How to Make a Witch Bottle (with Rue Hexing Powder)
The purpose of a witch bottle is create a “decoy” for any entities / energies that are looking to harm you. They end up trapped in the bottle instead, and take damage. You could make one on your own or in ritual with a protective and trusted spirit. Days and hours of Saturn, the Moon, and Mars would be ideal, as would a Dark, Waning, or First Quarter Moon.
Step One: Hexing Powder
Create your rue hexing powder (recipe from The Witching Herbs by Harold Roth). Or, use a different hexing powder. Add visualization / mantras / spells / etc. while you make it; this should be a ritual and spell all on its own.
Rue Hexing Powder
- Rue (dead)
- Wormwood (dead)
- Mugwort (dead)
- Myrrh Powder or EO
- Lemongrass (dead) or Lemongrass EO
- Iron Oxide (rust)
Use black iron oxide for hexing, and red iron oxide for war.
I foraged / picked the herbs from my garden and mortified them by dehydrating them in my air frier, but buying them already dried is fine if they don’t grow in your area. You can make iron oxide by burning steel wool, or you can collect rust scrapings, etc. Roth says to make the powder at night, preferably in autumn or winter, during a Dark Moon or a solar eclipse if you can.
Step Two: Cleanse, Consecrate & Charge
Cleanse, consecrate, and charge a small glass bottle. Use smoke, energy, visualization, a spell, a mantra, whatever works for you.
Step Three: Bottle
Add your hexing powder and your own urine (or hair / finger nails) to your witch bottle with ingredients such as broken glass, thorns, rusty nails, dead insects, and poisonous things. Be sure to have enough “prickly and clawing things” to catch the entity / energy. Use visualization and spoken word as you do so.
Step Four: Seal
Charge and seal the bottle. You could paint a sigil on it, seal it off with candlewax and a spell, chant a mantra / enn / homeric verse / psalm / prayer over it, or whatever fits into your personal practice.
Step Five: Deposit
Bury it by your front door, in the ground, in a potted plant, or hide it in a garden ornament (etc). Keep it outside of the home. It will need to be replaced from time to time. Remove the old bottle from your property. Do not thow it in a river or pollute the environment! Burn it if you can, or throw it in a trash far from your home.
Refs:
- The Witching Herbs: 13 Essential Plants and Herbs for Your Magical Garden (Harold Roth)
- By Rust of Nail & Prick of Thorn: The Theory & Practice of Effective Home Warding (Althaea Sebastiani)