Sappho's Spellbook

here are some good ones!

ἰοχέαιρα (iocheaira), arrow-pourer

θηροφόνος (thērophonos), killing wild beasts

δρυμονία, (drymonia), haunting the woods

Thank you dear 🌺 I’m so glad you’re at the point where you want to accept your power. Now, since I dont know you’re living situation and I can’t tell if you still live with your Christ following parents or not, I’m gonna list some things and you pick and choose what you can do.

Location:

The bathroom. Often the most private room in the house. A ton of witches dunk themselves into a body of water or take a speacil herbal bath to mark them as a witch, as a symbol or rebirth

Your bedroom. You can tell your parents or whoever that you are going to be studying for something or taking a nap so they won’t disturb you. The bedroom is also a very sacred place, where you dream.

Outside. If you live in a more rural area, outside, possibly in the woods, would be a good place. The outdoors and nature are sacred and holy and can help you connect to many goddesses, including Gaia

Tools:

A candle to represent all goddesses. This candle can be white, black or rainbow. A candle is a point of energy, something for them to feed off of. And it marks their presence.

A crystal. This can also be your point of energy for the goddesses. Crystals are also very helpful, I would suggest rose quartz, clear quartz or larimar for this.

Drawings of goddesses your interested in.

Incense

Perfumes, to give as offering (if you do this outside dont pour it on the ground and if you spray it do it over yourself or your altar, if its on a table), to anoint and bless things or yourself.

Offerings. Whether it be food, drink, dancing, singing or what have you.

This ritual can be as elaborate or simple as you want.

I would suggest calling on the goddesses and giving them some kind of offering. Given their permission (whenever I ask for permission I usually feel a good or bad feeling) you could consume it in their stead. You can annoint yourself, make a declaration or dance to “transition” from being a “normal person” into a full on witch. Meditation and prayer are going to be key.

There are two different ways to read menstrual blood. The moon phase you start in, and how heavily you bleed.

The Moon Phase

This tells you what’s to come in the future.

Waning: something is coming to a close now, something is ending. You must let go of or banish something from your life. Beware of curses, ill-wishing* (wishing something bad to happen to someone so bad that it actually happens), and troublesome spirits. Keep rosemary and amethyst by your bedside to ward nightmares.

Waxing: now is the time to work tworads your goals. Make plans for the future. Divination is your best friend right now. Pray to your goddess and ask for assistance and for Her to keep you on the right path. Keep an eye out for thieves and liars. Sprinkle thyme in front of your front door to ward off gossip and lies.

New Moon: cleanse, cleanse, cleanse. Now is the time to renew and a fresh start. Burn that picture of you and your ex, tear up that college rejection letter, let go of the past. Draw in healing and protection to you, put up wards and keep lavender on your pocket.

Full Moon: now is the time for the strongest of magic. You may soon get a sign from a goddess, a new job, a new love, a speacil dream, or something you’ve been chasing for a while. You may even have a spiritual awakening. Put up wards against curses, evil spirits and the like, and ask your goddess for protection and luck

Your Flow

Spotty: you are uneasy, insecure and unsure of yourself. You need to work on confidence and self love.

Back and Forth: *bounces in between heavy and light* you are going through a great change. Now is the time to let go and let the forces that be do what they need to.

Heavy: you need to heal. You have been through a lot of pain, and you need desperately to heal. Reach out to others, to your goddess, and possibly professionals.

Light: you are starting a new, and learning to love yourself, coming into your power, but you’re not quite there yet.

To draw other lesbians to you!

⚢violets

⚢snippets of Sappho’s poetry

⚢rose petals

⚢rose quartz

♀donate to a women’s shelter

♀conduct a thank you ritual

♀pray

♀give offering

♀build them an altar

♀masturbate

♀read up on their legends

♀read up on women’s witchcraft

♀have pride in your womanhood

♀take a bubble bath

♀take an herbal bath of devotion

♀meditate on them

♀clean their altar

♀recite a hymn

♀sing or dance for them

Go outside and pick up litter

Plant trees

Plant a garden

Water the wild plants outside

Cut down on environmentally harmful things

Talk a walk through the woods

Go to your nearest public nature reserve

Keep yourself from littering

Recycle

Collect and research different herbs and plants

Keep a houseplant

Give offering to Gaia (wine, offering, tea, vegetables and fruits, incense, any of the things on the list and so much more)

IF IT IS MEDICALLY SAFE FOR YOU use herbal supplements, such as capsulated John’s wart. DO YOUR RESEARCH FIRST, ASK YOUR DOCTOR

Drink tea

Talk to Gaia

Work with nature spirits and far

Take care of yourself

Make a poppet of the person, make sure to have a tag lock. Make sure what you made it out of is biodegradable.

Give offering to a goddess of revenge or protection. It would be best to do this at night, under a dark moon.

Tie up the poppet, tell the predator their crimes and how you intend to stop them.

Take a hammer and smash the poppet, breaking their means of harm.

Repeat

"Dirty, filthy unwanted hands break under the weight of their crimes"

3 times, and repeat a personalised prayer to the goddess you called upon, tell Her its crimes and what punishment they need to receive.

Not rosemary, not clear quartz, nothing. This is such a harmful mindset and I’m going to explain why.

Why do we use ingredients at all?

A spell, at its most basic and general sense, is combining intent with mundane action in order to affect something bigger than the sum of its parts. On a sliding scale between mundane action, where everything is a really measurable cause and affect (like working for a paycheck) and a wish where no other action is taken, witchcraft and spellwork falls kind of in the middle. When we do a spell for money, we’re doing something with the intent to cause real change, but it’s not something we can directly observe working. Having the action here be very measured and deliberate is a big part of what distinguishes it from an elaborate wish, or just putting stuff in a jar because it’s pretty.

So we have our recipe! And in these recipes, every ingredient has a specific purpose and role to play. A spell is made by the precise aligning of our energy with the energy of what we’re doing.

So, do spell ingredients matter?

Yes. They didn’t just get their associations from nowhere, they’ve been supported by various cultures and traditions for generations, and I like to have faith that our Ancestors stuck with it because something about it worked. Our personal associations can also play an influential factor, but we could argue that’s because our personal energy from it is overpowering any conflicting energies/contributing more than the ingredient itself. It still plays an important role in the spell, but the way it might be working is notably different.

Magic is like cooking.

Every ingredient plays a specific role in forming the spell, just like every ingredient has a reason for being in a recipe. Just like in a kitchen, different ingredients can be used for different things, depending on what you’re making. I might use half a lemon to bring out the flavor of my sauce, squeeze a few teaspoons into my meringue cookie recipe to make it more acidic so that the texture is right, then use the rest to make lemonade. All of those have entirely different functions in the recipe, and would each require a different type of substitution. It’s the classic cartoon gag of getting your salt and your sugar mixed up because they’re both white powder or putting tomatoes in a fruit salad.

Can you swap out salt for any seasoning in the kitchen? Swap out strawberries for any fruit and pie crust for any dough? Of course you can’t, at least not for everything you’ll ever make. Because every ingredient has a specific function and if the ingredient you’re swapping can’t fill the hole you’re making, then it’s just putting tomatoes in a fruit salad. 

In the same vein, rosemary can’t fill the role of every herb in every spell, nor can clear quartz with any crystal, rose with any flower, etc. They may work for many things, but…

It’s a harmful mindset for magic. 

Whenever we say something is a universal substitute, it means we never have to think about the role any ingredient plays in anything ever again. Instead of our ingredients being “something to create healing energy” and “something to augment and focus that energy” we stagnate with “crystal” and “herb,” and the original intent of those ingredients was never “crystal + herb = results.” The materials were picked for a reason. There’s no reason to look into why or how things work, which means there’s no way for us to look critically at our spells for ways to improve. If the ingredients and the ways we use them don’t matter, then there’s no way for them to work against us, and any failure must be because we didn’t “believe” hard enough or “couldn’t raise enough energy.” That sounds like a great way to feel horrible about yourself for no reason. 

There’s also probably something to say about how all of the “universal” ingredients are things that are already everywhere and easily accessible in the white upper middle class new age scene. Nobody ever talks about the magical potency of “ethnic” foods, even their staple ingredients. Certainly not in a way where they’re supposedly universal for everyone. 

What if I can’t find a substitute, then?

This is just a way of warding that I found works for me.

You’ll need:

A black candle

Protective herbs

Oil

Chicken bones (please just get them from chicken legs at the grocery store don’t murder a chicken)

Thread

So, first count how many windows are in your house. That’s how many chicken bones you’ll need.

Set your altar, call on your goddesses, give offering and libations.

Take the black candle and dress it in oil; the first time I did it I used rose oil, but the second time I had to use cooking oil in a pinch. Lavender and sandalwood would be the best in my opinion. Cover the candle in your protective herbs. I tend to use black salt, rosemary, lavender, cayenne pepper, and, if I have some spare ones, cat claw shavings. Don’t rip out your cats claws, I tend to find them around my cats scratching posts or I collect the ones that drop when they get their nails trimmed. Use what you have. Light the candle and let it burn all the way down.

While it’s burning, cut however many pieces of thread as there are chicken bones. Tie the thread around the bones and drip some of the wax onto them. This will charge them, and they’ll be used as “posts” for your ward. Then take your bones and place them in the windows, and using your hand or wand, “trace” along the walls of your home, stating your intentions. This will cause a sort of “protective fence” ward.

⭐️ pick wildflowers and give them as offering to the gods or your local spirits. Make sure you don’t pick too many

⭐️spend time in your garden

⭐️take a walk and enjoy the changing of the seasons around you

⭐️ either by yourself or with your witchy friends, go to the beach. Collect sea shells and pray and connect with the sea

⭐️do a ritual for growth and abundance

⭐️bake bread, offer your first two slices

⭐️enjoy fresh apples and strawberries

⭐️plant local wildflowers to help the birds and the bees

⭐️make sun water

⭐️spend the day resting

⭐️study the correspondences with summer and the plants it brings to your local area, study what they mean and what magic is best to do at this time

⭐️make plans for the rest of the year, reflect on what happened these last six months and feel what you liked and what you didn’t like. Make plans to improve on those things

⭐️bond with your family, friends or pets

A lot of people talk about color correspondences with candles, but a candle's potential in magic runs way deeper than that! Here's a list of things I don't see people mention as much:

Loading a Candle

Carve out a small hole in the bottom of the candle and stuff it with herbs, a name, whatever else you want to "fill" the candle with.

Carvings

Etch sigils, symbols, names, and other things into the candle before burning! (I like the idea of writing my problems/worries onto the candle then watching as they burn and melt away.)

Dressing a Candle

Much like loading a candle, mix your herbs in an oil or have a pre-made magical oil ready to cover your candle in before lighting.

Reversals

Chop off the top of the candle, flip it upside down, and carve a new wick out of the bottom (now top.) This is a good way to inverse its symbolism!

Shape of Candle/Container

Not all candles are little cylenders. Candles shaped like pyramids, spheres, hearts, skulls, or animals can all have those correspondences taken into account as well.

Life of the Flame

Some candles are meant to only burn for a short period of time then be blown out. (Like birthday candles.) Others are meant to burn continuously over multiple days (like yahrzeit candles or seven-day candles.) Others can be lit or extinguished as you please. Which one makes the most sense for your goals?

Burning or Beacon?

A candle flame is a light in the darkness, drawing things near. It's also literal fire which can burn away whatever it touches. Which one is your candle trying to do, burn out something undesired or serve as a beacon for what you DO desire? Plan accordingly.

Read the Wax

Which of her epithets are you drawn to?

My favorite of all her epithets is Aphrodite Pandemos which means Aphrodite Of All People. I’ve always spoken about how Aphrodite is a goddess who welcomes and embraces all potential worshipers regardless of sexuality, gender, preferences, aesthetics, hobbies, and style. The Pandemos epithet is representative of that belief and I personally think it is ultimately the core of who Aphrodite is. A Goddess for us all.

Here are some other epithets of hers I quite enjoy!

Aphrodite Kallipygos (Of the beautiful buttocks)

Aphrodite Areia (Warlike)

Nikêphoros (Bringer of Victory)

Ourania (Heavenly)

Epitumbidia (She Upon the Graves)

Tumborukhos (Gravedigger)

Androphonos (Killer of Men)

Eleemon (Merciful)

Enoplios (Bearing Weapons)

Dia (Divine; Shining)

Philommeidês (Laughter-Loving)

Kataskopia (Spying; Peeping)

Hôplismenê (Armed)

Summakhia (Ally in War)

Melainis (Black)

Skotia (Dark)

Do you see how multifaceted this goddess truly is?? It’s rare to find a realm that has not felt the divine influence of Aphrodite.