be smart, and ALWAYS research it for yourself
🔮Moonstone, tigers eye, amethyst, flourite, agate. {Or any crystals in warm colours}.
🌞See the sun rise & set, eat outdoors, make or buy a sun catcher, bake a sweet cake, let sunlight cleanse your rooms, clear cobwebs, wear a flower crown, make honey/sugar scrub, wear warm tones.
🌽Multi grain bread, corn on the cob, bbq meats, fried chicken, potatoes, soup, rice, nuts, black current juice, beer, peppermint tea.
🌹Rose, chamomile, passion fruit, all spice oils/scents.
🔮Citrine, clear quartz, tigers eye.
📖Finish a project, make a bread to share, enjoy nature, take care of plants, decorate or craft, acknowledge what you are grateful for, journal future hopes.
🎬Parent Trap, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, Cheaper by the Dozen.
🌾Make scented pinecones, spend time under the stars, donate food or goods [RSPCA], burn bad habits, visit the deceased, harvest take care of plants, bask in nature, meditate.
🌹Light candles, plant seeds, share a roast ham with loved ones, bake banana bread, finish spring cleaning, lay tumbled stones in your garden bed, take deep breaths [inhale new energy & exhale old energies], wear spring colours whites & florals, collect wildflowers or buy flowers that call to you & research what they mean, walk through nature.
🎬Epic, Strange Magic, The Secret Garden, Spiderwick, A Bugs Life, Barbie Fairies.
🔮Amber, citrine, moonstone, red jasper, rose quartz.
🌼Wear a flower crown or flowers in your hair, dress in red or white, make a bonfire & roast marshmallows, garden, take a walk, spend time in nature, pick fresh flowers to decorate.
🎬Moana, Arthur Trilogy, Avatar, Jungle Book, Tinkerbell, Barbie.
HOW I CELEBRATE ALL SABBATS OR ESBATS
☾Sage cleanse the house, light candles, diffuse oils.
☾Clean sheets/bedding/pillowcases/towels.
☾Eat at least one traditional food.
☾Watch a relevant movie.
☾Take notes in my BOS of how I celebrated the Sabbat to look back on next year.
☾Charge my crystals & tarot decks in the full moonlight.
Quartz or any other crystal that you believe will help. Please check to see if your crystal works well with water!
Note: The water to oil ratio should be around 3:1 or 4:1, too much water will result in an obvious separation.
Steps:
Bring a small amount of water to a boil and then add pine needles. Allow this to sit for ten minutes or more.
In a separate container mix together your oil, sea salt, ashes, and pepper
Slowly add the mixture to your pine needles and water and stir.
Once everything is mixed together add your crystal.
Let this stand for a couple of minutes before removing the crystal and setting it aside.
Quickly pour your protection oil/balm into your chosen containers and allow it to cool.
Pray over your balm/oil and use it as you wish !
*Note: I used a cauldron of sorts so I sadly can’t tell you what level to set the fire at, and I also eyeballed all of the ingredients since I’ve done this before.
An alphabet of desire is the personalized magical alphabet of a witch or sorcerer. Each letter represents a sensation and is tied to a sense memory. The letters are used by the witch or sorcerer to *spell* out their desire. The *named* desire is *drawn* into existence. It is especially useful for artistic magic. You can put your personal letters on tools, charms and divination sets. Your alphabet can be used to make sigils. The alphabet of desire will reveal to the witch or sorcerer more uses as they work with it more. It can become a form of dream language too. For the most straightforward and simple information on Alphabets of desire check out Liber Null by Peter Carroll (available in paperback). Otherwise you are venturing into the challenging stuff: Frater UD’s Practical Sigil Magic, Andrew Chumbley’s Azoetia, Kenneth Grant’s various articles and excerpts re the alphabet of desire to be found via google and original works by Austin Osman Spare. When I read difficult books it can take me ages to understand, but I dig that process.
But really it’s simply the ongoing tradition of witches and sorcerers making personal alphabets and symbols that transcend mere code for regular letters A-Z and instead identify the spirit of things.
When burning anything always keep a glass of water near you, unless you are working with burning oils, then keep a fire extinguisher or baking soda on hand.
When working with essential oils(EO), do not burn them they are highly flammable
Never leave anything burning unattended, be it a burn bowl, candle, incense. DON’T LEAVE IT!
Please remove anything flammable such as paper or string from the candle, it will ignite and you will be alarmed.
Make sure that what you’re burning your candle in is fire safe, metal and cast iron are good bets. Do NOT burn in a glass, if you have to put it out and dump water on it, it will explode.
Make sure you tie back loose hair and don’t have any floppy sleeves or necklaces to get in the way.
When putting out a candle it is best to use a candle snuffer and do not use water.
Don’t burn kitchen sage, it gives off a toxic smoke. Not something you wanna inhale.
Essential Oil Safety
Please, please dilute them properly. I have a chemical burn scar I can never get rid of due to undiluted cinnamon bark oil. The proper dilution is one drop per teaspoon.
Never ingest EO, there are some that are now generally recognized as safe by the FDA, but the quality of EO are not regulated. Who knows what a bad quality EO could do to your internal organs, not something I wanna test.
Essential Oils are photosensitive, meaning they deteriorate in light store them in a dark area to prevent them from spoiling.
DO NOT put them near on your skin and get in the sun or a tanning bed, especially citrus oils, they will blister.
Water will not dilute essential oils, only other oils(canola, olive, sweet almond, olive will all dilute). If you want to use them in a bath it is one drop per a teaspoon of oil.
Please seek medical attention if anything seems off after using EO, they seem harmless but can be very dangerous
Pets can be very sensitive to essential oils(particularly cats) and it is almost impossible to cover all my bases here. The sources provided below have some great resources.
Always go by the scientific name, German and Roman chamomile are very different products.
Kitchen Magic Safety
Wear shoes if you’re doing anything, I nearly lost a toe the other day cause I dropped a knife. I got lucky I was wearing boots.
Wear correct clothing, and tie back hair. No matter if you have a gas, electric or induction stove, I’ve caught a lab coat sleeve on fire thanks to a torch while making a creme brulee.
Use your knives correctly, learn about the pinch grip and use the correct knife for the job. Using a paring knife for chopping potatoes is asking for trouble. There are tons of videos online, I like the ones from Alton Brown and Jamie Oliver.
As a side note use sharp knives, a blunt knife will do more damage than a sharp one.
Don’t leave knives in the sink, someone could begin to wash dishes and cut themselves.
Watch the steam. Steam can give a worse burn than dry heat, open pot lids away from you and don’t stick your face and phalanges in steam.
Don’t leave food products unattended.
Use your damn pot holders, they protect you and your counters.
Store raw meat on the lowest shelves, and never store cooked meat on the same shelf
Wash your hands before, wash your hands after handling raw meats, wash your hands after.
Don’t leave food that is meant to be cold or hot out for more than 2 hours, this is to decrease foodborne illness.
When using the store turn handles in, to keep yourself from bumping them off the stove.
Cook meats to proper temps(there is a chart in the sources)
If you are using herbs be sure to use kitchen grade herbs, those that are not kitchen grade are not held up to the same purity standards and could have more pesticide residue.
Herbal Safety
Please be aware a lot of herbs can work against prescription medications, or should only be taken in very specific doses( St. John’s Wort I’m looking at you.) Check in with your doctor or a licensed herbalist or naturopath before ingesting herbs.
Crystal Safety
Identify your crystals, some are water solvent some are not and it matters
Some that aren’t safe in water include malachite and selenite. They have copper and if aren’t sealed they can become toxic. There is no way to know for sure if it was sealed or not keep -ite crystals dry as a good rule of thumb.
Some crystals fade in sunlight like rose quartz, amethyst and citrine, in order to prevent fading try cleansing them with sound, flower petals, moonlight and energy.
(a decoy acts as a “substitute” for you, which the curse will be redirected to instead of harming you; the decoy can then be cleansed or destroyed to remove the curse from it; sometimes you don’t get a choice and the decoy gets destroyed, and you have to make a new one if you still desire its protection)
I don’t celebrate Ostara, so instead of posting about that I decided to instead post my checklist of things I do every spring to cleanse my home and start fresh.
The first step before you start any magical cleaning of your home is to do a good physical cleaning. There are many cultures for which spirtual wellbeing is very connected to your physical space, so I really don’t suggest skipping this step. Plus, it will make the rest of the steps a lot easier if you don’t have to navigate around piles of clothes and dirty dishes.
If your place is in a really bad situation, I recommend starting off with Unfuck Your Habitat’s Emergency Cleaning guide. If you’re coming out of a depression lull and your apartment or room has gotten extremely messy, it will give you manageable steps so the clean doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming. They also have a great guide to Spring Cleaning for Actual People on their website (or you can get the pdf here). (I’m not in any way affiliated with this website, I just like what they do).
Sources: The content below is a mixture of French-Canadian folk magic, personal gnosis, and rituals from ‘The Magical Household’ by Scott Cunningham and David Harrington.
1. (Re)arrange furniture. Take each room on its own and look at it from every corner, rather than only from the places you usually see it from (doorway, desk, couch, etc). There should be room to breathe and allow the energy to circulate freely. A good starting point is to find the focal point of your room, and orient the rest of your furniture accordingly. I usually point the head of my bed to the North and place it going in the same direction as the lines on the floor.
2. Salt the floors. This is honestly one of my favourite parts about doing a good home cleanse. Your floors should already be cleaned up from your mundane spring cleaning. It’s easier to do it one room at a time. Sprinkle the salt on the floors and especially in the corners. Leave the salt to sit so they can absorb any negative energies in the room, and once you feel it’s been long enough sweep it up with a broom. Cunningham’s book says that it’s common practice to have a separate broom for mundane than for magical cleaning, but I personally prefer to use the same broom for both. When you are sweeping you want to do it in any direction that is not towards the main entrance of your home. I sweep towards the back of the house, and once you’ve collected all the salt into a dustpan throw it outside (preferably not on your own property). An optional additional step would be to mop the floors again, but instead of using a cleaner use warm water, Lavender essence, and a small amount of (your own) urine. In folk practices this marks your spiritual and physical territory. It might seem gross, but this was (and still is) fairly common practice for many witches. Urine is sterile, and you should only be using a small amount so there will be no lingering odour (if you can smell it, you’re using WAY too much).
3. Ward windows and doors. If you use wards regularly, any protection ward will do. My windows and doors are all painted white, so I use white chalk on them. If you don’t use wards normally and you’re not sure what to put on there, any symbol that to you means protection will work just fine. Pentagrams are a common one for pagan witches, crosses are also fairly common.
4. Additional protection. These are extra things I like to do for safety due to the entities I work with and the experimental nature of my craft:
– Dry a bunch of dill and hang it above the entrance to your home – Hang a bag of salt onto each door handle – Hang a string of garlic in the kitchen – Place a knife under the bed – Place a whole onion under the sink (this needs to be changed out when it goes bad) – Light sandalwood incense in each room (you can do them one at a time if you only have one incense burner) – Hide a witch bottle
5. Cauldron ritual. This step closes the spring cleaning for me and acts as an activation for all the wards and protections that have been placed in the home. Bring water to a boil in a large pot. Add a tablespoon of vanilla, juice from a lemon, and one stick of cinnamon. Let them simmer for a few minutes while you finalize your ritual. If you use incantations or call upon gods, this is where you’d do your thing and incorporate whatever elements you prefer. When this is done, I pour the water (remove the cinnamon stick) into bowls and leave them overnight as offerings for house and local spirits. They can be discarded the next morning however you want.
Little witchy ways to help with brain fog (UPG). Brain fog is basically when you struggle with mental clarity, memory, focus, low energy, grumpiness, and the like. It’s no fun!
Using Crystals:
Pick a clear crystal, like quartz. Hold it to your temples/forehead and let it draw out the fog. Picture the fog being pulled from your head and swirling into the crystal, and the coldness of the crystal bringing clarity to your mind. (You can also do this by touching a crystal in your pocket if you’re in public!)
Using Water:
Dip your fingers in snow/moon water (tap water will do if needed) and touch any points on your face that you feel like the fog is affecting it (if that makes sense?!) I like to do: a drop on my chin, a drop on each cheekbone, one on my forehead and on both temples, and on my eyelids as well. With each drop, say a word you would like to bring back (clarity, focus, understanding, comprehension, memory, retrieval, ~ability to see~).
Using Air:
Get fresh air (even through a cracked window) and breathe deeply for one minute. Envision it swirling in your mind and clearing away any muckiness.
Using Sigils:
Find sigils for brain fog, clarity, memory, etc. and draw them in a place that you feel connects to your mind. For me, it’s my pulse points on my inner wrist (since drawing sigils on your face can be a hassle!
Non-witchy advice:
(Aka boring “have you thought about changing your entire lifestyle?” stuffs)
Evaluate your diet, and consider if there may be any foods influencing it. Have you been tested for food allergies? It’s worth considering!
Try to do light exercise at least once a day. For me this involves a little extra walking on campus, or some stretches in the morning.
Less sugary drinks, more water.
Give yourself at least 10-30 minutes before bed to wind down/think about the day/de-stress – even if it means you go to bed a little bit later. It can help sleep if you’re really busy and stressed.
Get a planner/make a to-do list.
Getting up at the first alarm is better for your clarity than hitting snooze six times (but I am guilty of the latter).
to help you gain victory against all that fights you whether it be illness, work, or humanity at large. call the hounds to hunt and your steed to bear, for you will not return bloodless and empty-handed.
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