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The Spellbook · Protection

The Spellbook · Witchcraft & Wicca

Protection Spell Jar for the Home with Salt and Herbs

How to make a protection spell jar for the home with salt, rosemary, bay and iron, and how this modern charm descends from the English witch bottle.

  • TraditionContemporary witchcraft, late 20th–21st century, modelled on the English witch bottle
  • ForProtection, Home & hearth
  • DifficultySimple
  • Time30 minutes
  • WhenTraditionally during the waning moon, on a Saturday; or whenever you move into a new home
Post-medieval glass witch-bottle and contents. The glass bottle has a wide flat base with a twisted and fluted narrow neck, which is broken around the rim. The size and form of the base and neck indicates that…
Post-medieval glass witch-bottle and contents. The glass bottle has a wide flat base with a twisted and fluted narrow neck, which is broken around the rim. The size and form of the base and neck indicates that…The Portable Antiquities Scheme, Adam Daubney, 2003-12-08 15:04:21 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

A protection spell jar is a small sealed vessel filled with salt, protective herbs and sharp iron, made with a spoken intention and kept near the door or hidden in the house to guard those who live there. It is one of the most popular workings of contemporary witchcraft and a gentle, safe descendant of the English "witch bottle", an early modern countermagical device. The aim is defensive only: to keep harm, ill will and bad luck away from the household, not to return anything to anyone.

How to do it§

  1. Prepare. Wash and dry the jar. Clean the room where you will work and gather the materials on a cloth. Sit quietly for a moment and decide what the jar is guarding — the home, the people in it, a doorway.
  2. Write the purpose. On the slip of paper write a short protective sentence of your own, such as "This house and all within it are safe and at peace." Fold it and put it in the jar first.
  3. Add salt. Pour in a layer of coarse salt, the classic purifier and guardian of the threshold in European folk custom.
  4. Add the herbs. Add rosemary, bay leaves and cloves or peppercorns, naming each as you add it: rosemary for protection and remembrance, bay for strength, cloves or pepper for keeping trouble at a distance.
  5. Add iron. Drop in the nails or bent pins. Iron and sharp points have been used against harmful influences across Europe for centuries; in this jar they are understood as a barrier, not as something aimed at a person.
  6. Fill and seal. Top up with salt, close the lid firmly and, if you wish, drip wax from the candle around the rim to seal it, holding the jar over a plate. Speak your sentence once more.
  7. Place it. Keep the jar near the front door, on a high shelf, in a cupboard, or buried in a pot by the entrance. Some people make one for each outer door.
  8. Maintain and dispose. Many practitioners renew the jar yearly or after a move. To dispose of it, empty the salt and herbs onto bare ground away from plants or into the bin, recycle the jar and keep or bury the nails, with thanks.

Origins and history§

The ancestor of the spell jar is the witch bottle. From the late sixteenth to the nineteenth century, households in England, and later in colonial North America, buried or concealed stoneware and glass bottles containing bent pins, nails, hair, nail-clippings and urine, usually under hearths or thresholds. Many surviving examples are German salt-glazed "Bellarmine" jugs with a bearded face on the neck. Their purpose, as described in contemporary writings such as Joseph Blagrave's Astrological Practice of Physick (1671), was to counter witchcraft believed to be afflicting someone in the house: the bottle was heated or buried so that the witch would feel the torment and break the spell. Archaeologists, notably Ralph Merrifield and Brian Hoggard, have catalogued hundreds of finds.

Four fragments from post medieval ceramic frechen stoneware bellarmine jugs. Three pieces are body sherds contain parts of coats of arms which decorated one side of the jugs. The fourth is a rim fragment…
Four fragments from post medieval ceramic frechen stoneware bellarmine jugs. Three pieces are body sherds contain parts of coats of arms which decorated one side of the jugs. The fourth is a rim fragment…Museum of London, Kath Creed, 2012-03-09 11:10:16 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The modern spell jar keeps the vessel, the iron and the idea of a household guardian, but its contents and ethics have changed. Contemporary witchcraft books from the late twentieth century onward replace bodily fluids with salt and herbs, and emphasise protection rather than counter-attack. The social-media era has made "spell jars" in many forms — for love, money or calm — one of the most visible practices of modern witchcraft. See protective magic and maleficium and protective magic.

Variations§

Some add a sprig of dried rue (handled with gloves), a few juniper berries, eggshell, or a small black stone such as obsidian or tourmaline. In hoodoo, comparable "protection bottles" may hold red pepper, salt and pins and are sometimes buried under the step. Other practitioners prefer an open dish of salt by the door, changed monthly. For the older form, see the Witch Bottle entry rather than recreating it with bodily materials.

Safety and good sense§

Keep the jar, nails and pins out of reach of children and pets. If you seal with wax, never leave the candle unattended, hold the jar over a plate, and keep hair and sleeves back. Avoid glitter and other microplastics if you might bury the jar. Salt harms plants and some stone surfaces, so dispose of it thoughtfully. Protective magic is no substitute for good locks, smoke alarms, or help from the police, a doctor or a lawyer where there is real danger.

Sources and further reading§