For years, I carried a small version of a full ritual setup in my bag, just in case I was called upon for an urgent matter such as a hospital visit, death call, or emergency ghostbusting and house blessing service. But I realized that during those sorts of calls, I didn’t seem to need much of what I carried. Most of the time, I had access to what I needed at the community member’s location. Often, I was doing energy work that didn’t require the casting of a circle, so there was no need for an athame or wand. Because of the sorts of calls I was doing, I didn’t need bundles of anything for smoke cleansing. All in all, I found that there wasn’t much use in carrying a temple’s worth of supplies in my backpack every day when I had my large travel ritual kit stuffed full of those things and the ability to go retrieve it from home if I really needed it before a working took place.
After jettisoning all of that stuff, I took a look at my “witchy EDC” with a mind to keep all of my things in a men’s canvas dopp kit for easy retrieval. And I think I have succeeded in that challenge.
So, here’s my everyday carry for witchy purposes:
- Trinket altar (detailed below)
- Altar cards (detailed below)
- Power stones (detailed below)
- Several dram bottles of blended and charged oils (detailed below)
- Blessed sea salt
- Holy water in a leakproof container
- Votive candle in holder
- Tubes of sandalwood and amber incense
- A small incense burner
- A condiment dish for making additional holy water
- A Buddhist mala
- A Catholic Rosary
- My personal Pagan prayer beads
- Playing-card-sized Tarot cards
- Tobacco for offering
- Whiskey for offering
Trinket Altar
I’ve been practicing for over 25 years, and in that time I have gained a goodly number of pendants, tokens, and other small items that I didn’t use often but didn’t want to get rid of. As I rethought my witchy EDC, I realized that most of these small items could be used for an altar setup or to tap into the energies of the various paths I’ve walked in my quarter-century of practice. I used a plastic soap box – the kind you get in the travel aisle at the supermarket – to contain what I wanted to carry and before I knew it I had what I dubbed the “trinket altar”. Here’s my list of what’s in it:
- Colored flat glass marbles as markers for the four elements, spirit, and self
- Pendants representing the Goddess, God, Cosmos, and my primary Familiar Spirits
- Tokens representing the traditions that I’m aligned with
- Tokens representing energies that I commonly tap into
Altar Cards
I inherited a set of damaged Well Worn Path cards (an oracle deck, now out of print, created by Raven Grimassi and Stephanie Taylor with art by Mickie Mueller) and rather than respectfully destroy them, I decided to take out the most damaged ones and put them in the “spell ingredients” drawer of my altar and keep the ones with the four elements, the ancestors, the God and Goddess, and a few other significant images on them. They serve as added visuals for those who need something more concrete to focus on while I set up the altar and work magick on their behalf.
Stones
In another soap box, I keep several stones including a crystal that I’ve used as a wand for as long as I have been practicing, a Venus of Willendorf carved out of tiger’s eye, and a piece of sea glass that I received in a Thunder Moon ritual and charged with thunderstorm energy, which is a very energizing time for me and my preferred weather to work magick in. There are other stones as well which link me to energies I work with and help to empower my workings.
Oils
Oils, I’ve found, can be used in a variety of ways and can eliminate the need for smoke cleansing. They can also be used for anointing people. In a padded pouch, I keep the following in one-dram rollerball bottles:
- Blessing Oil (equal parts rose, cinnamon, and plant-based musk in jojoba oil)
- Used for blessings and other happy anointings
- Rose Oil (I carry rose otto rather than rose absolute because rose otto is steam-distilled whereas rose absolute is solvent-extracted)
- Used when working with feminine aspects of Christianity
- Frankincense and Myrrh Oil (equal parts frankincense and myrrh in jojoba oil)
- Used when working with masculine aspects of Christianity
- Meditation Oil (two parts sandalwood and one part gardenia in jojoba oil)
- Used for focus during meditation
- Ancestor Oil (equal parts vanilla, amber, and sandalwood in jojoba oil)
- Used for any anointings related to death, grief, and afterllife journeying or communication
- Avalon Oil (equal parts apple blossom and heather in jojoba oil)
- Used for any anointings related to healing physical and psychological wounds
- Named for the sacred healing isle in Arthurian myth
- Sasa’s Ajax Oil (three parts lavender, three parts sage, one part rosemary, one part red thyme in jojoba oil)
- Used as a powerful cleansing and sealing agent for both people and objects
- Named because “it cleans up the shit that Ajax won’t take off” as my teacher Sasa would say
Other Items
My personal practice includes a great deal of prayer and contemplation, and during those times, I like to use prayer beads as a means of focus. For my personal prayer beads, I have a series of prepared prayers that help me focus on the spirits I tend to interact with. For meditation, I use my sandalwood mala and chant mantras. And for interactions with the deities and saints of Christianity, I use the Rosary and recite prayers in Ecclesiastical Latin – never underestimate the power of a magickal language!
My typical divination tool is the Tarot, and I carry a playing-card-sized deck of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot most of the time. Occasionally, I will trade it out for my Well Worn Path and Hidden Path decks, which is a pathworking deck much more geared toward questions of spiritual progress than mundane life events.
I do still include a small container of blessed sea salt and a leakproof bottle of holy water because (a) you can make holy water with the salt and (b) sometimes you need to come in “guns blazing” so it serves to have some premade holy water for that rare occasion. The candle and incense are also holdouts for when there are no supplies available on-site; I don’t anticipate using them often, but it’s nice to have and they don’t take up much space or weight. The condiment dish was small, convenient, and also didn’t take up much space or weight.
Finally, I have a pouch of American Spirit tobacco that I use for offering to the spirits, many of whom are accustomed to receiving tobacco as an offering. For those who prefer something else, I keep a couple of ounces of whiskey in a glass bottle to offer instead.
What Didn’t Make The Cut?
So if that long list up there is what made it into the dopp kit of witchiness, what did I take out? Well, here’s another long list along with the reason it was axed from the Witchy EDC.
- Altar cloth – redundant, can use Tarot wrap
- Athame – looks too much like a weapon to risk carrying
- Wand – redundant, have crystal
- Mini chalice – no reason to bring it because I have never once had to use it
- Pentacle – no reason to bring it because it’s mostly symbolic of a certain kind of energy
- Bell – no reason to bring it because I’ve never once had to use it
- Mini candle snuffer – redundant, can respectfully blow out candle
- Notebook and pen – redundant, can use the notebook and pen already in backpack
- Pocket correspondences book – unnecessary since I have a multitude of correspondences memorized
- Lithomancy set – get better readings from Tarot when it comes to the sorts of questions I ask during emergency calls
- Regalia (necklace and circlet) – unnecessary and I would really be upset if I lost them
The Most Important Thing
Now that you know what is in my witchy EDC and what isn’t, I feel compelled to remind you that the only thing you need to work magick is yourself. The rest is just props to help you get into the right mindset. And, for emergency calls, the props are as much for the community member as they are for you. The key is using the right props. For example, if I’m doing a bedside crossing-over, then people are already grieving. Setting up a small altar with the four elements and then using those elements to bless away the recently deceased is more powerful because it is meaningful to everyone else in the room. By the same token, if I’m going to the hospital to visit a community member who is ill, it makes sense to anoint them with healing oil without any sort of altar set up. The personal connection is more important in that situation. There’s no need for theatrics, only a listening ear and a willingness to bring whatever they need from wherever they call home. In a situation where you’re cleansing a home or other area, your will and some pre-prepared oils are really the stars of the show. But you don’t need any of it. Just yourself.