Lavender & Mandrake Body Butter Recipe
This is a modification of an online body butter recipe I found years ago. I added a little bit of mandrake oil to help attune with the plant and prepare my subtle bodies for travel.
You can’t put this on and expect to have an out-of-body experience, but it can help you build a relationship with Mandrake. It can also have a very subtle effect on your mindset, to help you prepare for out-of-body work. It is also suitable for meditation or ritual.
For a deeper understanding of flying ointments, I recommend The Witching Herbs by Harold Roth. Belladonna’s Botanicals / Jennifer Vatza have also put out a series of helpful and informative videos on YouTube. If you want to go really deep, look into Andrew Chumbley and Daniel Schulke.
Ingredients
- 1 cup shea butter (8 oz)
- 4 tbsp almond oil
- 10 drops lavender essential oil
- 10 drops flying oil
I chose to use lavender and mandrake, but you could use any EO blend you like. Other flying oils you could use include mugwort, wormwood, datura, brugmansia, henbane, lotus, fly agaric, and poison hemlock. You can get these from Belladonna’s Botanicals or Banefolk, for example. Do not go heavy on the flying oils!
Please do not do what I did the first time and just buy a flying ointment off of etsy with no real ingredient list or safety information. Go through a reputable seller. Yes, this is more difficult outside of the USA, but it is absolutely worth the effort and extra money. Safety first!
Instructions
In a double boiler (a glass bowl over a pot filled 1/4 the way full with water), over medium-low heat, melt the shea butter. Add the almond oil. Turn off the heat.
Pour into a bowl and place in the fridge or freezer and allow to cool and return to a solid (not hard) form. This takes about 15-20 minutes, depending on location.
Once opaque and slightly firm, remove the bowl from the freezer. Add in the essential oils and flying oil. Using the whisk attachment on your mixer, whip the mixture.
Do not listen to the person who wrote the original recipe and said “a fork is fine”. It’s not. Get a beater/emulsifier/mixer of some sort.
Consider adding Vitamin E Oil to combat rancidity, and beeswax if you would like something less greasy. Now and days, I add beeswax as well as coconut oil that I infuse at home with soothing herbs such as chamomile, mugwort, calendula, and rose. I just eyeball it, so I can’t give any exact measurements.
If you’d prefer a lotion bar, up the beeswax (a lot) and pour it into a mold.
Why is this lotion bar not yellow if I added so much beeswax, you ask? Because I did not add enough beeswax the first time, and it lost its shape in less than 6 hours 