Raven Recipes - Ruthvah

 Since we closed the business down I have had a few letters from people asking if I would let them have recipes for magical oils and incenses that we used to produce.

    I am quite happy to pass these on, as it feels nice that people enjoyed them, and want to go on using them.

    I actually have two very fat files of recipes and I have wondered about making these available somehow for people to have a go at. I know how difficult it can be to find either a recipe for a particular magical incense or oil, or to find someone who sells these things.

    I have to just mention that my recipes are unique. They will not be the same formulas as anyone elses, simply because makers have been very wary about passing around recipes, in case they do themselves out of business, so a lot of the time I have had to devise a recipe based on my own knowledge of the magical uses of plants, plus planetary magic and even numerology and astrology.

    Thankfully people have been kind enough to let me know that their spell workings etc have been successful using my oils, incenses and powders - and the number of repeat orders also tells me that.

    Some of my recipes (well most of them actually) have changed over the years, simply because there have been times when certain ingredients become harder or impossible to source, so I have had to find a substitute or in some cases rewrite a recipe completely.

    One that I was asked for recently was my recipe for Ruthvah.

    Now, Ruthvah was created originally by Aleister Crowley and his recipe is relatively easy to find and is:

Ambergris (Kether) 1 part

Musk (Chochmah) 2 parts

Civet (Binah) 3 parts

    Now I have a bit of a problem with this recipe in that all of the ingredients are animal based and in the main the animals have to be killed to obtain the perfume - Civet cats can be 'harvested' for their perfume, but it is not a pleasant experience for any involved.

    I know you can get artificial versions of Ambergris, Musk and Civet, but even these are not easy to find. So I chose instead to look at plant based essential oils, and my recipe is:

Benzoin 1 part

Patchouli 2 parts

Vetivert 3 parts (you can use Valerian as some or all of this part instead if you wish)

   Another problem you might spot is that there are no exact measurements here, all the ingredients are given as 'parts'. This is the old way many recipes were written whether for oils, incenses or medicines. This actually gives you some leeway about how you measure the ingredients.

    You could use spoonfulls. You can choose which size of spoon you use, but in the above recipe it is an easy one, two or three spoons. You may find that this gives you far too big a quantity. So instead I chose to use a measurement based on the numbers of drops and the size of bottle I was going to put the oil in.

    After some experimentation I found that in general 25 drops of essential oil is about 1ml, and the bottles I mainly used were 5ml bottle. So I would use around 40 drops of essential oil and top it up with a neutral carrier oil. So the Ruthvah recipe becomes:

Benzoin 6 drops, Patchouli 12 drops, Vetivert 18 drops - 36 drops of essential oil in all.