If I ever catch you putting neat essential oils on your skin I am gonna be VERY DISSAPOINTED IN YOU and also any blog who tells you its fine is a hack who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking out and is probably going to end up with chemical burns.
NOTE; adding a few drops of oil to your regular skin oil/lotion or shampoo is not using it neat. That is diluting it, and is perfectly acceptable.
I mean, if you get chemical burns it’s because there are harmful chemicals in your oils. Per FDA regulations, an essential oil only has to contain 7% of the actual ingredient to be called “pure”. The rest can be synthetic. This is why there is a greater risk of irritation and why many are not safe for consumption, even citrus oils like Orange and Lemon. And this is why you can get a chemical smell. Stay away from store and other very cheap brands.
AFAIK the only brand on the market that’s ACTUALLY 100% pure is doTERRA. And even then, straight oils can cause irritation on people sensitive skin and children. ALWAYS dilute your oil. Fractionated Coconut Oil is the best way to do this, as it will stay liquid. You can also use regular coconut oil or an I scented lotion. Or of course diffuse a few drops with water.
I’ve seen some pretty bad burns on people who used straight clove and pepper oil. It’s not just because there’s additives. Newsflash! Essential oils are made of chemicals! SOME OF THOSE CAN BE HARMFUL, PARTICULARLY WHEN HIGHLY CONCENTRATED AS THEY ARE IN ESSENTIAL OIL.
And there’s lots of carrier oils you can use. No one is the ‘best’. Almond, olive, jojoba, rosehip, avocado…whatever someone finds works best for them. And doTerra is a good brand, but by no means the ONLY good brand.
That 7% thing you just said? Is a myth, usually used by essential oil companies to claim that THEIRS is DIFFERENT!!!!! It’s untrue, and a lie, and NOT TRUE. So far as I can tell, the first mentions of this were by sales reps of a multi level marketing scam to try and hawk their shit. It’s bullshit. And NOT TRUE.
and
DO
NOT
INGEST
ESSENTIAL
OILS
GOD
DAMMIT
UNLESS
YOU
CONSULT
A
DOCTOR
FIRST
If you want to try oregano for immunity, fine, GO MAKE SOME TEA WITH DRIED OREGANO FOR FUCK’S SAKE
100% this. I don’t even use 100% tea tree oil neat on my skin, I dilute it with jojoba oil. This doesn’t make it any less effective. If anything it makes it more effective, because I’m not irritating the shit out of already irritated and damaged skin. Oils that explicitly state on the bottle are okay to be applied directly to the skin? Have typically been diluted with something else to make it safe. (NB: water does not dilute essential oils, it disperses them, but doesn’t dilute them. The only time water and essential oil should meat without a carrier oil is in a vaporizer or oil burner.)
Also be really careful using menthol oils (y’know, the stuff you use for congestion) around small children, as they can actually cause breathing difficulties in small children and even result in death. https://naha.org/naha-blog/peppermint-safety-info/
I had a witchy friend who made her own sinus congestion oil blend for years, she was a licensed aromatherapist and had been working for decades in the field. And without thinking, used it on her daughter who was under 6, to help ease a bad head cold. The child went in to respiratory distress and died. She did everything right, the oils were 100% organic natural and well diluted with appropriate carrier oils—that still didn’t make it safe to use on a child. I have midwifing friends who wont even apply vicks vapor rub to their kids because of the risk of respiratory arrest.
If your baby is congested, by all means fill the bathroom with warm steam if it will help them breathe, but avoid menthol oils. Please. And do not apply any essential oil neat to their skin. I’m begging you.
Natural does not mean safe. “Chemical free” does not mean Safe. It just means you better know what the fuck you’re doing and that requires doing more research than trusting pinterest-tumblr witch posts that talk about “chemicals” with no basic understanding that Essential Oils are a chemical substance. Synthetically scented or otherwise.
mix with coconut oil, or olive, or non scented lotion. please. Making essential oil is a chemical process that refines plant oils to a concentrate. Meaning if it smells strong as a plant it is going to be 100% stronger chemically, when applied as a concentrate oil to your body!
Making herbal infused oils is one way to extend the life, and use of your herbs. When you successfully allow your herb to steep in oil over a certain period you allow the carrier oil to extract the natural essential oils from the herb which will last a heck of a lot longer then your bag of dried herbs.
You can use this oil to feed spells, Anoint yourself or candles, Add to
salt mixtures, etc. Like I always say the possibilities are endless, Be
creative.
Now this is not to be confused with regular essential oils which requires steam distillation. We are not making this. This is an infused oil which is less concentrated. But just as good.
So to make it is incredibly simple but even more time consuming (sorry in advance)
You’ll need a few things.
A clean glass Jar (stay away from plastic)
Herbs (dried)
The carrier oil of your choice ( I usually go for olive – or almond)
So once you have all your supplies handy its time to start. To your clean glass jar fill it about ¼ of the way full with your herb.
Next top it off ¾ full with your carrier oil. Try not to exceed the ¾ full mark because in a few days your herb will swell, And when your oil is done steeping you don’t want it to overflow.
After you mix the two you can seal up your jar nice and tight and shake vigorously for about 2 minutes. You want to aggravate the herb so it begins to release their essential oil.
Now would be a good time to infuse the oil with your intention. Think of what you want to make the oil for and push the desire into the bottle.
The last step is the most time consuming and it is to put the oil in a cool dark place (like a closet) and let it sit for 3-4 weeks shaking daily. It will be good to use in 3 but that extra week allows it to fully suck up the remaining essential oils.
After several weeks have passed you can strain your oil or leave it in. What ever you choose.
Tips
If in 3-4 weeks your oil is not the scent you hoped for you can add essential oils to the mix to enhance the smell. You can also reuse the oil in a new batch to make it more potent. Just strain the old herb, And add more. Allow it to steep for several more weeks.
You can also add crystals into the mix to amplify the herbs magical uses. I almost always throw a clear quartz in the mix.
You might find it helpful to label your bottle with the date you started just so you know how long you’ll have to wait before its ready.
so, I’ve been selling smelly things for about a decade now (which is crazy, but there you go), and I get super wired whenever I see people using essential oils for witchcraft/devotional perfumes/what have you. I also get worried sometimes, because some of what I see people doing – particularly on tumblr – is kind of dangerous. (sometimes in a low-key way, sometimes seriously.) use essential oils for devotion and witchcraft because essential oils are awesome, but be careful with them, because plants are assholes and want to kill you sometimes.
Check out the contraindications before using anything. There are basically no essential oils that are 100% safe to use in every single situation. It’s important to double check even if you’re healthy, but particularly if you have a medical condition or are pregnant. (If you’re pregnant, be really fucking careful. Seriously. Essential oils are a minefield for you.)
Don’t give yourself a fucking chemical burn. One of my favourite party tricks (I am so boring at parties) is to put a few drops of something like peppermint oil on a thin plastic take-out container. If you wait a couple of minutes and then poke it with a fork, the plastic will have melted a little. EXCITING. A lot of people seem to think that essential oils are ~~natural and gentle~~, but fuck, a lot of them are used by the plant to get rid of insects/fungi/etc. All essential oils need dilution before using them (okay, sure, tea tree and lavender are generally safe, but otherwise), and some shouldn’t even be used on the skin in normally-safe levels of dilution. If you have sensitive skin and put some cinnamon oil lotion on it, you’re fucked, you’re going to be red and sore and pissed off at cinnamon, which is a sad state of affairs.
Related note: don’t try to dilute with water. Essential oils aren’t lipids, but they’re still hydrophobic. Want to use essential oils in your bath so that you can focus on shit that isn’t all the stuff you have to do at work tomorrow? Awesome! My favourite is spruce, clary sage, and myrrh – that one’s fucking great. Dilute it with bath oil or some salt first, though. Being super focused on how sore and itchy you are isn’t ideal.
Related note: citrus oils are assholes. You know that whole ‘use sun and lemon juice to bleach your hair!’ deal? That totally happens to your entire body if you use too much citrus oil in something that’s going on your skin. Bergamot is one of the worst, but all of them are guilty as hell. Dilute well, don’t slather it on before going out in the sun, and keep an eye on how your own body reacts.
Remember that essential oils are super concentrated. I fucking love putting essential oils on charcoal. Sometimes I mix them in with dried herbs, but sometimes I just drop them on the charcoal directly – too many drops and you’ll just have a hunk of sad wet charcoal, but it’s worth it for the billowing smoke that flows out over the rim of my charcoal-burning bowl and drifts along my altar. (SPECIAL EFFECTS FOR YOUR MAGIC.) Whenever I do that, though, I have to remember to be careful about how much I use, and how much of the smoke I breathe in. Inhaling ten drops of peppermint essential oil all at once is like eating more peppermint than anyone should or would want to eat, just fucking… bowls and bowls of the stuff. When I used clove oil on charcoal to get rid of a plague of flies, it worked magnificently, but then I also had to air everything out and ended up googling the effects of clove oil overdose. I had one customer who accidentally dumped a bottle of lavender oil on their head; they washed it off, but still had some fun hallucinations (this is sarcasm) and spent a while at a walk-in clinic. Don’t let that be you.
Essential oils go bad. This isn’t a safety tip, exactly, unless you’re dealing with an oil like jasmine that will make you cry and hate your life and the world if you smell it after it’s gone bad. Those oils are rare, though – your sadly ruined oil isn’t going to stink, it’s just going to stop smelling like anything and become an expensive bottle of nothing much. Store your oils in a cool, dark place – don’t set them out on your altar or shrine if that’s on a sunny windowsill. Most oils will eventually lose their potency anyway (citrus oils continue to be assholes and only last about a year even in the best conditions), but some oils, particularly resins, will keep for decades and just get better with time if you’re nice to them.
Be careful. Don’t burn yourself. Don’t overdose. That’s about it, really.
ETA: Be careful about pets and other animals. This needs a whole post of its own, honestly, but if you have pets (particularly cats or birds), read up on how they react to essential oils. This shit is important. Essential oils can be deadly to some animals.
It is BY FAR the best out of any place I’ve seen! Don’t go on Amazon, don’t go on Etsy. Those sites are grossly over priced. I see a lot of people trying to sell stuff for WAY MORE than it’s worth and it really makes me mad.
I mean, $2.50 for an ounce of Lavender flowers from France!
OR go to Mountain Rose Herbs. You can save $1.00 by buying lavender there. (They sell it for $9.00 for 4oz.) They’re prices for herbs are great, too!
Spirit Apothecary has better prices for essential oils though- for example: Bergamot Essential Oil is $8.00 @ S.A. for 1/3 oz. it costs $16.50 @ M.R.H. for ½ oz. That’s over twice the price, but you don’t get twice as much, so I get all essential Oils at S.A.
MRH doesn’t sell, crystals, but SA does. They are good quality and by far the most inexpensive. Also they both have a facebook page.
If you really want to buy herbs, oils, and crystals, but think you can’t afford them, PLEASE, PLEASE check these sites out!!
teakepp 