Witch's Black Salt

Protection, banishing, breaking hexes, laying tricks, used to keep outside influences from interfering with your work.

I keep a vial of gourmet volcanic black salt on hand, and I have a little packet of "witch's black salt" from an occult store, but I honestly like my own a little better. Volcanic salt is natural of course, and comes from a very powerful source, so it's great to use, but to be honest, I enjoy the process of making black salt so much that I use MY black salt and I'm saving the volcanic salt for a special occasion.

I select my ingredients carefully when I make things that I put into my magick. For this recipe you will need some kind of salt, some kind of charged/blessed water, and some kind of carbon.

For your salt, any kind of salt will do. I like fancy stuff. I'll use things like pink Himalayan salt, or kosher salt, generic sea salt, and my favorite--Gray Celtic Sea Salt. I'm just a sucker for gourmet spices being used for magickal purposes, foremost being salt.

For your blessed water, you can get holy water from a church, you can use full moon water, you can pray over the water, you can Reiki the water, you can use storm water, you can use a crystal elixir, if you don't mind the scent being added you can use Florida water... whatever water you would like to use that feels right for your black salt, that's what you use. I don't have any blessed water right now, so I'm going to bless it myself.

Carbon is a component in all black salt, whether you purchase the fancy volcanic black salt, or make your own by heating it in a cast iron pan, or mixing it with charcoal or ashes. You can use a charcoal incense tab which has the addition of saltpeter, which is a pretty powerful banishing ingredient. In fact, if you wanted to add saltpeter to other carbon sources, that would also add an extra boost. You could also add a small amount of sulfur, as volcanic salt has natural sulfur in it.

Carbon atoms are formed when a star dies. Our bodies are made of carbon. All life on Earth is based on carbon, except for a few species that are formed of silica. This includes most animals, plants, microscopic organisms, and the pre-organic soup that life first sprung from. Carbon is very simple, in that it is an element (scientific periodic table) and it is associated with fire. It is literal star dust and it is what diamonds are made from.

Carbon in the form of charcoal is used to filter water. It is used to absorb toxins when someone has ingested poison. It is used as fuel in the form of charcoal and coal.

As such it absorbs negative energy, filtering it and neutralizing it. This is great for allowing positive, beneficial energies to pass unabated while filtering the negative energy through it completely. As a fire catalyst it is powerful and fast as well as destructive.

My carbon source for my black salt is coal. I live in coal country and the reason I choose coal is because coal is made up of the carbon from trees from millions of years ago that have fossilized into anthracite coal. Jet is a kind of coal that is hardened to to the point of being polish-able. I can literally walk down the street and find a piece of coal laying on the ground, it is so common here. It's a fossil fuel, like crude oil, and burning it causes a lot of problems for our atmosphere, but it's very magickal because it is not only the product of dying stars, but the product of the death of living things, and decomposition. It is inertia in solid form. It is death. It is the end. It is also a great connection to the land spirits and ancestral spirits.

After I've selected my 3 ingredients, I first set up the salt in a bowl. I do a banishing on the salt the same way I would if I was using salt in a ritual, by simply drawing a banishing pentagram over it.

After the salt has been blessed, I'll begin adding a bit of carbon and a few sprinkles of water to the salt, and just stir counter clockwise, blending it in until the salt has turned black. The water helps the carbon and salt adhere to each other by the salt dissolving just a little bit, and as it dries, it will crystallize with the carbon in the salt. So the end result is complete black salt crystals, rather than just crystals with black soot on the surface. That's fine to use, of course, I just think that this method is more alchemically whole and as a result creates a more powerful black salt.

So once it is blended well, the salt will be rather like damp sand. You can set this out in the sun or the moon or on your altar, and let it dry completely. When it is dry, you'll probably have to break it up a little bit. You'll see where new crystals have formed. Keep it in a nice bottle...something dark and mysterious if you have it.

Put your intentions into each step and recall what each ingredient does in your spell. The carbon absorbs and the salt neutralizes and the water binds them together and they crystallize into one substance.