How to Make Ritual Oils

Ritual oils have been used for ceremony and ritual for thousands of years. For many witches today who enjoy working with natural elements, kitchen witches, green witches, hedge witches, hoodoo practitioners, root workers etc, making these oils is a core part of their witchcraft practice.

Read more: What is a Kitchen Witch? | What is a Green Witch?

Magical oils are made from various ingredients, including flowers, herbs, essential oils, resins, roots, minerals, and carrier oils to create a powerful, goal-oriented/intentioned infused formula. Amulets, charms, talismans, and personal items are sometimes added depending on the purpose of the oil.

You can purchase premade witchcraft oils such as: 

• Essential Oils
• Herbal Tinctures
• Intention Oils
• Conjure Oils
• Anointing Oils
• Ritual Oils

These are great for a busy or beginner witch. But once you get the basics down you can use your intuition and knowledge to create powerful personally tailored oils and blends. Creating oils is a process you can do at home with mostly everyday tools making it budget friendly. 

While there are many different recipes and techniques, the basic process is to infuse a carrier oil of your choosing with herbs, resins and/or other ingredients, then charge the oil with your intention.

The herb-infused oil serves as a magical oil for various intentions: love, abundance, healing, banishing, dreaming, protection, etc. You can use it to anoint candles, purify altar tools, place around your home or even yourself depending upon the herbs and intentions.

How you go about making your oils will vary depending on your type of magical practice, your intentions for the oil, and the way you work. You might do this entire process within a ritual mindset, and cleanse beforehand. You may choose to only create certain oils in certain phases of the moon, or leave them out under the moonlight afterwards for example. These are the base instructions for creating herb or resin infused oils. Use your intuition or practice to guide you in your process around these methods, and in adding additional items such as crystals, or other magical ingredients.

Before you start:

Gather your ingredients. If you have purchased our Green Witch Kit, you will have everything you need including recipes to create some oils. Once you expand you might wish to add more ingredients, or select additional ingredients for your oils.

For this method, you will need herbs, and/or resins. 

Choose a carrier oil for your magical oils

There are a wide range of oils which people like to use for ritual or magical oils. Some people like to choose their oil based around intention, while others prefer to choose a good all rounder oil and use this for most, or all of their oils, letting the ingredients do the work. 

Most people use olive and sweet almond oil, because they are inexpensive and great all round oils. If using an oil on the skin we would recommend something like fractionated coconut oil or jojoba oil. Fractionated coconut oil has a very long shelf life and is a great all round oil, and jojoba is fantastic for your skin. (But always do a patch test first of anything you plan to use on yourself)

If you would like to use an oil best suited to your intention, olive oil and almond oil are more associated with protection and luck, money, prosperity magic. While apricot kernel oil, avocado and jojoba are more for healing, emotions, and love magic. We recommend doing some research based on your magical practice and going from there. 

To make your own herb infused ritual oils

You Will Need:

• Large saucepan (only needed for some methods)
• Glass jar with an air-tight lid 
• Bottles to hold the finished oil
• Cheesecloth, coffee filter, muslin, or another way to filter the oil.
• Carrier oil for the base. This might differ depending upon intention. As a good all-round oil, olive oil works well and has a great shelf life of up to 3 years. Jojoba, coconut oil and sweet almond oil are all popular too.
• Ingredients

Stovetop method

1. Put carrier oil and herbs/resins in a small saucepan.
2. Heat slowly over a low heat and bring to almost the boil. Keep at this temperature for 2 hours. Remove from heat then let cool. 
3. Add to a jar with lid then let it continue to seep for a couple of days.

Double boiling method

1. Fill about 1/4 of the glass jar with your dried herb(s) of choice.
2. Pour your oil base over the dried herbs, and fill to about ¾ of the jar.
3. Place the jar inside a large pot of hot water on a hotplate and slowly bring the water to a low simmer. The temperature should be no more than 100 C. Leave for around 2 hours – keep an eye on it and be careful it doesn’t spill into the water.
4. Remove from heat then let cool. Add a lid then let it continue to sit for a couple of days to 4 weeks, gently swirling it every couple of days.

To make ritual oils without heat

1. Fill about 1/3 of a glass jar with your dried herb(s) of choice.
2. Pour your oil base over the dried herbs—almost all the way to the top of the jar.
3. Shake the jar gently.
4. Label the jar with the oil base, herb(s) used, and the date.
5. Close the jar tightly and put it in a cabinet—preferably a cool, dark place.
6. Gently shake the jar twice a day, every day, for the next 2-4 weeks.

Once the oil is infused

1. Strain the oil: Open the jar, place a piece of cheesecloth on top, and secure it with a rubber band. Strain the oil by tipping the jar over another jar or bowl (to contain your infused oil). Once most of the oil is strained out, remove the rubber band, and squeeze the remaining oil out of the herbs that are in the cheesecloth.
   Alternatively, you can use a tea strainer or other filter to remove the herbs and other ingredients.
   Some witches prefer to leave the herbs in the oils and skip this step. If you do this, be aware it might impact their ability to be used in certain bottles as they can get stuck inside pumps or droppers.
2. This is the step where you might wish to magically charge your oil, add crystals and other items or leave it out under moonlight.
3. Bottle the infused oil and be sure to label and date it.
4. You can add the oil to a roller bottle - ie a protective, calming, or attract luck oil in a roller to use on yourself. If you do so, please check if the ingredients in the oil are safe for skin contact as some essential oils and herbs are not. Always do a pactch test on yourself for 24 hours first.