A spell bottle is a bottle into which a magical spell
has been cast in the form of physical items used to
ensure that the spell results in the desired outcome.
A bottle spell is a magical spell that is contained within a bottle, and which, when finished, is expected to work for the ends one desires.
There are many types of bottle spells used in folk magic traditions from around the world. Almost every culture that uses bottles (or gourds, or animal horns) as containers also has developed ways to use those containers to hold works of magical spell craft.
The painted bottle spells shown here were made in America from small medical bottles. They come in both hoodoo and Catholic styles, as described below.
Among the earliest spell bottles known are those called "Witch Bottles."
They are buried under the threshold or hidden up in a
chimney to keep witches or evil-intentioned people away from
your home. Examples of glazed clay witch bottles have been found in
England that date back to the 1600s at least. A typical
witch bottle contains sharp, jagged items like bent pins,
shards of glass, nails, or even broken razor blades, a hair,
and the urine of the person who wishes to be protected. Some
of the ancient witch bottles found sealed by archaeologists
in England have been opened and all of them that still
contained liquids tested positive for the presence of
urine.
This is a small, short, squat style of jar made from very
pale green recycled glass. The shape is what used to be
called a "Cream Cup" in restaurants -- a tiny container
for coffee cream. Made of glass and outfitted with a cork
stopper, it serves beautifully as a Spice or Herb Jar,
or a diminutive container for a special Bottle Spell.
In Central and South America -- and especially in Peru -- spell bottles are created that
are customarily filled with a variety of hand-made and natural botanical lucky and protective
amulets and curios. Most of them contain a combination of native folk-magical charms and
Catholic religious artifacts such as holy prints and small hand-painted soapstone
patron saints for various
conditions. The arrangement of the articles within the flasks is
quite artful.
When used on the altar, the bottle is filled with oil and sealed. Prayers are said over it
and it becomes a permanent part of the altar furnings as long as the spell is
in effect or being worked on.
These bottle spells come in many sizes, from
medical ampules to whiskey flasks.
Some beautiful examples of such bottle spells from Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala can be
found on the page of charm
vials and charm flasks.
One of the oldest bottle spells that is not a witch-bottle
or protective spell is the
Break Up bottle. These are most
commonly found in African American
hoodoo magic, but their
contents are related to similar "divorce from demons" spells
inscribed in bowls that are found in ancient Jewish ruins.
Break Up
bottles typically contain the hair of a black dog
and the hair of a
black cat
-- so the people you want to
break up will "fight like cats and dogs" -- plus red cayenne
pepper powder, to make then angry, and a group of 9 needles,
9 pins, and 9 nails to cause them to hurt one another.
Vinegar
may be added to "sour" their relationship. A black
candle
inscribed with the people's names written
back-to-back (to separate them) may be burned in the mouth
of the bottle before it is sealed. After it is prepared it
can be buried at their home where they will step over it or
it can be shaken up daily as you name them and call down
curses on their relationship.
EUROPEAN, ENGLISH, AND ANGLO-AMERICAN WITCH BOTTLES
In more recent times, the
witch bottles of England and Anglo-America have been made from cobalt blue glass and
they are often kept on a window sill "for pretty" as well as to keep away witches and
the evil eye.
Because they function as "fascinators" and spirit traps, they
are typically filled with shiny and sparkly things. The empty cobalt blue glass
bottle shown here is typical of the style used. It has a rolled rim and is stoppered with
a cork, adding to its old-fashioned look and charm. Its shape has led folks to
call it a "potion bottle," and of course it can also be used for storing magical liquids.
LATIN AMERICAN CHARM FLASKS
HOODOO BOTTLE SPELLS AND HONEY JARS
Bottle spells may also be used for helpful magic. The round blue bottle shown here
was made and photographed by my friend Lara Hopkins Rivera.
Its purpose is to draw and hold true love. It is filled with
a special combination of
love herbs
and
sachet powders, plus some decorative metallic confetti hearts,
then capped with a cork that
has been dressed with
ritual oils for love
Special hoodoo bottle spells are made for various conditions.
A Compelling bottle to make someone keep a promise may be made by writing their name on paper, crossed by your command, folding the paper with herbs such as Licorice and Calamus that are used to rule and control people, and inserting everything in the bottle. A small purple candle is then stuck in the neck of the bottle and burned. It may be dressed with Compelling brand dressing oil, all-purpose Special Oil No. 20, or plain Olive Oil.
A Fast Luck
bottle spell to get luck in a hurry is made the same way --
only in this case one writes the command first and crosses
it with one's own name written out 9 times. A red candle for a
love spell
or a green candle for
money magic
or
gambling luck
dressed with
Fast Luck
brand
anointing oil
is burned with this bottle.
Come To Me, Reconciliation (shown here), Peaceful Home, Lavender Love, Prosperity and other bottle spells are all created in a similar way: If there are two people in the case, appropriate herbs and minerals are placed in the bottle and when the petition paper is written out, your name goes on top of the name of the other party, to rule them. If there is only one party and the petition is for success, wealth, or luck, the petition is written first, crossed and covered by your name. Dress the candle with an appropriate formula oil or an all-purpose anointing oil such as Special Oil No. 20, or, in a pinch, use plain Olive oil.
The
honey jar or sweet jar spell
-- in which in two
people's names are written criss-cross and folded around some personal items and kept
in a jar of honey to create sweet conditions between the two -- is among the most
popular of the
hoodoo
bottle spells.
Honey jar spells
may be used for
love magic,
for
court cases,
to succeed on the job, to get a bank loan, or anywhere
that you want someone to be sweet to you or those on whose behalf you are working. There are so many types
of honey jar spell that they
have their own page, and you may read more about them there.
Religious bottle spells are a special form of prayer-in-a-bottle. They are made to hold your wish or petition, written on paper, along with herbs and minerals deemed relevant to the case, such as Rose buds if calling upon the Virgin, two Balm of Gilead buds if petitioning to mend a broken relationship, or Frankincense and Myrrh in making a petition to the Infant Jesus. There are patron saints for almost every human occupation, location, or condition, and some of the popular saints who appear in painted bottle spells include Saint Expedite for fast results, Saint Christopher for the safety of travellers, the Seven African Powers (shown here) for devotion to the Orishas, and the Infant of Atocha for political prisoners and missing victims of kidnapping.
Once the relevant items are put in the spell bottle, a candle of the appropriate colour for that patron saint is inserted in the neck of the bottle and dressed with oil -- either a named Saint or Holy oil or simply pure Olive Oil -- and then lit.
One candle alone may be sufficient, but some
people burn several, one per day, until they achieve
satisfaction.
Sealing the bottle concludes the creation of your bottle spell, and it may be placed on your altar or deployed at once, but if your spell is ongoing, you may make a "shaking" bottle of it either before or after you seal it and work with it fuirther before deploying it.
For instance, if you burn a candle in the nexk of the bottle, then after the candle is burned out, you can add vinegar (for a harmful spell), Florida Water Cologne (for a blessing spell), or Hoyt's Cologne (for a luck spell) and seal the bottle. If you wish to create a disturbance in someone's mind -- either for love or for ppain -- you can seal the bottle with a cork, then drive needles through the cork so that they stick down into the bottle.
In any case, once the bottle is sealed, you can shake it for a few minutes, either every day or once a week, as you call aloud your blessing, wish, prayer, or curse. To do this, hold the spell bottle between your thumb and middle finger and shake it rhythmically as you speak, as you would a rattle. Your words should be improvised and cadenced, like preaching, toasting, or rapping. If you stuck needles down into the bottle, you want to shake it in such a way that the person's name-paper and.or personal concerns is hit by the sharp needle points every time you shake the jar, giving him or her a mental jolt with each shake.
Bottle spells are utilized in many ways. Once completed, a bottle spell or prayer bottle
should be given
ritual deployment or disposal
in an appropriate manner. Depending on your intention, It
may be
buried under a doorstep,
buried in a graveyard,
thrown into a
crossroads, have a hole punched into the cap before
being made to sink in water, or kept on an altar.
If your intention was to keep someone close but
not let them know what you are doing, you may bury the spell bottle in
your back yard.
If the petition or prayer you made was
performed for
love,
money,
gambling luck,
protection
or
religious reasons
and you maintain an altar, then you should keep the spell bottle on the altar where it
will continue to work for you. Spiritual prayer bottles, blessing and wishing bottles,
charm
vials and charm flasks, and
honey jars
kept on the home altar may continue to be shaken on
special occasions, when it is important to "wake them up" and get them re-activated.
Honey jars are often
kept on the altar for weeks, months, or years, where they may serve as a
base for the burning of small
altar candles
anointed with
ritual oils.
Bottles fixed to make an enemy's, ex-lover's, or boss's power drain away are
prepared with a combination of his or her personal concerns, a commanding
name-paper, an assortment of domination herbs, hot sauce,
and vinegar,
and placed in a tall,
narrow glass bottle such as a ketchup (catsup) or hot sauce
bottle. A small pin hole is punched or driven through the bottle's cap
or carved as a groove out of the side of the bottle's cork,
and the bottle is buried upside down, preferably where the person will have to walk over it, or,
failing that, at a country crossroads.
As the liquid
drip-drip-drips out of the bottle, the power and strength of the enemy
likewise dribbles away.
If you live near a river or an estuary, you may a prepare a bottle
like this and
throw it into running water or into the ebbing tide,
with an additional prayer that the person will be carried out of your life and that as the bottle eventually sinks, far from where you threw it in, so will the person against whom
you are working be driven first away from you and then down to the depths.
Bottles for
breaking up a relationship,
crossing an enemy,
or crippling someone with pain,
are typically
buried on their sides in the earth, where the victim may step on them and feel the effect
of your jinx or curse as a result of
foot-track magic.
There are no hard and fast rules, but generally speaking, if the spell or prayer
was to rid yourself of some person or condition, then you will want to
ritually dispose
of
the bottle. If you work the bottle by
HOW TO DEPLOY OR DISPOSE OF A BOTTLE SPELL
Apotropaic witch bottles are generally hung around the home for
protection. The blue glass ones are often kept in a kitchen window, or they may be hung from
the rafter of the porch, or in a tree, to remain there until the string that holds them breaks,
signifying that they have "taken the hit" of any evil magic that was intended to harm the
inhabitants.
burial in earth in the home yard
then the spell-work is finished when the action of deployment or disposal is performed and you
cannot re-open the bottle to add more ingredients to it-- but if you are
working the bottle spell at your altar by shaking it, setting small altar
lights in the bottle mouth, etc., then
you may continue to add things to it, as it is still a "work in progress."
burial under the enemy's doorstep
deployment or disposal at a crossroads
interment in a quincunx pattern in a building
burial in a graveyard
deployment in a tree
deployment in running water
disposal in fire
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