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22 Domestic Witch Tips, Charms, and Omens

This is a list of tid-bits that I find useful in aiding the Domestic Witch in creating a comfortably witchy home. 1. Spray a bit of perfume, drops of essential oils, or room spray on light bulbs to make a room smell fresh and add a magickal aura according to the sent you’ve chosen.  Make sure you do this while the light is off otherwise the light bulb will likely explode. 

2. Keeping an acorn at your window will keep lightning from striking.

3. Keep a Kitchen Witch (Cottage Witch) doll in your kitchen to bring good luck and to keep away any ill meaning spirits.

4. Spilling water on your tablecloth means a storm is coming.  The same is true of a coffee pot that keeps boiling over.

5.Burn a candle on your stove to symbolize the hearth fire of the past.  This honors your patron kitchen Goddess and fills your home with love.  (Candles have a longer burning life if you place them in the freezer for a few hours before lighting them.)

6. To keep an unwanted visitor from returning sweep whatever room or rooms they were in as soon as they leave your home.

7. Never sweep your kitchen after the sun goes down

8. Two yolks in an egg foretell a marriage.

9. Cakes should be baked while the sun is rising.

10. Never turn a loaf of bread upside down after it has been cut.

11. It’s good luck to receive a loaf of bread as a house-warming present.

12. To throw away bread is to throw away any potential luck and prosperity that would come to your home, instead make breadcrumbs or feed it to the birds.

13. If a ring of rice forms around the edge of a pot it means money is coming.

14. Wine leftover from ritual…freeze it in ice cube trays then add a cube or two to gravies, sauces, and casseroles as needed.

15. To make your food taste better keep a quartz crystal on or near your stove.

16. When given a plant as a gift you should not say thank you or the plant will die.

17. Those looking for love should place a pot of basil on their windowsill.

18. Rosemary can be placed under pillows to ward of evil spirits.

19. In ancient times it was believed that in gardens “where rosemary flourished, the woman ruled.”

20. Lavender can be placed under the mattress to bring passion to the marital bed or hung on a bedpost for protection.

21. Growing ivy in your home guards against disaster.

22. Grow a spider plant (chlorophytum comosum) in a space you want to purify.

(Source: ravenrinspagannest’s blogspot)

Candle Magic Omens

If you are doing candle magic, watch for omens that may predict the success of your spell:

Tall, strong flame - your spell is empowered and getting through, it will work very well

Flickering, unsteady flame - your spell is having trouble manifesting your results

Dancing, wild flame - get ready for the roller coaster ride

Normal flame - things are working as expected

Small, blue flame - your spell is not getting through, prepare a backup plan

Crackling, popping flame - your spell may manifest in very unexpected ways

- Tho

Rosemary’s Baby theme song sang by Rose McDowall (best known for Strawberry Switchblade, Sorrow, and lots more)

A Hearth Witch's Security System - Boundaries and Entrances

A Disclaimer: I am one person and my opinions (which I have in abundance) may not reflect the opinions of other witches, in general, or other people who call themselves hearth witches. In fact, they probably won’t, because I’m an asshole. I have a bizarre sense of humor that doesn’t convey well in text and I rant about shit I don’t like. A lot. If you don’t think you can handle that, maybe don’t read anything I write. Ever.

Protecting the Home, Protecting the Family 

Let me preface this post by saying, I am exhausted, so probably nothing I write here is going to make sense to anyone but me. Also, that has just been my luck lately, but we’ll see how it goes anyway. 

If you read my blog, you’ll know that I do a lot of stuff to protect my railroad cottage. Not just because I live here, but because I literally use my house as a symbol of my household and family. So, in a witchcraft sense, protecting my home is protecting my family. And, because that’s the witchcraft I write about most on my blog, that’s what I get a lot of questions about (spirit work aside, because that’s what I get the most questions about). 

So, this post is going to be about various ways to protect your home and (hopefully) prevent nasties from creeping inside. 

Rule Number One: Keep a Clean House

I know that sounds really boring. I know you’re like, “Emma, that is not witchcraft. Those are chores and I hate you. Did my mom put you up to this?” But, actually, there are two good reasons that’s Rule No. 1: 

It’s not easy to cleanse a house that isn’t clean. Part of protecting your home is being prepared to go into battle for it. Now, witchcraft is known to make a house a little cluttered. If you’ve got ribbons falling out of your sewing box and stockpiles of tea on your counter. Don’t worry. You’re normal. But it’s possible for a house to be both cluttered and clean.

Cleaning a house regularly is a fantastic way to magically take ownership of the property—which I’ve discussed here. 

Obviously, I’m not saying you’re house has to look like something from Good Housekeeping. My own cottage has four rooms and is home to more than four people. It’ll never be as neat as we want it to be. But’s it’s clean. And that’s what matters. 

Rule Number Two: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors 

I’m not talking about real fences—but those too. I’m talking more about magical boundaries. Like a witch fence. This can be set up in or outside of ritual, using a real fence, other objects, or using visualization. 

So, let’s talk about putting up this fence, huh? The method I use  is, of course, the “Gross Method”—and, by gross, I mean no one wants to do it or talk to me they’ve found out I’ve done it. It uses a pre-existing fence to create the boundary, which means that what you’re actually doing with this method is enchanting or reinforcing your standing fence. It’s supa supa easy. Like really, children could do if you let them. Only probably don’t let them because it’s probably a health hazard. 

For this method, you will need 1) a fence, 2) something to mark your stake-points with, 3) some bodily fluids—i.e. menstrual blood, piss, spit, sexual fluids, etc., 4) your bad ol’ self

Step One: Walk around your property and decide where you want your stake-points to be. I refer to them as stake-points because what you’re actually doing is kind of like putting up a magical tent rather than a fence. These are the strength points of your enchanted fence. You’ll want at least one in every corner of the existing fence. Mark these places. You can do this by scratching or painting on the fence, tying something to the fence, or sticking something in the ground there. In my case, I used the support posts for my pre-existing fence as my stake points, so I didn’t have to mark them because I knew where they were. 

Step Two: Collect fluids. (Unless you’re using spit, which you have.) You can water any of these fluids down if you need to—except probably spit. 

Step Three: Using a paintbrush, herbs, your hands, a spray bottle, or whatever, apply the fluid to the INSIDE of your fence where your neighbors won’t be touching. As you do, visualize the stake-points linking together as they’re placed. I tend to visualize something like a barbed-wire fence going up between my stake-points, but white light works too if you’re into that. **If you’re going to forget, mark where you started.

Step Four: When you’ve completed the fence and connected your last stake-point to your starting point, visualize the tent going up. In my visualization this is something like a deer-skin version of a Circus tent, but I am a legit freak of nature, so your probably wont be. 

Now, you can be done here, or you can write something to say to tweak the spell to your style. If you have Property Spirits that you work with, you may also want to ask them to guard the fence at this point. 

Rule Number Three: Gardening = Ammo 

While we’re still outdoors, let’s talk about ‘defensive gardening’. One of my favorite things to do with my garden is to reinforce my boundaries by planting protective herbs. Not only does it add punch to your enchanted fence, but it provides ammunition should you need to banish something later. 

This can be done directly in the ground, in hanging planters at/on your stake-points, in windowboxes, in planters by the door, etc. 

Some good protective herbs to start are:

Aloe

Rosemary 

Roses (thorny for offensive magic, rosehips for defensive magic)

Mint

Lavender

You may also want to include banishing plants

Garlic 

Sage 

Sweeatgrass

Thyme

As well as flowers, trees, and shrubs to the same effect (like holly, cedar, etc). 

Rule Number Four: Wards/Wardings Aren’t As Hard As They Sound

Come with me to the porch and let’s talk about wards! *runs to the porch, points at wards* Wards are awesome! There are so many different kinds and they can range anywhere from decorative to practical to invisible! 

When you’re warding your doorway, like a lot of witchcraft, intent is super important. Really, it doesn’t matter what kind of ward you use as long as you have the intent. And, with the bucket load of types of warding, you should be able to find one to fit your needs.

My favorite way to ward a door or window is with a decorative ward, which was something we did in my family for years and then I finally saw it outside of our house in an Ellen Dugan book (which I bought JUST for that reason). This one isn’t mine, but it’s a good example of one:

These hang above doors and windows to ward off evil, ill will, etc. and can be made out of dried flowers and herbs (like above), fabric (such as a warding banner), carved into the wood above a door, or any other way you prefer. 

I usually go with the pictured method. Typically I

Start with a base. For year-round wards I like to use wheat and dried grass (which you can find at a craft store—but not Hobby Lobby, because they areevil). 

I face half of my base one way and half the opposite way—so that the cut ends are together and you have the awesome wheat/grass/evergreen ends facing out. Over lap the two halves a few inches and tie them together. (I usually use twine for that, but you can use whatever you like.

Next, go you your second layer, which is the actual warding part. For this, my favorite things to use are lavender (which grows wild in the neighborhood I work in), and rosemary. But there are plenty of other possibilities, too—sunflowers, rose, baby’s breath, holly, pine, mint, etc. These can be tucked into the tie you’ve already made, glued on, or tied on separately. 

To finish mine off, I usually add a bell, to symbolize a signal, which sort of makes the ward into an alarm. Sometimes, when trouble is around, I’ll hear a bell even though it’s not ringing. Sometimes it actually rings. 

The ward can go above your door, window, fireplace, or anywhere else you feel you want to hang it. 

Of course, there are a lot of other ways to ward your doors and windows. 

With energy and visualization. 

With water or oil (drawing protective symbols on them with the water/oil) 

Warding Wreaths

Other hangings (like photographs of deities or saints, Brigid’s crosses, horseshoes, strings or bells)

Salt lines and brickdust (I tend to mix these together)

Hanging herbs by or above the door (I typically dry my herbs next to the door so I never have a shortage of door-based protection)

Whatever

The most important thing is that you make your intent clear. Whether you want to ward off evil spirits or unwelcome mortal visitors, make your intent clear. If you need to do this by putting your warding into a big ritual, do so. If you need to activate your wards out loud, go ahead. 

Rule Number Five: Everything You Need to Strengthen Your Protection is On/In You

Spit

Urine

Menstrual Blood

Sexual Fluids 

Sweat 

and so on

These are all totally useful supplies for witchcraft in general and for protection in specific. A touch of one of these on a window, door, doorknob, etc is fantastic for strengthening a boundary and clearly marking your territory to anyone who might wander inside. Surface cleaning with remove germs, but not the intent or the warning.

Rule Number Six: Never Let an Outsider Make Your Forget Whose House This Is

The conviction of ownership is pretty important to home protection. Don’t let an intruder scare you into believing that they own your home. They don’t. It’s yours. The people inside it are yours. 

Evocation of the Black Mother

Call to Her for Rites involving: 

Darkness, chaos, the esoteric, the infernal, “demons,” but on a more personal level: things forgotten, the subconscious, fear and the primal aspects of the psyche. 

While she can be sharp, her teachings are rooted in cosmic understanding – she is the ever-present, the one who sees all, but remains passive and patient, biding her time until her force might be unleashed with catastrophic fervor. Do not fear her – for despite her power and frightful epithets – she is nonetheless a great, maternal force. “To understand, one must be demanded – for Truth is an elusive concept.”

Offerings, including but not limited to: 

Blood – of most any variety (dark wine will also suffice), meat (raw or otherwise), black candles (turned upside down), ashes, water – rain, sea, spring, river, lake, black soil, obsidian, sulphur, spiderwebs, etc. No fire or lit candles.

Ideal locations for workings:

 The darkness – night, caves, empty fields, near water, anywhere dark and secluded, but even a dark room stripped of as much light as possible will do.

To Call Her

Gather a collection of offerings, a square of black cloth, and (optionally) a bell with a low, vibrational tone – a gong or singing bowl would also work. Before the working, on the black cloth, mark her Seal (above) in ash (chalk or paint would also suffice). Upon this, the offerings will be presented. It is important to do this beforehand, as the working should take place in complete darkness (or as complete as can be arranged). Given that this should be done blindly, there is no hymn to be sung or prayer to be read – instead, speak from the heart. Ask her to come, trust your intuition and delve into recesses of the mind. Present a desire, ask for her help, ask for her presence. While those with Sight may catch a glimpse of her, she prefers to remain shapeless, present as a serpentine energy – one that coils about in the shadows and reassures the practitioner. Do not fear, but trust the Darkness.

Once the connection has been made, you might make a plea to her. What that will be is entirely dependent on what you need, but do so honestly – there are no secrets, she knows – do not try to mask your true intentions or desires, for they are already apparent to her. Be forward, be genuine and she will do what she believes is right.

When you are through, leave the offerings for her. Leave the scene by taking three steps backwards, turning and walking away without looking back. If you choose to work within a dark room, leave through the door, at which point, you may reenter and turn the light on to clean up. The offerings should nonetheless be left somewhere dark (a basement would do), remote, or buried.

It is recommended that upon the completion of your request that you leave another offering to her as a gift of thanks.

Negativity / Bad Luck / Curse Absorbing Decoy Poppet For more pictures and detailed instructions, click here! Witchy Words: A Witchcraft Blog

Using Planetary Squares to Create Sigils

Sigils are very, very popular on Tumblr and the Internet lately. They are perfect for witches and magicians living in today’s dynamic world. There is much consternation and perhaps even a bit of debate, though, over what constitutes a sigil and how to use them properly. I personally just define them as any (usually) two-dimensional symbol communicating magical intent, and I’ve talked about my process for making and charging them here. A lot of us have different methods for making sigils, and there’s really no wrong way to do it (provided it works for you), but there do exist some traditional sigilization methods, among which we find the idea of using planetary squares.

This method, popularized by Agrippa, uses a series of number grids associated with each planet. A statement of some sort of magical intent is translated into numbers, and then the numbers are plotted on the grid. A line is then drawn between the numbers in their order within the statement, beginning with a circle to denote a start point, and ending with a perpendicular line across the main one. You’ve probably seen sigils made in this fashion before - the circle at the beginning and perpendicular line at the end make them rather recognizable.

While not all sigils with those features are planetary, they do employ a similar technique to those using the planetary grids, usually a grid setup of some sort. Of note, many technowitches will use keypads and keyboards as grids in making sigils. Here, though, I’ll describe what’s (mostly) the traditional method for making a simple sigil using a planetary grid. It’s pretty far beyond the scope of this article to include all the grids, but resources for them can be found in various places online, including this site.

Lets just here, as an example, focus on the grid for Venus, which is shown below.

Suppose you’re a witch and would like to create a sigil using it to help a friend find love, or to bring love of some sort into your own life, strengthen an existing relationship, or just invoke the concept of love for some reason in general. Venus is an ideal celestial sphere to work with for this purpose, as most people know, given that Venus is not only named for a goddess of love, but also associated with love in astrology. Venus is associated with other matters, too, such as creativity, fertility, and art, though, so we want to be specific. We could, in theory, just use the glyph, hexagram, or other symbol of Venus for this, but suppose your friend (who has bad luck in love, and needs help with it) wants a custom sigil specifically. It’s quite easy to do.

Like with most sigils, you begin by summing up your intent. Were I doing this for a specific, actual situation and not as an example, I might spend a long time deciding on the correct choice of word or words to sum up the goal of the sigil, but for the purposes of this example, we’ll just use the word LOVE itself as our statement of intent. It’s not very specific, but it’s positive, and using it in this fashion will be a great demonstration of this technique. The word LOVE, after all, only has five letters, and works well to sigilize in this fashion. That’s one thing I do want to emphasize before you try this with something more complex - try to reduce your intent to as few letters as possible. This can be done by removing vowels or repeating letters if your statement is complex, but planetary sigils really do work best with as succinct an intent as possible. You’ll soon see why.

We take the word LOVE and transliterate it into numbers using the following table of values. The table has variations, and witches assign numbers to letters in a variety of ways - some might transliterate their intent into Hebrew or Greek letters and use those systems of gematria, for example. This is the most common way that I’ve seen of doing it in English, though. Of note - Dixie Deerman (whose book taught me to do this back in the day) actually includes a & symbol at the end, equal to 900, and uses that to connect words if necessary. I’ve never been much for that, but some might find it useful, so I mention it. It’s in the image below.

For LOVE, it gets transliterated into five numbers, which are, in order, 30, 60, 400, and 5. This can then be plotted on the Venus square using the method described above, beginning with the first number (30) and ended with the 5. But wait! If you actually look at the Venus square, it doesn’t quite go as high as 400, does it? It doesn’t even go up to 60. So, how do we include those numbers (representing the letters O and V) in the sigil? Well, simply divide them by 10! Instead of plotting straight up 30, 60, 400, and 5 on the grid, we’re plotting 30, 6, 40, and 5. This is how it is commonly done, and, in my experience, it works quite well.

Below is the finished LOVE sigil plotted on the Venus grid. Notice how the first number is circled, to designate where the sigil begins, and the last one is marked with a perpendicular line. Feel free to use this yourself if you want (and feel like doing love magick!), but I do encourage everyone to experiment and make their own for whatever purposes they favor.

Sigils made in this fashion on planetary grids can be used without the grid, naturally. If I were wanting to use the one above as a bit of gesture magick by tracing it in the air, or perhaps just sketch it on a piece of paper for a quick boost, I’d do so without drawing the full grid - just the lines themselves. The grid is implied. When creating the grid on paper in preparation for creating a sigil, though, it’s traditional to draw the lines, and then jump around the grid, filling in the numbers in order. I personally make most of my planetary sigils digitally in Photoshop, but some witches will have all the grids in their grimoire and use tracing paper over them to create the sigils. There’s a lot of methods for making a planetary sigil physically or digitally, so practice, and see what works for you.

Color can play a role in any sigil you create, too. If anything peeves me in the magical community these days, it would be that so few witches realize you can use colorful sigils. I just feel that people miss out when they don’t explore that, and it can be a lot of fun! With planetary sigils, each planet is associated with several colors traditionally (as an example, Venus has an association with both pink and emerald green), and you yourself might have color associations on your own for the planets or the intent of your sigil that can be used. You’ll note above that I’ve tinted the lines of the sigil itself a nice Venusian green, and were I casting the sigil, I’d do it with green ink if possible, or just visualize it in green. In fact, were I to suggest someone use this sigil (or were I using it myself), it might end up looking something like this:

The usual “rules” (as in, whatever you usually get results doing) as far as charging and preparing mentally to use a sigil apply with planetary sigils, as well. If you’ve read my article on charging sigils, you know that I personally know some folks who don’t “charge” sigils formally, yet still get good results. A lot of them work with planetary sigils, and the general consensus between us (having discussed this) is that, for some people, the very process (which you now see is quite involved) for creating these sigils can be sufficient to charge them. Whatever works for you is fine, but definitely experiment a bit.

I hope this article on planetary squares and sigilization was useful or entertaining for you, and that you create wonderful magick, regardless of how you do it! Planetary squares used in sigilization are a great way to get started working with celestial forces in specific ways, and they’re ideal for witches who’re on a budget or trying to keep things low-key, as they, like most sigils, require essentially nothing but paper and pen to create. If you like my work, consider donating or purchasing a divination reading in my shop, and if you have an questions, feel free to contact me. 

Methods for Spells

TO BIND- wrap in black thread, drip wax over, or seal in a jar and hide it in the dark.

TO BANISH- burn an effect to ash and sweep off the back door step, cast it out a window, or bury in the ground and spit on it

TO ENCOURAGE-  plant it by the front door/steps, bury by a window, or place it on a windowsill

TO HIDE- place in a jar painted black, cover with cloth and bury, or wrap with a ribbon

TO CLEANSE- bury it in a bowl of  salt, burn herbs and pass through the smoke, or lay it in a moonwater bath

TO GLAMOUR- leave under the full moon, hold its reflection over a mirror with herbs, or 

TO WISH- place before a candle and blow it out, drown a coin in water, or let seeds blow into the wind

TO COMMUNICATE- (with a spirit or deity) - anoint a candle, leave out offerings, or open the front doors and windows

TO WARD- leave part of the spell in four corners, draw lines around the protected area, or plant an object of projection in the north, east, south, and west edges

TO CURSE- spit on it, drag your nails down it, or stick sharp things in it

TO DISCOURAGE - plant or bury by the back door, or burn to ash

TO JINX- say it three times out loud, or say a word the same time as someone else

TO MANIPULATE - use wax, use poppets, or tie several strings to pieces of an effect

TO BENEFIT - light a candle, charge a crystal, or create a talisman

Zodiac sign constellations for wrist tattoos. Thought this was pretty unique and interesting.

anyone remember that weirdly accurate color oracle test that somehow knew you as if it had been your therapist for the past 5 years