WARNING Diffusing essential oils can be toxic to your pets. Please do extensive research on which types of oils are not harmful to your pets.
Among our senses, one of the most-looked over and powerful is our sense of smell. Aromas can help us recall happy memories - baking cookies with loved ones during the holiday season, the perfume or cologne of a loved one - as well as unpleasant memories. Through psychology, we’ve proven that, when recreating a scene, scents can be our most powerful allies in recalling past events in our lives.
Aromatherapy is the art of using scents to heal the body, mind and soul. We use scents in healing rituals, magic and spirituality frequently - it even manifests in religious practices such as Christianity when a pastor cleanses a space with incense.
Scents and Sensibility
Working with essential oils is really quite easy, but here are some precautions to take.
Dilute
It’s important to dilute your essential oils in a carrier oil before using them therapeutically. You should rarely apply an undiluted essential oil to your skin.
By diluting your essential oils in a carrier oil, you get a lot more use out of them and you also prevent skin irritations. Some common types of carrier oils are grapeseed, olive, flaxseed, almond and sesame oil. Use 30mL (2 tbsp) of carrier oil per 5-10 drops of essential oil.
Storage
Essential oils need to be kept away from light and air. It’s best to store them in dark-tinted bottles to prevent light penetration. With proper storage, most essential oils can last 1-2 years. However, citrus oils should not be used after 6-9 months.
Allergies
Before working with essential oils, be sure to do a skin allergy test. Many people have sensitive skin and it’s important to take precautions and avoid allergic reactions to both essential oils and carrier oils.
To test for allergies, simply place a drop of your chosen carrier oil on your skin. Check and see if there is a reaction over the course of 12 hours. Place one drop of essential oil in 15 drops of carrier oil and apply to your chest. Check and see if there is a reaction over the course of 12 hours. If there is no reaction, then you likely have no allergy to the plant or the oil.
Precautions
Please avoid essential oils if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Specifically, avoid: cardamom, coriander, geranium, ginger, grapefruit, lavender, lemon, lemon balm, lemongrass, lime, mandarin, neroli, palmarosa, petitgrain, spearmint and ylang-ylang.
If you have sensitive or dry skin, it is best to avoid the following essential oils: black pepper, cinnamon, clove, grapefruit, lemon, lemon balm, lemongrass, lime, mandarin, orange, peppermint and spearmint.
Healing with Essential Oils
When starting out with using essential oils for health purposes, it’s important to address one symptom or issue at a time. Limit your selection to a few different oils until you become more familiar with your tools. Once you get comfortable, start experimenting with making your own blends. As time goes by, you’ll see what works best for your body and you!
Stress
Stress often has the side effects of anxiety, upset stomach, heart palpitations and rapid breathing. One of the most common essential oils used to alleviate stress is peppermint - it relaxes the mind and body. Lavender is another good choice as it relaxes muscles and the vapors help regulate breathing.
Pain and Muscle Tension
Muscle tension and pain are something most of us are familiar with. When using essential oils to address this particular issue, it’s best to create a massage oil to rub the affected area. If you’re trying to relax muscles and ease pain, allspice and geranium are great choices.
Chest Congestion
Flus, colds, respiratory illnesses - we’re no stranger to those during the winter months. To use essential oils to treat this, apply a few drops of diluted oil across the chest and massage into the skin. I tend to use eucalyptus, but thyme is another great choice!
Concentration and Focus
Everyone experiences difficulties with focus and concentration; stress, lack of sleep, anxiety and depression are just a few possible culprits. To use essential oils for this, apply a few drops to the temples, middle of the forehead and the base of the neck. Rosemary and spearmint are great choices for this as they help you relax while improving mental clarity.
Fatigue
At the end of the day, many of us feel exhausted from school, work and just life in general. To help with this, place a few drops of essential oil on your wrists and rub them in. Citrus oils like lemon and lime work really well since they uplift mood, relieve fatigue and provide mental clarity and focus.
Insomnia
Sometimes we just can’t fall asleep. Place a few drops of essential oil on your forehead and at the base of your neck. Lemon balm and ylang-ylang are good choices for this as they promote restful sleep and reduce stress and anxiety.
Anxiety
This issue typically involves both the physical and mental parts of the body. To help alleviate anxiety, place a drop of essential oil on the forehead, base of the neck, wrists and along the collarbone or upper chest. Chamomile, lavender and lemon balm are excellent choices.
Images are under the Creative Commons License. Information is from a variety of books, websites and my personal experience working with essential oils.
You want to get your bffl the perfect magical gift, but you’re no basic witch: you can’t just buy any pack of incense and call it a day! For those of you that want to imbue a little magic into your festive gifting, here’s our list of DIY ideas for the holidays and all year round.
1. Perfume. Fragrance is always a great gift option, but why not make it more personal and blend the scent yourself? This is also a great option because it allows you to easily add some magic based on the ingredient correspondences. Try out one of these ideas and then charge your creation under the full moon!
2. Black Bath Bomb. We’ve all seen the hypnotizing black bath bomb that took over the internet, but what better way to add extra magical umph then to make it yourself? Give a go at either this recipe or this one for the perfect bath to banish negative energy. Add an essential oil of your choice for even more magic.
3. Incense Cones. Just because you’re not buying a pack of incense doesn’t mean you have to forgo the idea entirely. Making incense means more magic when burned then store-bought, and now you can customize it to your receiver’s needs. Use this recipe as a guide but use your own ground herbs to target what this witch needs more of in their life (hint: its probably cleansing!).
4. Salve or Balm. Every witch loves a gifted salve because it means they don’t have to make it. These make particularly great gifts for those friends who want something practical and useful in addition to being cute (looking at you, earth signs). A great compilation of recipes can be found here.
5. Gem Soap. It looks as pretty as a crystal, but has an everyday use, too! Make a big batch with this recipe to give to all the bath witches in your life and all the witches with the swoon-worthy gem collections. Hell, give them to all the witches in your life because they’re so absolutely adorable!
6. Bath Melts. Especially around the holidays, bath melts are great because they deliver much needed moisture to dry, irritated skin. This recipe, made with milk, honey, and almond oil, could easily be charged to attract prosperity and therefore makes a great gift for any struggling witches out there.
7. Smoke Cleansing Sticks. This one is for the purist friend who likes the traditional (they probably read all of Cunningham). Why reinvent the wheel when you can just give it a seasonal twist? Personal favorite of this list is the thyme and cinnamon bundle because it just screams holiday energy.
8. Reading Runes. While runes are typically inscribed with the Norse alphabet, why not give a version you know they don’t have with a moon phase update? Not only are they the cutest ever, but you can ascribe your own meanings! Note: the original link is under construction but general instruction can be found here.
9. Body Butter. A charged body oil post bath magic can be heavenly but it sure is messy. Upgrade your fellow witch’s ritual experience by making them a fun whipped body butter instead. This recipe uses hibiscus tea, which would be perfect for attracting love, but switch in lavender tea for protection or ginger tea for confidence.
I thought I would type up an extremely detailed list of candles today.
Of course you have you basic chime candles, but there is so much more! Here I’ll begin with the basic candle colors then go down through the list.
White: Protection, purification, peace, truth, binding, sincerity, chastity, happiness, exorcism, spirituality, tranquillity, can be used in any ritual, new begins, banishing, uncrossing, road opening. planetary magick, working with spiritual guides/assistants/friends.
Red: Protection, strength, health, energy, sexual attraction,vigor, lust, sex, passion, courage, exorcism, love, power, woman mysteries, mother goddess, Fire and working with its spirits, destruction, and masculinity.
Black: Absorbing and destroying negativity, creating negativity, jinxes, tricks, curses, protection, healing, banishing, attracting money, work with psychopomps, Crone, breaking addiction, astral travel, and spells to work with the spirits of the night.
Blue: Understanding tranquillity, great for healing, meditation, patience, happiness, overcoming depression, work with spirits of the air, sky deities, rain spells, change, flexibility, subconscious mind, psychic powers, healing, water, ocean spells, and working with the Crone
Green: Earth, plants, healing, grounding, working with the Mother, working with the Hunter, money, finance, fertility, prosperity, growth, good luck, employment, beauty, youth, success in gardening, and gambling.
Gray: Neutrality, cancellation, stalemate, working with ghost, opening the veil, finding hidden things, psychic powers, and waxing & waning moon magick
Yellow: Color of air, charm, attraction, study, persuasion, confidence, divination, good fortune, psychic powers, wisdom, vision, sleep, health, metabolism, raising vibrations, and the mind.
Brown: Working with animals, healing animals, home, the hearth, and justice and legal work.
Orange: Adaptability, stimulation, attraction, encouragement, legal matters, Solar magick, creativity, and spirituality.
Purple: Power, healing severe disease, spirituality, medication, exorcism, ambition, business progress, tension relief, command, compel, and control spells, and domination.
Most of these things have come from Kitchen Witchery by Marilyn F. Daniel, but then I have continued to add on as I’ve continued my path. I highly recommend the book if you are pagan or Wiccan.
I am going to leave out colors like gold, silver, and copper. I feel like those are very self explanatory. If they’re not reblog and I’ll type up another detailed list.
Now on to candle shape
Multiple day candles
Seven day candles! These candles are often called vigil or prayer candles. You can go to your local Botanica and buy some or you can order them.
Traditional these candles are prayed over and burned sequentially through out seven days. They are typically one shade, so use the list above to determine what you need it for. These candles are often dressed (anointed), by being removed from the glass and being carved, being drilled into, through the wax, and being stuffed full of herbs. They also sell different sizes of these candles, like an 128 hour candle. If you have a working deity like for example Hecate, you can then buy one of these monstrous candles and dedicate it to her, and save yourself some money. Don’t worry she’ll approve of the usage, but you can also find these candles with the name of the Orisha or a specific condition you wish to bring about. These candles also come as dressed or undress spell candles. You can by a vigil candle call Follow me boy/girl! or Lucky 7/ 7/11 candles, and etc. There are so many out and to truly write about each one deserves a separate post.
Then there is the famous seven or nine knobbed candle. These candles are often dressed and then prayed over for the amount of knobs there are. (If there is nine knobs then you burn a knob a day).
Figurine Candles
Adam and Eve/Lady and Gentleman candles
These candles are simple suppose to be representative of a person. If you typically make wax poppets, I highly recommend being a lady and gentleman candle or the Adam and Eve candles. The only difference is one group is naked and the other is fully clothed. These are candles used when the spell is suppose to target a person or yourself. Carve your name/persons name on the bottom, and dress the candles. These candles come in a variety of shades, so again use the list above when selecting a candle. Two of these candles (same gender or opposite gender) can be tied together and burned to make two parties fall in love with each other. You can also burn each candle bit by bit to bring two people together, as you move the candles together in a line towards each other.
Bride and Groom candles
These candles are designed to be used in relationship work. Blue can be used to smooth out any relationships, black for cursing and serration work, red for passion and love, pink for fidelity and love, white for marriage, spirituality, and new beginnings for a couple. I do not know when they began to sell these candles, but there are also Bride and Bride candles, and Groom and Groom candles! If you can not find one of these candles either use an Adam/Gentleman with an Eve/Lady, Eve/Lady with an Eve/Lady, or an Adam/Gentleman with an Adam/Gentleman candle for the relationship work. Just burn them side by side. I recommend using the Lady and Gentlemen candles for this purpose.
Lover Candle and Heart Candle
These candles are mainly used in love magick. Lover candles are often used to instill passion, and Heart candles can be used in all forms of magickal love working!
Divorce Figurine Candle
Pretty self explanatory. Used to end a relationship between two parties, but also can be used to end a relationship that you are end. If one party is unwilling to move you can burn a divorce figurine (to remove them physically) and preform a cord cutting (getting rid of their emotional and spiritual connection to you) to get them out of your life. I would like to note, that if you are reading this and are in abusive relationship and think about preforming one of these spell, please reach out to those around you and call the police, and head to your friends house or local woman’s shelter. They have resources to help you deal with the abuse. Magick can help us in so many ways, but we must be the active parties to help ourselves.
Gargoyle Candle
Used for protection and I often use this candle to work with my protective spirit friends. I often have a giggle when I order this candle. I order this candle from Lucky Mojo and they have it labeled with “Gothic Cuteness”. I love that company!
Two tone candles
These candles often have two types of wax, and typically deal with removal of a curse. You will see these sold as double action or reversal. You have red and black (reversal or send back to sender), green and black (removal of a money jinx), and red and black (removal of love jinx).
Master Candle or Master Hand Candle
These are extremely powerful candles. These bring about conditions, and are unforgiving. Make sure to be careful for what you use them for. They come in many different shades, so refer to the list of colors above when choosing one.
I don’t necessarily uses all of these candles, but as the saying in my group goes. Knowledge is a witch’s truest power, because if we understand we can move and bend what stand in our way.
I don’t remember where most of this information as comes from since it is coming out of my spell book. A lot of this information as been passed from mouth to mouth and passed on to me. I hope this helps everyone move forward in their craft or at least I hope it provides a good read!
This is a basic guide on how to enchant everyday objects from necklaces and rings to phones and laptops. Whatever you want to enchant, go ahead and charm it!
⚡️This is not the only way to look at enchantment or do enchantments! Practice and explore to find what suits you best.⚡️
To break it down, enchanting is just giving an item purposed energy. All you need is intent + an energy source! The correspondences of that energy source will be transferred to your object. For example, I could take a necklace and leave it in the sunlight so the sun’s energy can be transferred to the necklace to give me energy, warmth, and confidence (those are my correspondences of the sun). Tada! That necklace is now enchanted! ⚡️Examples of energy sources: the sun, the moon, the weather, yourself, plants, herbs, crystals, electricity, the elements, sigils, etc.⚡️
You can also say a quick chant before or during the charging stage (charging is giving an item energy; the difference between charging and enchanting is that charging is giving an object energy without a specific purpose while enchanting involves giving an object purposed energy) to make that energy have a specific purpose. For example, I could take a ring and leave it on top of a rose quartz crystal and say, “This ring shall be energized with love.” Tada! That ring is now enchanted with the specific purpose of having loving energy! Rather than having all the correspondences of rose quartz transferred to my ring, it is now just the love aspect that has been given to my ring. So, how do you use these items once they’re enchanted? Just keep them close to you! If you want to be confident, for instance, I’d recommend enchanting a necklace and wearing it around your neck so that it’s closer to where you talk and also closer to where you think. You can also leave them in places where you reside in the most since some of your energy will linger there, such as your bedroom, your most frequented restaurant, etc.
⚡️Common energy sources: crystals, the sun, the moon, herbs, the elements, your own energy, a tarot deck, electricity, lit candles, incense, essential oils⚡️
