The Magickal Cottage

We chose to start off 2018 with our January WWW making magickal ink. Why magickal ink? Well, there are many uses for this lovely tool of communication! Among those uses might be to mark your magickal tools, to write spells and petitions, to draw sigils, and, of course, to record information in your Book of Shadows.

We were really only able to scratch the surface on this wondrous topic, and although there are many types of magickal ink, we decided to make 3 kinds in our workshop: invisible ink, lampblack ink and dragon’s blood ink.

Sometimes a witch might want to write a secret message that would remain invisible until revealed at the chosen time. Citrus juice and milk are two different common liquids that can serve in this way. We used lemon juice. With a quill pen or paint brush all we needed to do was to write our messages on a parchment paper and let it dry. As the liquid dried our messages disappeared. To reveal the hidden message, simply hold the parchment over a heat source such as a candle flame or a light bulb. If you use a candle be sure to keep your paper moving and have a fireplace or fire pit to toss it into should it accidentally catch fire. Below is a picture of one successful attempt at using invisible ink.

And one unsuccessful attempt . Ahem!

Our next magickal ink we chose to create was lampblack ink. This is a good all purpose magickal ink. Originally made from the soot from oil lamps, this type of ink can be rather time consuming to make.  We used candles instead of oil lamps and held old metal spoons over the candle flames to gather the black and then scrap the black into a small bowl. It takes a loooong time to gather much soot and we ended up supplementing the soot with ground charcoal. If you use charcoal be sure to grind it into a powder (no chunks).

To your black powder you will want to add an equal amount of finely ground gum arabic that will serve as a binder. Then add distilled water a drop or two at a time to get an inky consistency.

Here’s how mine turned out!

We felt we were on a magickal inky roll, so we started on our final ink which was dragon’s blood ink made from dragon’s blood resin and gum Arabic. This is a good ink to use for writing spells of manifesting, creativity and power. Grind dragon’s blood resin and gum Arabic separately and then add equal parts,making sure you have a fine powder as a mixture. For this ink you won’t use distilled water but, rather,  99% alcohol, everclear or high alcohol vodka. Again add just a drop or two at a time. You don’t want your ink too diluted. We chose to also add a drop of cinnamon oil to give our ink some extra punch! We stored our inks in small baby food jars, but any small glass container with a lid would do.

At at this point we started to discuss ways to add to our magickal inks. To the lampblack perhaps a drop of rain water for weather magick, or a tear for emotion? And of course don’t forget a drop of your own blood! That would make your dragon’s blood ink an awesome expression of your power as a witch.

Magickal ink is a subject that could be  explored and experimented with for a life time…..and beyond. So get thee to your working altar and start mixing!

Until next time!

Brightest Blessings,

Sarina