Salt Dough Magic

Adding a Dash of Magic

There are so many ways to work salt dough into your Pagan and magical path. For one thing, salt dough is excellent for making tools, icons and offerings. For example, for Lammas you could consider making a salt dough figure of John Barleycorn, the spirit of the grain, and then offering it to the deities by burning it, burying it or leaving it out in nature (if left unvarnished and unpainted salt dough is bio-degradable and environmentally-friendly).

Additionally, you can bless, consecrate or charm the salt dough as you make it. For me, the ingredients and processes needed to make salt dough represent the Four Elements:

1. Flour = Air (because it’s so fine and light)
2. Salt = Earth
3. Water
4. Heat of the oven = Fire

As a Shintoist, I also like the fact that these ingredients share traits in common with those offered routinely offered to Shinto deities (kami). Basic offerings to kami usually consist of what is known as the “essentials for life” – rice, water, sake (rice wine) and salt. In salt dough, the flour takes the place of the rice (they both represent essential staples grains from the earth), while the heat of the oven can be connected to the sake: sake is a flammable alcohol, can cause “hot flushes” when drunk, and is often heated before it is drunk.

You can use these elemental associations to charge your dough with the power of these elements as you make it. An example of a ritualised recipe for making salt dough is as follows:

1. First fill 1 cup with salt. Before pouring it into the bowl (or cauldron!) in which you will mix it, raise it up, turn to face north, and say, “With this salt, I call upon the spirits of Earth to charge my craft with your energies. Please bless this work with protection, strength and stability. So Mote It Be!” Then pour the salt into the mixing bowl, visualising the energies of the Earth pouring through you and into the salt.
2. Now fill  one cup with flour. As before, raise the cup, and this time face east. Say “With this flour, I call upon the spirits of Air to charge my craft with you energies. Please bless this work with creativity, inspiration and joy. So Mote It Be!” Pour the flour in with the salt, visualising the air’s energy pouring in as before. Mix the salt and flour together, stirring deosil.
3. Fill half a cup with water. Raise the cup, face west and say, “I call upon the spirits of Water to charge my craft with your energies. Please bless this work with originality, thought and purity. So Mote It Be!” Pour the water in a little at a time, mixing together with the salt and flour, until the correct consistency is reached (you can adjust the amount of water if necessary).
4. Now craft your dough as desired! If you’re something of a kitchen witch, you might want to use your tools such as your athame in this process. This is the most creative part of the process and you can incorporate magical workings however you like. For example, you can inscribe runes or other meaningful symbols on your items, or intone chants as you work.
5. When you have finished, before placing the dough in a pre-heated oven, hold up your dough and face south, saying, “I call upon the spirits of Fire to charge my craft with your energies. Please bless this work with passion, energy and vitality. So Mote It Be!” Then put your dough in the oven to bake.

(If you’re air-drying your dough rather than putting it in the oven, you could either wave it over a candle or hold it up to the Sun while invoking the element of Fire instead)

Once you have finished this, I recommend offering a little piece of leftover dough to the spirits of the elements to say thank you for their time and energies – you can leave it out in nature or burn it.

There are so many wonderful ways to use salt dough – the last time I used it was to make Yuletide gifts of “Holly King” Green Man faces for my friends and family to decorate their Christmas Trees! Salt dough is also a fantastic way of getting your whole family, be they young or old, Pagan or not, to take part in your practice. Above all, enjoy working with this cheap, versatile, eco-friendly material.