A Brief Note on Herbs

Hey Occulties,

While I'm all for people making their own spells, keep in mind many people do not understand the herbs they put into a spell. 

Creating a spell is a bit like creating a recipe. If you do not understand very distinctly the function of every ingredient and how it works with the other ingredients, you can't create a recipe. You might be able to cobble something to your liking out of other recipes (I use reese's temptations peanut butter cookie recipe with peanut butter M&Ms instead of a reese's cup, but I could not just off the cuff tell you the baking soda or egg or butter or sugar ratio if we just decided to make up an entirely new cookie, for example,) but even cobbling things together requires some understanding of what our ingredients are. 

And when it comes down to it, many people really don't understand herbs, or they do something incredibly stupid like use Cunningham's herbal. Quick note on that – it was basically influenced by Herman Slater, who himself wrote an incredibly wrong book of hoodoo recipes wherein he said van-van oil (basically mostly lemongrass) was made with vanilla (not at all,) among other hilariously wrong recipes – both of them are dead now (they were lovers, and unfortunately both passed away from AIDS many many many years ago,) and Cunningham's heart was in the right place, but Herman Slater is so infamous as a fraud and a piece of shit that it's surprising anyone still uses or trusts Cunningham's Herbal, especially given the source of a lot of his info (the late Mr Slater.) 

So if you have that piece of shit, throw it out. 

Or when someone said quassia ashes could be used as a replacement for lover's hair, this is also exceedingly wrong and not a use for quassia wood. At least I can't even understand how that's possible or suggestible as I know what quassia is often used for and it is nothing to do with hair or love, really. 

I mean, all of this is in books, and you're trying to learn, and now you're pissed because there's bullshit abounding everywhere, right? Well, I think I can help.

See, every herb is best learned by getting to know it. I know, that sounds so terribly dull, doesn't it? But, honestly, it's not as dull or as hard to do as you might think…but you're right to think it isn't overnight. These lists that tell you x is a love herb, or y is for cursing are generally not telling you enough. Like…I only use patchouli for cursing (I dropped a whole bottle of patchouli oil in a drawer of clothes many years ago and can't bear the smell now,) but yet you see this in "love" and wealth spells too? Is this a miracle herb? Hardly. Patchouli excites lower urges and brings power to lust, wrath, and greed. So, technically, you might want someone to lust after you as part of a love spell, but if you only use patchouli and no other herb, it's not really going to be helpful. We might want to remember it used to be used to stop corpses from stinking before we improved on our embalming techniques, so it's probably not an herb we should associate with lasting romantic love, but many books describe it as a love herb, when the best it might produce is a roll in the hay. And it likes to feed off the other herbs you combine it with… Lemongrass is a bit like that at times, too. It's like it amplifies all the other herbs it's paired with but can be a bit…meh on it's own. Balm of Gilead pods are for healing, especially emotionally healing, so used for reconciliation, but, again, should be paired with a love herb. And yet, a well meaning person might see all 3 of these herbs listed as love herbs (Lemongrass and Patchouli are more lust herbs, but someone won't tell the reader that,) and combine all three in the hopes that their partner will make things official. I'm not really sure what that would do (the idea of mixing all three kind of gives me a headache,) but I assume it would actually create something like a weird argument about something your partner has been holding in followed by some make up sex. It would not manifest your partner making things official.

How do you learn that stuff? Years of experience helps (ha!) but what also helps is starting small, and using what you have on hand. I don't know how many beginners go out and buy herbs that they don't need (I certainly did as a beginner,) and then wonder what they are going to do with four ounces of this or that. I ended up using all that stuff (because look at my job) eventually, but I know many people are not going to go as far down the path of spells as to become an expert, author, and practitioner for hire. I get there are a lot of folks who like to pretend they are a witch on TikTok (I recently received a fucking hilarious screen shot where an adolescent female pretended she was a high degree Mason, which would have fuckall to do with magic, and also be impossible given her age, and the fact that most masons are male, very hard for her to find a lodge,) but the thing about that is….

Being an expert spellcaster requires a lot of time, practice, study, more practice, more study, even more study, practice, and study some more before you can actually be expert enough to be teaching others. I had 15 years of experience before I was writing this blog. I didn't just get a septum piercing, and go to Hot Topic, and figure I looked freaky enough to pretend to be a witch.

And, I hate to break it to you, but the likelihood of you being any sort of magic expert when you're under 25, is very low. I say that as the "expert" among my adolescent friends who as an adolescent myself legit was still a bit fucking clueless when I was 22 on more than a few things. And I've been studying this shit intensely since around puberty (most of your parents were probably going thru puberty when I was to give you some idea,) so I assure you, if you weren't learning magic at your momma's knee, and your parents were not mega witchy, there's absofuckinglutely no way you're an expert at 21. Nor is your expert an expert at that age if you are learning from someone who only has the wrinkles they were born with and can't legally rent a car. I was a wunderkind, so I know. I caught plenty of shit for being "too young" at 27 when I started writing this blog. 

But let me get off of my tangent. So, here's what I recommend. If you want to create your own spells, you need to know exactly why all of those ingredients are in the spell. If you want to use a particular herb, and you selected it from a vague list, feel free to contact me and ask me what the herb does. I get a lot of these requests and as long as you don't give me a list of 20 ingredients, I'm happy to help free of charge. For example, if you ask me what poppyseed is for – it is to make someone more calm and suggestible. While it can be used for confusion workings (which is why we see it in some curses,) it also works quite well to calm a reluctant ex and make them more apt to accept reconciliation work. It is NOT a cursing herb, despite being in some curse spells. Licorice root (for controlling,) is also in some darker workings but is not a curse herb. 

And while I'm totally down with helping you, I want you to do yourself a favor and try to keep only 10-20 herbs on hand (not everything you ever saw once in an occult store, and you were sooooo curious,) so that you can LEARN THROUGH PRACTICE how these work with each other (or don't.) All of these herbs have personalities. And like I said, its like cooking…you might discover garlic one day when you are cooking and add it to everything savory (it is good for that,) then take a risk and add it to something sweet (which often makes a dish wholly unpalatable,) and learn that wasn't your best choice. Well, working with an herb magically can bring the same results.

I can't sit here and provide an exhaustive list of all herbs and objects you might use (and books exist that attempt to do just that, so I won't bother,) but I'm glad to help (within reason,) for free.

~Cat

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