Skip to main content

Hyssop Incense Recipe - DIY White Witchcraft at Home

hyssop used in magic, witchcraft and voodoo

Hyssop is a great purification herb in hoodoo, it's use having been picked up through Bible magic and kabbalist texts like The Key of Solomon.

The most typical way to use hyssop, other than mixing it into other formulas, is to prepare a bath with it. However, recently I decided I wanted some hyssop incense in order to purify a room. The only manufacturer that I know sells hyssop incense is one I've had a falling out with and so don't buy from anymore, meaning I had to come up with a recipe of my own. I could have used the makko incense recipe I gave in Conjure Cookbook, but I was all out of makko. Ultimately I turned to Scott Cunningham's Complete Book of Incense Oils and Brews. There was no recipe specifically for hyssop incense, but it had the following for making cone incense:
6 parts powdered Sandalwood (or Cedar, Pine, Juniper)
2 parts powdered Benzoin (or Frankincense, Myrrh, etc.)
1 part ground Orris root
6 drops essential oil [sic] (use the oil form of one of the incense ingredients)
3 to 5 parts empowered incense mixture
[not listed: saltpeter, and you also need tragacanth glue made from about 1 tsp powdered tragacanth dissolved in 8 oz water and let to sit till thickened]

This was okay as a starter, but there were some issues with the recipe -- like, how can he know 6 drops of oil is right when the rest of the recipe is in parts? I also never bought into the empowering idea -- the whole point of using herbal ingredients, to me, is that the herbs should have and fulfill the needed energy already. Additional prayers or magic words might be spoken as the incense is actually being used, but it seems needless to do all that while just preparing it. In the end I used a recipe that went about like this:

  • 6 tsp powdered juniper wood
  • 2 tsp powdered benzoin
  • 1 tsp powdered orris root
  • 15 drops rosemary and marjoram oils (I didn't have any hyssop oil, but rosemary is a good replacement for most herbal EOs and marjoram is an herb that historically hyssop has been confused with)
  • 5 tsp powdered hyssop herb
Beat together all these ingredients till well mixed. Weigh and add ten percent saltpeter. Mix well, and then add sufficient tragacanth glue to make the mixture into a moldable paste. Roll into incense cones, and set out on tin foil to dry. This recipe made about a dozen cones.

The juniper wood is the overwhelming odor when burning this incense, but it still contains hyssop as well as several other purifying herbs, and it gets the job done nicely. It's also nice that this incense is ready to go in cone form, instead of being "self-lighting powder" that needs to be formed each time, or the even less convenient loose incense that needs to be burnt over charcoal.

Popular posts from this blog

Planetary Hours and How To Use Them for Magic Spells and Conjure Work

The Planetary Hours are a belief that sections of each day are ruled by certain heavenly bodies, and that these times of day can be utilized by those who understand their secrets to improve success in certain types of ventures. Folks like Jim Haskins and Tarostar have printed slightly incorrect versions of "Venus Hours" which have been popularly repeated: the claim that 2 AM, 9 AM, 4 PM and 11 PM on a Sunday, 6 AM, 1 PM and 8 PM on Monday, etc, are Venus Hours is wrong. This is a problem that goes back to the 18th century at least -- the Petit Albert itself mentions the mistake. The error stems from the notion that planetary hours align to hours on the clock -- they do not. As the Albert puts it: "In order that there be no mistakes about the hours that each planet rules [...] one needs to reckon the first hour from the sunrise, and not by midnight, as some people have erroneously claimed." In other words, the planetary hours are reckoned by a solar clock. T...

The Intranquil Spirit

(EDIT: Up to date information about the Intranquil Sprit can be found in my book  The Intranquil Spirit , available on Amazon.  This post has some incomplete information which is clarified in the book.) The Intranquility spell is, unfortunately, the first resort of many a rejected lover. In some ways it makes sense -- the more unhappy and forlorn one is about a breakup, the better this idea of making the other partner feel just as much so starts to sound. Unfortunately, this spell is often not well suited to a case. The purpose of the standard Intranquility spell is to have the person be tormented by the spirit until they make contact with you, or whomever the spell is being cast for. This means that if a person is already in good contact with their ex OR if they're one of those people who cannot restrain themselves from initiating contact, then this already is probably not the right spell for that case. If you've had an Intranquility spell cast and you make contac...

Paper-in-Shoe Spells

A popular and very traditional hoodoo spell, often used for any situation where you need to control someone with magic , is the namepaper-in-shoe spell. It's very easy: you write the target's name 3, 7, or 9 times on a paper (depending on intent and who's giving instruction) then fold it up, sometimes after dressing it with oils or powders, then put it in your shoe. This "keeps the person underfoot" or "stomps out the trouble" or "puts pressure on them" or any other number of metaphors. I have had this work several times over the years. In one instance, I was working for a very unpleasant boss, on a short-term job. It was the last day, and I only had about 3 hours of work left on the project; and I wanted him to up my pay for the day since it almost wasn't worth the trip across town for the amount he was paying me, for only 3 hours. He was very reluctant. So I wrote his name 3 times on a 5-dollar bill he'd given me, and dusted it...

13 Herb Bath for Curse Removal

13 Herb Bath for curse removal can be made from from any 13 uncrossing and purification herbs. For example, if I needed to fix a batch of 13 herb bath right now based on what I've got in the house, I could mix bay leaves, rue, mint, rosemary, wood betony, sage, verbena, angelica root, white rose petals, lemongrass, lemon peel, agrimony and arnica, and it would suffice well. Other herbs like hyssop, pine needles, juniper leaves, boldo, eucalyptus leaves, mullein, basil, lavender, or marshmallow leaves would be good to use too. By no means complete, here is a list of just a few herbs said to remove a curse or jinx that you can use to make your own 13 Herbs bath: Agrimony Alkanet Angelica Arnica Basil Bay leaves Black Pepper Blessed Thistle Boldo Cayenne Pepper Chives Eucalyptus Garlic Hyssop John the Conqueror Juniper Lavender Lemon Lemongrass Lime Marshmallow leaves Mint Mullein Onion Pine Rosemary Rue Sage Sandalwood Verbena White Rose Petals ...

Ammonia - A Spiritual Cleansing Agent for Magick

Ammonia is a strong cleansing agent in hoodoo magick, both physically and spiritually. In Edwardian times it was advised as an old home remedy for a nerve tonic (see recipe below.)  "Household ammonia" or "ammonium hydroxide" is a solution of NH3 in water. Household ammonia ranges in concentration from 5 to 10 weight percent ammonia. The Romans called the ammonium chloride deposits they collected from near the Temple of Amun (Greek Ἄμμων Ammon) in ancient Libya 'sal ammoniacus' (salt of Amun) because of proximity to the nearby temple of Amun, the chief god of ancient Thebes. Salts of ammonia have been known from very early times; thus the term Hammoniacus sal appears in the writings of Pliny, although it is not known whether the term is identical with the more modern sal-ammoniac (ammonium chloride). In the form of sal-ammoniac (nushadir) ammonia was important to the Muslim alchemists as early as the 8th century, first mentioned by the arab chemist...