Substituting with âanythingâ (a quartz and rosemary-inspired rant)
Apparently this is the month of me sticking my foot in places Iâll likely regret. But I feel like this really damages the learning process for a lot of witches and needs addressing. So today Iâd like to talk about this thing being told to new witches way too often: that they can use âanythingâ as a substitution if they donât have X ingredient for, say, a spell jar or whatever.
Can I just say, as someone whose practice focuses heavily on herbal work, how crazy that makes me?
I am not saying spells are set in stone and substitutions canât be made. They totally can be.
I am not saying that this here fancy spell with all these fancy, expensive ingredients canât have a more accessible re-working done with more common ingredients. It probably can.
I am all about making spells work for less money, less time, and less privileged people. You tell me what youâve got in your kitchen and yard, and I will help you find a way to make that into any-damn-thing you please.
I am not all about the elite-extra-special âold wayâ or some dead guyâs mandates on how to witch.
But when I see, âjust use quartz/rosemary insteadâ as the generic advice for EVERYTHING, no matter what the missing component in question is, it makes me crazy.
Whatâs the purpose of using ingredient-based spells? No, not just for the aestheticâ˘. Itâs to reduce the energy load on you by replacing it with stuff that ALREADY HAS a given energy, or focus.
So if you remove it and just stick a generic energy booster in there, whatâs going to happen?
1. The spell doesnât work as intended, because you took off a wheel and put a rocket where it used to be.
2. The spell does work as intended, but Iâm willing to bet you feel the exact same drain you would have felt if youâd just done energy work⌠because thatâs probably what you did (and a lot of people donât realize that isnât supposed to happen).
So while Iâm not saying that youâre wrong and your spell didnât work regardless of whatever generic substitutions you made, I am going to say that if thatâs true, I wonder if youâre wasting a lot of materials in your practice.
The purpose of spell ingredients is to use the properties of the ingredient in order to add a specific energy to the spell, which reduces the burden on you to supply that specific energy, and to have highly consistent focus while doing so. If your spell calls for valerian, then there is something about valerian itself that is aiding the spell. You canât simply swap it with cayenne and expect to get the same results. There are definitely things you COULD swap it with because they have similar properties, but not absolutely anything.
If you can swap the valerian with literally anything and get the same results, that likely means you are not actually using the valerian to help you cast the spell. Youâre simply using your own energy and the herbs are set dressing.
And thereâs most certainly nothing wrong with being adept at pure energy work. Thatâs a great skill to have as a witch. But it sure is a waste of herbs if youâre not actually using them, eh? I mean, a lot of these herbs we use arenât cheap or readily available.
Why not just get rid of the set dressing and save yourself time and money and just do energy work? Or if you like your set dressing, use tools meant to amplify energy work, like a wand or a staff or something?
Also, I think thereâs a certain level of damage being done when we tell witches who are trying to learn herbal work that anything is just the same as anything else and none of it matters.
The magical uses of herbs are often tied to their mundane uses. Letâs remember: cunning craft was the mother of medicine. To this very day, the magical uses of many herbs are tied to their physical affects. Even when they arenât, theyâre often a sort of hypersigil, and theyâve gained those associations through dozens or even hundreds of years of thousands or millions of people all imbuing them with the same purpose and energy. Most correspondences have a biological reasoning behind them, or have been basically sigilized by being used the same way thousands of times.
Exceptions and personal correspondences are a thing; I have a few myself. But these tend to be herbs that have been highly significant in my own life over a long period of time, and have consequently become a sort of personal sigil, as opposed to the cultural sigil of most broader correspondences. My personal correspondences tend to be things I have history with (even if itâs mundane), not just literally anything. Basically, Iâve overridden the cultural sigilization, by writing over it with my own over time. But thatâs an exception.
It makes it impossible to learn herbal work â which is a totally different skill from energy work â if youâre proposing that none of it actually matters and it all works the same anyway. And furthermore, itâs pretty discouraging if a witch tries that, and then their spell fails, which I see with some regularity.
Witches read that they can replace âanythingâ with quartz or rosemary, and then they come back and say their spell is doing all kinds of weird stuff it shouldnât be doing.
Well, Iâm not surprised. The original ingredient was there to give the spell a specific property, and then someone told them to replace it with a neutral energy booster and not do anything to replace the loss of that specific property, or control all the unprogrammed energy.
So, the result is going to be a high-powered bouncy ball of a spell that just pings around doing random shit and putting holes in the wall. Because they didnât give it anything except energy with no focus. Because you canât just replace âanythingâ with quartz or rosemary.
That tripped me up for a while, as someone who relies a lot on tools. Iâm an empath, and like a lot of drain-prone people, I find using ingredients helps reduce how drained I get by casting spells. Becoming adept at herbal work was really important for me to be able to cast at all with any consistency. I can DO energy work, but I donât always wanna wind up spending the next day in bed, and thatâs where tools help me.
Itâs not very helpful to just say âreplace it with anything.â Thatâs not how herb magic works.
Substitution can be done in most cases. But if youâre gonna remove a wheel, you need to add a different one thatâs compatible with the car, not just strap a rocket to the axle.
So, long story short: I really wish people would stop saying you can substitute with âanything.â While I get that the intention is to try to make the craft more accessible, it just impedes people from learning how to do it with stuff thatâs ACTUALLY accessible. I mean, whatâs inaccessible about the stuff most people have in their kitchen? You can substitute for a lot with that!
While it is completely true that you donât need ingredients to do a spell, it is also true that if youâre going to use ingredients, they matter. If they didnât matter thereâd be no point to using them.
If you find that you can substitute with âanythingâ and get the same results no matter what, then I think I can save you some time and money: just get an energy working tool instead!
