Photo by Sable Aradia. Copyright (c) 2015. All rights reserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
When I was a child, I used to try to make potions. \u00a0I\u2019d read somewhere about potion-making and herbalism, and I wanted to discover those secrets for myself. \u00a0I would steep flowers in water in an attempt to draw the scent out of them, and I would hunt for especially strong-smelling flowers. \u00a0My early perfumes had some limited success, but they would always go bad with the plant matter. \u00a0I eventually read somewhere that alcohol was the basis of perfumes in order to preserve the scents, and then my next potions were of alcohol and flowers. \u00a0That was not nearly as successful; nobody clarified the difference between spirits and rubbing alcohol in those books I\u2019d read, and rubbing alcohol reeks, no matter how many flowers you put into it!<\/p>\n
My potion making was not limited to perfume. \u00a0I tried to make botanical mud masks, eyeshadows, and even khol (an experiment which resulted in my mother forever forbidding me from mixing things in the house; khol involves the use of charcoal). \u00a0I would try to come up with my own herbal healing teas, and they actually had some healing value; I made a tonic out of dandelion root and burdock, for example. \u00a0I didn\u2019t have an herb dryer and I was frustrated by the way my plants would always eventually rot and mould, no matter how much direct sunlight I used to dry them. \u00a0Some things worked when you hung them upside down (which I did by tying them to my curtain rod; another experiment that did not amuse my mother) and some things did not.<\/p>\n
I remember being really excited when my friend Trixie pulled out a lovely\u00a0perfume-making kit she had been gifted by her parents. \u00a0What wonderful magic was this! \u00a0Here lay the captured (artificial) scents of dozens of flowers and fruits and things, for which they provided recipes to imitate the more popular commercial perfume scents. \u00a0I was not at all interested in that; I cheerfully mixed up experimental batches based on my estimation of what might smell good together, founded in opening up caps and putting bottles under my nose at the same time and making a judgment call (perhaps a little more of that and a little less of this). \u00a0I was gratified when Trixie and I managed to create a perfume that had her mother almost weeping; she said it was the precise smell of a flower that she missed desperately from her native Singapore, which was known as the \u201cQueen of the Night.\u201d \u00a0My mother tried to tell me why that was a less than desirable name for a perfume in Western culture, but I was having none of it.<\/p>\n
When I discovered witchcraft in my early teens it only created a greater outlet for my creativity. \u00a0I made a scented oil from frankincense resin, a tea for good luck and healing, and dandelion wine. \u00a0I still have all of those recipes in my formulary. \u00a0I still have the frankincense oil; it\u2019s still good to use. \u00a0I had discovered orris root by then.<\/p>\n
As an adult witch, I discovered herbalism, aromatherapy and crystal healing. \u00a0I took courses on all of them. \u00a0I bought an herb dryer. \u00a0I expanded into incense blends, scented oils for magic and health and beauty, and magickal tools. \u00a0I scented candles and baked magical cakes and cookies. \u00a0Even being lactose intolerant and gluten free did not stop me.<\/p>\n
I started looking up some really obscure things; like what the magickal purpose of aloeswood is, or what the original recipe for Oil of Abramelin was. \u00a0I conducted experiments with traditional entheogens. \u00a0I learned how to make topical creams and flying ointments.<\/p>\nPhoto by Sable Aradia. \u00a0Copyright (c) 2016. \u00a0All rights reserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
I keep\u00a0what I call my apothecary, which is a cupboard where I keep a broad collection of magickal and medicinal herbs and resins in little jars, awaiting my next concoction. \u00a0I have a small collection of essential oils that\u2019s probably worth more than a thousand dollars. \u00a0I also keep things that traditional witches will recognize that might give someone else the jitters; bits of my family\u2019s hair, wrapped up in tissue and kept for life-or-death emergencies; a couple of dried corvid wings; a drop of mercury and a couple of lumps of lead; various animal skulls; sealing wax; a jar of dead wasps; another jar of dead moths. \u00a0I used to keep spider web but I find it\u2019s easier just to find some fresh stuff when you need it. \u00a0So I let the spiders spin webs in the corners of my house and I only move them if they\u2019re in the way.<\/p>\n
I still make perfumes by putting bottles under my nose together and making a judgment call; but now I also choose the oils by magickal purpose and aromatheraputic effect; and I balance the blends based on base notes, heart notes, and top notes, and how the perfume will evolve over the course of day once it\u2019s been applied. \u00a0I carefully record precise measurements so that I can flawlessly imitate the results.<\/p>\n
I also discovered that I liked making magickal tools. \u00a0My first attempts to mimic the Golden Dawn inspired tools in Donald Michael Kraig\u2019s book Modern Magick were crude and limited; but to be fair, I was only fourteen. \u00a0Over time my crafting skills improved; from hand stitching to hand carving to hot gluing. \u00a0I made a study of sigils and symbols and runes. \u00a0I learned the meaning of every colour of the rainbow, the planetary association of every gem and metal, and a list of magickal correspondences that rivals 777. \u00a0I taught myself how to paint with acrylics and I made a series of four mixed-media paintings to represent the four elements in my Temple space. Recently I have discovered the joys of Dremelling. \u00a0I keep stones, beads, silver charms, little bits of fabric and a collection of feathers ready to hand should I need them.<\/p>\n
My pentacle was the first one I ever handpainted on a wooden pine disk. \u00a0I borrowed the design from my favourite Tarot deck. \u00a0Each point has a stone in it, which was selected to represent the four elements and spirit. \u00a0The stones are secreted away in the underside of the pentacle; except the citrine at its center, which rests in a concave dish of Xacto knife carving and wood filler. \u00a0Were I to do it over again now, more than twenty years later, I would probably use that Dremel.<\/p>\n
My wand is oak wood, wildcrafted by me\u00a0from a copse of trees\u00a0that grew on the other side of the country near the home of my bandmate from when I was a goth singer. \u00a0The quartz crystals were purchased from Laurie Cabot\u2019s shop in Salem, MA, which is a place I\u2019ve only ever been once and which was a kind of pilgrimage for me at the time. \u00a0Each of the stones on it, arranged in the order\u00a0of the chakras, including the thymus chakra and the terrestrial and celestial chakras (for a total of ten stones, thus corresponding with the ten sephiroth of the Kaballistic Tree of Life, and thus, a ceremonial magician\u2019s rainbow wand as well,) was given to me as a gift by a friend. \u00a0I have recently also made myself another wand. \u00a0It is made from the wood of a maple tree that came from the home I grew up in, which was struck by lightning twice. \u00a0It is tipped with amber and jet.<\/p>\nPhoto\u00a0by Sable Aradia. Copyright (c) 2014.\u00a0All rights reserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Once I even forged my own athame from an iron bar. \u00a0It\u00a0took full two days to create. \u00a0It was certainly easy to feel the presence of the gods of the forge as I pumped bellows, laid the bar on the hot charcoal, waited until it was red hot at the tip, pulled it out with an oven glove to pound on it by dropping the hammer on it hard three or five times, then waiting another five minutes or so for it to get hot enough to do it again. \u00a0Painstaking and labourious, the process of forging; something that requires endless patience and the facing of ones instinctive fears of heat and flame.<\/p>\n
Nothing makes me happier than making something for a magickal purpose, especially if it\u2019s unique! \u00a0There\u2019s a special magick to making something with your hands and imbuing it with power and purpose as you do so. \u00a0The more effort you put into it, the more carefully you choose your symbolism, and the more research you do, the more power it will have when you put it to Work for you in magick.\u00a0 I always thought that this desire to make and create things, and to combine them in interesting ways that spell out a symbolic language, was the reason that we call it The Craft or The Art. \u00a0Do you have any witch Crafting stories to share?<\/p>\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/482\/2015\/02\/DSC02234-300x225.jpg\")
![\"I'm](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/482\/2016\/05\/2016-05-18-08.24.20-300x225.jpg\")
![\"Cold Iron\" by Sable Aradia. Copyright (c) 2014. Please email me for permission to use!](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/482\/2014\/10\/coldiron-300x244.jpg\")