Leveling up your witchcraft: What are YOUR ingredients?
This is beyond just following a spell and using the ingredients listed there, or knowing basic substitutions. This is about finding the ingredients that are specifically powerful for YOU. Which ones actually work for you; which ones you have a connection with; which ingredients make you actually feel your own unique power; which ones are a regular part of your mundane life; which ones you use when writing your own spells. If witchcraft is about intention, and the tools and ingredients you use should support your intention - not the other way around. The power that a witch draws from an ingredient is often specific to the witch - after all, different ingredients can have different correspondences based on the cultural tradition you are practicing in, your history with that ingredient, and what you intend the purpose of that ingredient to be in your particular spell. Some ingredients that a perfectly commonplace to one witch (a copper bowl, for instance) may be a specialty ingredient to another.
If something isn’t useful for getting you into the state of channeling your intention as power, then using that thing is actually hurting you more than helping you.
1. The value of rare ingredients In some cases the rarity of a certain ingredient may contribute to its power. I once made a piece of thread spun from spider silk - collected after Gabriella was finished with that web, of course. (Yes, I named the local spider Gabriella.) The rarity of this particular ingredient is part of the power of it - but so is the amount of effort I had to put in to collecting, cleaning, and spinning the silk. There is a power that is imbued from the process of making something - or the journey to a strange shop to buy a rare ingredient, or even tracking the rare ingredient down online. If you pay a lot of money for a rare ingredient, there is another weight attached to it - that you were willing to sacrifice some amount of money for this rare thing. But it’s likely not about the inherent properties about that thing - the power comes from your own psychology and associations around that rare thing.
2. The value of common ingredients But outside of the case where you may want to use an ingredient specifically because it is rare, you probably generally want to use ingredients that are common to you - whatever those things are. If you cultivate a set of go-to ingredients for your spells, you really get to know those ingredients. Particularly if they are things you use day-to-day in mundane circumstances - actually using the ingredients is how you build your own correspondences in the first place.
3. The value of ingredients from your culture or location Witches come from all over the world, as well, and something that is common in one place or culture may not be common in another place. Additionally the correspondence of that ingredient may be particular to the experience of using that thing day to day in that place or culture - or it may take its association from stories/myths in that culture. So trying to use that ingredient may not have the same power for you.
4. The value of using what you want instead of what you think you’re supposed to use A lot of the ingredients I use in magic are things that I want to surround myself with anyway. I don’t wear amulets I don’t appreciate on their own as jewelry. I don’t use fruits in my spells that I don’t like to eat. (Although if you are doing a hex or banishing spell, you may want to specifically use a food you dislike to harness the power of your natural revulsion!) You’ll find your spells are much more powerful if you use ingredients that really speak to you, rather than assuming you have to use the same exact ingredients that someone else uses. Maybe they only recommend that ingredient because it speaks to them in particular.
Some people are critical of ‘aesthetics’ in witchcraft, but to be honest… if a certain aesthetic really speaks to you, using correspondences or ingredients that fit your aesthetic may help you connect more psychologically with your witchcraft. If you really see yourself as a sea witch, go ahead and use abalone shells instead of crystals. Use dried seaweed varieties instead of herbs. There is nothing false about doing this - you are connecting to the things that are important to you, that you are drawn to, and that make you… you. And that is where your intention will connect best, and be most visceral.
As an example, here is a list of ingredients I use most often. I’m sure this list will make some people roll their eyes, but it’s an honest list of things I’ve used. it’s a combinations of things from all of these categories - some ingredients I value for their rarity, some for how common they are, some for cultural reasons, some because they represent me or some part of my life.
Absinthe, Almond oil Bath & Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar perfume lmao, Bergamot, Blood, Bone Cardamom, Cherry, Coffee, Coins, Coral, Cream Dandelion Fennel Ginger, Ginseng, Gold Hair, Honey Kumquat Lapis lazuli, Lapsang Souchong Tea Mandarin, Milk, Moonstone Nasturtium Olive oil, Opal, Opium incense/perfume, Orange blossom water (hydrosol), Oud Paper, Pear, Pearls, Plum, Pomegranate, Poppy seeds Rain water, Red wine, Rice, Rice paper, Rose, Rose water (hydrosol), Russian Caravan Tea Saffron, Salt, Scotch (particularly Lagavulin), Seaweed, Shell, Silk cloth, Silver, Swan feather (black), Swan feather (white) Tangerine, Tea (other), Turmeric Vanilla extract, Violet Wormwood
