Easy Spiritual Cleansing and Healing - Magical Bath Recipes

I've been having a rough week. For whatever causes, I'd been feeling particularly stressed out, irritable, and like everyone was against me. All week I'd been bathing in Florida Water, washing with salt, sprinkling herbs, burning Healing incense and Uncrossing candles, and dousing myself with Peace oil to such little effect.
Then, I took this simple bath from Draja Mickaharic's book Spiritual Cleansing: Handbook of Psychic Protection, and it did better for me than all the week's work had. From the text:

Add 1/4 cup bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) to the regular bath water ... This simple bath has produced more testimonials than any other.

Indeed, indeed. What magic makes baking soda so strong is unclear, but it's a famous bath additive even in non-occult circles. I first heard about it in beauty books that I read in high school, because when added to a bath it helps to soften the water. It's often used, there, as a medium for other fragrances, but it clearly has properties all its own.
Anyway, with the help of this bath, I had the first good night's sleep in days, and though I had some unpleasant dream about bugs all over the floor that kept crawling up onto my skirts and I had to shake them off, then some other weird dream about Sam and Diane from the show Cheers -- nevertheless, quite different from laying around all night trying to sleep and not being able, or sleeping and waking up against constantly. 

MAGICAL BATH IN A HURRY

What happens when you require a spiritual cleansing but haven't the time, or perhaps just haven't the ability, to take a complete bath or a shower for purification? The following ritual can help you to perform a fast spiritual cleansing on yourself for jinx removing, turning around bad luck, starting fresh, etc.

YOU NEED:

Perfume - Florida Water is a good multi-purpose mixture, but Van Van, Indian Clear Water, Divine Water and so on can be used depending on your intent and on what is available to you.
Soap - a cleansing spiritual soap is best, such as Florida Water soap, camphor soap, sandalwood soap, Octagon, lemongrass soap, etc.
Water - plain tapwater, or whatever water you usually bathe with, is fine. You do not need to fill a tub with this but you do need to have easy access to it while doing the rite.

1. Wet your lower arms (elbow down) and lather them up using the selected soap. Try to use strokes going from the elbow out to the fingers when applying and scrubbing with the soap.
2. Wet your legs from the knees down, and likewise lather them with the soap, using downward strokes (knees to the toes.)
3. Rinse off the soap.
4. Mix in your hand a bit of water and perfume. Apply this mixture in downward strokes to your arms and hands and to your legs and feet, the same areas just washed.
5. Dot a small amount of the perfumed water on your head. 
6. Let yourself air dry so the perfume will soak into your skin.

There you go -- a fast and in my experience reasonably effective spiritual cleansing. Start to finish this can usually be done in 3 minutes or less. Of course very bad conditions will still need a full bath and possibly some other uncrossing work as well, but for general maintenance this spiritual cleansing is quite suitable.

MAKE YOUR OWN BATHS AND SOAPS

While I include the basic instructions for this process in my book The Conjure Cookbook, I figured I would give a more detailed -- and illustrated -- version of the homemade soap-making process.

Now of course, one can often buy ready-made magical washes, but they are sometimes little more than generic perfume with a lot of colorful dyes added and a pretty label asserting that it's now "Fast Luck Soap" -- and the exact same bar can also be bought as "Road Opener" or "Uncrossing." In some cases the, "washes" have no soap at all and are just colored and scented water. 

To avoid this, one can make their own wash (particularly if you have access to a good formulary like Conjure Cookbook and thus know your magical recipes.) An obvious way to do this is by adding essential oils to an unscented soap base -- but what can you do if the recipe requires ingredients that don't come in essential or fragrance oil? Many traditional recipes use things like cinquefoil, sugar, bistort and solomon's seal root that aren't exactly fragrant. For these cases, we use the following process:

Step 1: make a nice strong infusion of your herbs. I'd recommend starting with at least 3 cups of water, and simmering it down till you get 1 cup. How much of your herb or spice mixture to use depends a bit on the specific recipe and whether you're going to add any essential oils to the final mix, but just keep in mind you're probably going to get four or more uses from the final mixture and so, try to use enough herbs for four or more occasions.

Step 2: grate up about 1/3 cup of solid castile soap with a cheese grater (or chop it very finely.)

Step 3: to 1 cup of your cooled herbal infusion, add your 1/3 cup grated castile soap. Stir till dissolved.

Step 4: if you are adding any extra essential or fragrance oils to the mixture, now is the time to do so.

Step 5: bottle your mixture in an 8-ounce bottle, and keep it for your use. You may need to shake the mixture before using, as the castile soap can create an interesting pearlescent sediment when left undisturbed. (An old beauty formula called Pearl Water was made in this way.)

The result.

This simple recipe is ultimately a variant on Hungary Water. It is not strictly hoodoo, or magical in any way, but due to the large amount of rosemary oil can be used for uncrossing, for memory or for spells to help women be more dominant in the home. The stuff is called Pearl Water, probably due to the visual effect one gets upon dissolving Castile soap in water. I found the recipe here, but I think it's one of my new favorite soaps.

1 ounce castile soap, shaved

1 cup water

3 tbs + 3 tsp vodka or other spirit

1/2 tsp rosemary essential oil

Boil the water and stir the soap shavings into to, till dissolved. Let cool, then add the alcohol and rosemary oil. Blend well. Bottle and save for your use.