Not rosemary, not clear quartz, nothing. This is such a harmful mindset and I’m going to explain why.
Why do we use ingredients at all?
A spell, at its most basic and general sense, is combining intent with mundane action in order to affect something bigger than the sum of its parts. On a sliding scale between mundane action, where everything is a really measurable cause and affect (like working for a paycheck) and a wish where no other action is taken, witchcraft and spellwork falls kind of in the middle. When we do a spell for money, we’re doing something with the intent to cause real change, but it’s not something we can directly observe working. Having the action here be very measured and deliberate is a big part of what distinguishes it from an elaborate wish, or just putting stuff in a jar because it’s pretty.
So we have our recipe! And in these recipes, every ingredient has a specific purpose and role to play. A spell is made by the precise aligning of our energy with the energy of what we’re doing.
So, do spell ingredients matter?
Yes.They didn’t just get their associations from nowhere, they’ve been supported by various cultures and traditions for generations, and I like to have faith that our Ancestors stuck with it because something about it worked. Our personal associations can also play an influential factor, but we could argue that’s because our personal energy from it is overpowering any conflicting energies/contributing more than the ingredient itself. It still plays an important role in the spell, but theway it might be working is notably different.
Magic is like cooking.
Every ingredient plays a specific role in forming the spell, just like every ingredient has a reason for being in a recipe. Just like in a kitchen, different ingredients can be used for different things, depending on what you’re making. I might use half a lemon to bring out the flavor of my sauce, squeeze a few teaspoons into my meringue cookie recipe to make it more acidic so that the texture is right, then use the rest to make lemonade. All of those have entirely different functions in the recipe, and would each require a different type of substitution. It’s the classic cartoon gag of getting your salt and your sugar mixed up because they’re both white powder or putting tomatoes in a fruit salad.
Can you swap out salt for any seasoning in the kitchen? Swap out strawberries for any fruit and pie crust for any dough? Of course you can’t, at least not for everything you’ll ever make. Because every ingredient has a specific function and if the ingredient you’re swapping can’t fill the hole you’re making, then it’s just putting tomatoes in a fruit salad.
In the same vein, rosemary can’t fill the role of every herb in every spell, nor can clear quartz with any crystal, rose with any flower, etc. They may work for many things, but…
It’s a harmful mindset for magic.
Whenever we say something is a universal substitute, it means we never have to think about the role any ingredient plays in anything ever again. Instead of our ingredients being “something to create healing energy” and “something to augment and focus that energy” we stagnate with “crystal” and “herb,” and the original intent of those ingredients was never “crystal + herb = results.” The materials were picked for a reason. There’s no reason to look into why or how things work, which means there’s no way for us to look critically at our spells for ways to improve. If the ingredients and the ways we use them don’t matter, then there’s no way for them to work against us, and any failure must be because we didn’t “believe” hard enough or “couldn’t raise enough energy.” That sounds like a great way to feel horrible about yourself for no reason.
There’s also probably something to say about how all of the “universal” ingredients are things that are already everywhere and easily accessible in the white upper middle class new age scene. Nobody ever talks about the magical potency of “ethnic” foods, even their staple ingredients. Certainly not in a way where they’re supposedly universal for everyone.
What if I can’t find a substitute, then?
You probably can, it just might take more sweat than you intended. If you’re REALLY in a jam, restriction breeds creativity. Going back to the lemon example: if I don’t have lemons for my meringue cookies, I can also use cream of tartar. It’s a white powder that’s nothing like lemons and I neverwant to try cream-of-tartarnade, but it perfectlyfits the bill for what this recipe needs. I actually prefer it. Explore and get creative. As long as you’re focusing on the FUNCTION of the ingredient in the spell, it won’t lead you wrong.
I appreciate that you mentioned that there ARE substitutes. Almost anything has something that can be used to substitute it. It’s just that there is no one thing that can be guaranteed to substitute anything and everything.
A little bit of research goes a long way, there are many resources where you can find the most common substitutes for whichever herb/rock/ingredient that you’re using.
