The Trouble with Witch Bottles

[kimberlysteele]

Image Credit: Malcolm Lidbury (aka Pinkpasty), CC BY-SA 3.0

Witch bottles are a classic example of a type of natural magic that is no longer appropriate and that should only be used as an absolute last resort under the careful supervision of an experienced practitioner of natural magic, if such a human can be found (highly unlikely). The witch bottle is problematic because it is a form of etheric bait. The etheric plane is the layer of energy between us and the world of images; imagine it as one plane more subtle than smell.  Placing your own nails, hair, and other effluents into a jar is a way of siphoning off a bit of your etheric energy.  The purpose of a witch bottle is to entice the evil person or the spirit sent by her into attacking an etheric lure. The reason it contains sharp metal objects is to trap the witch tricked into attacking the bottle.  The witch or her familiar sees the witch bottle radiating etheric energy from whatever astral spying she has done upon the victim’s house and commences an astral attack on the bottle, mistaking it for the victim. When she does attack, her etheric body is bound by the magic of the bottle and punished by the pins, nails, and other sharp objects.  If the witch bottle works as planned and the witch's etheric body is damaged, her physical body will also be damaged here on the meat plane.  

What if the Witch is You?

The trouble with witch bottles is not their ineffectiveness.  The trouble with them is the intention of the creator/victim. I have never met a miserable, unlucky person who was not at least partially responsible for their own misery and bad luck. We humans are experts at getting in our own way and making our own lives difficult and depressing. A person who fails to look at herself as a potential cause of her own problems is overlooking Prime Suspect Witch No. 1. Creating a witch bottle almost always traps the creator of the bottle. If the witch bottle’s creator is plagued by hatred and paranoia, the witch bottle becomes a literal etheric extension of that hatred and paranoia. Anyone considering making a witch bottle should first ask herself, “What if there’s no witch out to get me?” Linking yourself to fear and paranoia through your physical action of making a witch bottle means that you are prone to fear and loathing of witches without evidence, analysis, or reason. If you are indeed the cause of your own woes, then you just did the magical equivalent of walking into a booby trap that you set for your enemy.

Alternatives to Peeing in Glass Containers

In the Cosmic Doctrine, Dion Fortune set you never overcome evil by fighting it directly. Instead, you build your own strength and use evil as a stepping stone or thrust block while overwhelming it with sheer force. If you do have a bona fide witch cursing you, don’t lure her to your house by peeing in a jar! Instead, ignore her whenever possible and build your own self until you dwarf her foul influence.  Vanquish her by ignoring her and leaving her to her own toxic fate.

“I Don’t Know Her”

Once upon a time, Jennifer Lopez, a celebrity known as J.Lo, decided to pick a fight with Mariah Carey, another celebrity on the same record label known for her amazing voice. Despite frantic efforts by J.Lo and her team over the course of multiple decades to engage Mariah by asking the singer for her opinion of J.Lo in interviews, Mariah repeatedly claimed “I don’t know her”, refusing to acknowledge J.Lo or their alleged fight. In one interview, a prodded Mariah commented “Singing is first and foremost, it’s a God-given talent that I’m grateful for. Her thing is something different.” Without speaking J.Lo’s name, Mariah decimated the opposition. The subtext that J.Lo’s singing voice profoundly lacked in comparison to Mariah’s was crystal clear. One could picture J.Lo fuming like Snow White’s wicked stepmother in front of her mirror while Mariah practiced pentatonic runs, even if the image was far from the truth.

The moral of the story is that witch bottles are better left to the rare expert or the rarer individual who isn’t at all responsible for her own self-sabotage. Instead of creating a potential etheric booby trap for yourself, spend time in discursive meditation getting to the root of your problems, starting first and foremost with the ones you laid upon yourself. If you have zero responsibility for causing your current set of problems and you have an expert natural magician on hand to help you craft a witch bottle, then have at it. If you don’t, consider avoiding witch bottles altogether.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"Vanquish her by ignoring her and leaving her to her own toxic fate."


That reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of classic wisdom, though one that I don't always succeed in following: "The best revenge is to not be like that." -- Marcus Aurelius. (I don't know Latin so I don't know if the original was quite so pithy, but the various translations I've seen all have the same general gist.)

[kimberlysteele]

I love that! So blunt. As someone who used to want revenge on bullies, I finally grew up enough to take Marcus Aurelius's sentiment to heart. The best revenge is to ignore the bully and do what makes me happy, which doesn't necessarily mean that I will spend my time trying to outdo the bully at being popular or good at sports or whatever else bullies find important. If I had known this in high school, I would have skipped all the after school activities (or would have absolutely insisted on being home-schooled) and rode my bike to the forest preserve every afternoon to talk to my tree friends.

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting.

I actually made a witch bottle in my previous house, as I was very unhappy there despite it being, to all intents and purposes, a lovely house, so I felt there must have been some kind of supernatural reasoning. (In all likelihood, there probably wasn't, I just didn't like the neighbourhood and was looking for any reason that wasn't just as simple as that - although the previous owners' son had died in the house, so I do wonder if I had picked up on some of the lingering sadness from that. I don't know how he died, but I do have a horrible feeling it may have been suicide - the room which I presume was his had something particularly soul-crushing about it.) I read a lot of guides online on witch bottles before making one, but did not find anything like your description above of the 'mechanics' of how the witch bottle works (probably because there are a lot of inept mages online, and at the time I didn't understand what "etheric" meant) Despite most recipes calling for urine, hair, fingernail clippings, and in some cases blood, I was, however, very careful not to add anything of mine to the bottle (getting the instinctive thought of "Don't do that!"), only adding some mud from the garden as an indirect link to myself, along with white wine vinegar, sea salt, bent nails, broken glass, rose thorns, chilli powder and probably some other stuff that I've now forgotten. I corked it and sealed the cork with black wax (with sparkles, as the only black candles I could find were birthday ones!) and then left it in a drawer and forgot about it for 8 months. Then when I later opened that drawer, the wax had broken, the cork had partially popped out and tarry black/brown fluid had oozed all over the bottle and the drawer. This was alarming. So I made an improvised floor washing liquid with more vinegar, salt, lemon juice and chilli powder, wiped up all the mess, put the whole lot in the bin, then took a long, cold shower. I should point out that I noticed no improvement in the well-being of the house before or after creation of the witch bottle. I should also point out that I was careful to fully fill the bottle with liquid so that the expansion of air with the seasons did not force the cork out, and the house was a relatively stable 18-20°C (about 65°F) the whole time anyway - this thing leaked all on its own.

Overall no long-term damage done, but a reminder these are not things to be trifled with. I learned my lesson, and in my defence, I was relatively new to anything occulty and had not found my patron gods yet. However, I am now more careful to only use Florida water in my new house, which I feel fits the category of building up good things to the point it effectively pushes away bad things (as all good banishing does, if one thinks about it).
Mr. Crow

[kimberlysteele]

Thanks for sharing that, Mr. Crow! It sounds as if the house spirits did not like your bottle and broke it before it could have any effect at all.

Of course just as I write an article condemning witch bottles, I received a Lucky Mojo bottle spell that I ordered in the mail. I should have said that not all bottle spells are created equal. The hoodoo bottle spell I ordered has a candle and sweet smelling resins inside -- it's for blessings and I'd have no trouble recommending it. The spell's directions are to put a piece of paper with the intention crossed 9x with my name and then burn the candle with the intention in mind at specific times. I'm going to time it magically according to my intention. The key difference though is that I'm not trying to trap any opposing force, nor am I doing magic on anybody except myself.

If you want a perfectly safe way of banishing bad energy and promoting a healthy astral environment, you really cannot go wrong with geometrics. Obviously they can be put anywhere in the house/apartment/barn/cardboard shack/wherever, and I suppose you could make one into a pendant and wear it.

Very interesting

[miow]

Thank you for this interesting post. I would be very interested indeed in learning about any forms of natural magic you have successfully practiced.
Blessings to you and your cats and trees from me, my cats and my trees here in England.