My Favorite Condition Oil

Genesis 8:11 - And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth [was] an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

 Exodus 27:20 - And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn always.

That's right, my favorite condition oil is plain old olive oil. Olive oil or sweet oil (a type of refined olive oil), blessed, is the most versatile oil you can own. The olive represents abundance and peace, making olive oil excellent for all good works. You can use it to fuel oil lamps. You can use it as a base to make your own condition oils (stick to the lighter, non-virgin olive oils if you don't want the smell to interfere.) When Jesus and his disciples healed people, they anointed the sick with oil. Following this tradition, Godfrey Selig's Secrets of the Psalms recommends the use of olive oil in conjunction with specific psalms to relieve pain throughout the body and even to restore domestic happiness between partners. In John George Hohman's Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend, he recommends sweet oil for a variety of ailments. You don't need the expensive stuff, I usually get huge bottles of it for about $5. Just make sure it's 100% olive oil and not a blend.

This is how I bless my olive oil. Every worker's way will be their own, there is no set way to do it:

First, I uncap the oil and add a pinch of blessed salt*. With the cap off, breathing on the oil as I pray, I pray the 23rd psalm, making the sign of the cross over it three times as I say the line "Thou anointest my head with oil", and once when I finish, saying "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

I do this for 7 days, beginning on a Monday in a waxing moon in a week that ends with Sunday still in the waxing phase of the moon. I try to do it just as the sun is beginning to rise, but failing that, I do it in the hour of Sun, and when the clock hands are rising.

My method of timing is complicated, but I will tell you that you don't need to be as crazy about timing as I am. Planetary hours, clock hands, and other timing methods will come in another post. If nothing else, I would recommend just starting on any Monday so that it is finished on a Sunday.

*I prepare blessed salt in a very similar way.

Corn dollies!

In my last post, I linked to New World Witchery. Not having read it in a few days, I clicked over to catch up, and to my delight the first post included a section on corn dollies!

The above picture is a corn husk doll I had made on the fly for a coworker a few years ago. She wasn't perfect, and she wasn't made with any magic intent; I had just twisted, tied, and pulled her together while chatting. I first learned to make them as a kid from people on my father's side of the family and friends. Indeed, these are not conjure, rather they are sometimes used in mountain and PA Dutch magic. Most all the time when you see them, they're nothing more than toys and folk art, but corn dollies are are a part of sympathetic magic called doll magic or poppet magic. They can also be used for protection.

Dolls, dollies, doll babies, voodoo dolls, poppets... every culture has a slightly different name for a figure that represents an actual person and is used to affect that person. Using a corn dollie as a poppet is pretty similar to the way you would construct a wax or cloth doll in conjure.You include personal concerns of the person (hair, nail trimmings, bodily fluids, scraps of worn clothing, etc) and maybe herbs appropriate to your goal (not everyone does). You might dress the doll with clothes, especially clothes *made from* the clothes of the person. The doll is baptized in the person's name and then worked on and spoken to as if it *is* that person.

I'm not sure how widespread their use in protection is, sometimes things that were once used for magic lose their meaning over several generations. I've known people, both in and outside of my family, to create corn dollie angels and pray over them for protection, hanging them on the front door or sitting them up on bookshelves. Sometimes you'll find corn dollies of angels or ladies in kitchens. I've seen corn husk angels being sold at farmers markets that I'm not sure were meant to be anything but decorations, but who knows?