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.

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 any other number of metaphors. I 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 with Bend Over powder. He paid me what I ...

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 ...

Spiritual Use of Turpentine in Hoodoo and Witchcraft

I have posted in the past about the use of giving one's bedding a spiritual cleansing from time to time. I recently was laundering my pillows in the same load of laundry as some turpentine-soaked rags, with the result that the pillows emerged from the wash reeking of turpentine. From a magical perspective, this may not be a bad thing. Turpentine is used in old-time hoodoo rituals for purposes such as uncrossing, protection and sometimes as a feed for mojo bags. Its solvent powers and strong odor do indeed suggest a powerful spiritual cleansing agent, and it is still used in some modern day cleaning products on a purely practical level for these same reasons. Old time medicines sometimes included turpentine as a thing to drink, in small doses. A book from the 1850s, The Domestic Medicine Chest , recommends giving it to children in a dose of one teaspoon for killing tapeworm. Relatedly, in old time hoodoo cures for "live things" turpentine might be made into a tea...

Blockbuster, Van Van, Uncrossing, Road Opener -- What's the Difference? What to Use Against Jinxes?

Many hoodoo formulas are related to one another, sometimes very closely. Some formulas, Lovers formula versus Love formula, are just manufacturer specific names for what is essentially the same product (or at least a product meant to get the same result.) Sometimes people wonder, what's the difference between Uncrossing and Van Van ? What's the difference between Road Opener and Blockbuster ? First things first: Road Opener, aka Abre Camino, is not a traditional hoodoo formula, it's a Latin American loaner that has come in relatively recently along with a lot of Santeria and Brujeria practices. This is why it seems to cover the same ground that several other old hoodoo mixtures do. Blockbuster might also be in this same boat, though my evidence on this is less sure -- nonetheless it does seem to be a newer formula, in relative terms ( the word "blockbuster" is only datable to around 1940 ) and often sold with an alternate Spanish name "Arrasa con T...

The Spellcaster's Source Hoodoo and Voodoo Witchcraft Blog of Talia Felix

Search This Blog