The Grind. Sacred powders and salts

The Grind: Sacred powders and salts

I like salt. It is cheap, easily obtainable and cleans and does cleansings like little else. You can add stuff to it, or add it to things (like baths, mop bucket or even your washing machine.) You can use it to make circles, sigils, or focus for spells, charms, bottles, altars or even just season your soup!
Salts absorb and reflect, which is a handy quality. Allowing a witch or magick worker to draw things and energy to, and repel in equal measure and at the same time.I love rock salt, especially pink rock salt, though I am happy to use almost any salt in a pinch!
When I am making a salt for a spell bottle or charm work I add oils and herbs and spices, charge with crystals. Sometimes I end up using salt to dry out things (like wild apple peel, or rowan berries). This leaves me with a salt that has that essence already in it! Which makes working with it all the more powerful and exciting. Traditionally in Craft, salt is blessed then mixed with water to cleanse and clean a space before ritual work. This is still the case with mixed and charmed salts but you are only limited in their use by your imagination. You can keep them as a spell on an altar (drawing in the spell and repelling the unwanted energy) or as witch bottles around a person or space or cast them on the floor, at a threshold or doorway, or mix into your cleaning water.

 Cascarilla is very simple too. It is finely ground eggshells (mine are always free range and often organic). Sometimes I mix other herbs and spices in there too. This stuff is amazing at protecting people and things from unwanted energy. Just dusting your hands when you need to touch something of dubious energy can prevent you from having it's yuck stick to you.This fine powder can be used like the salt to mark and protect doorways and circles. Unlike salt it is fine to use on grass and in forests as it does little to no damage to the vegetation. This means it is great to use during outdoor rituals. It can also be mixed with a little water and fine flour and turned into a chalk.

Both salt and cascarilla (ground eggshells) can be used in ritual and purifying baths. While cascarilla may not be "Celtic" in origin I can see a great idea and appreciate that it works and has potential in ritual and spell craft. I also wish I had know this when I kept chickens!
Bright Blessings