The Magical Properties Of Rosemary For Witchcraft

If you are looking for an herb that is purifying, protective, and capable of creating harmony, invigoration, and strength in your life and your craft, then rosemary is the plant for you.

This plant has some fascinating energetic qualities that we are going to dive deeply into today so that you can really get to know the spirit of rosemary and how to best use it for magickal purposes.

The Energies Of Rosemary

If you do any kind of research on rosemary and its magical and planetary correspondences, the first thing you will notice is that there seems to be a lot of disagreement about the planetary correspondences of rosemary.

Some people will say that this plant is solar, while other people will say that the plant is lunar.

The truth is that it has elements of both a solar-ruled plant and it has elements of a lunar-ruled plant. So it combines these two energies, which is what gives it its power.

This plant essentially combines the energies of the two primary celestial bodies that affect our planet.

All of the other planets are much further away and have a much smaller effect on us, but the sun is literally the source of all life on Earth, while the moon is responsible for the tides and lighting the night sky, which has a massive effect on the planet and on human life.

With the solar energy, we have this bright, vibrant, virile, masculine power.

And with the lunar qualities, we have a softer, feminine, more introspective, and intuitive power.

Rosemary is able to create a sort of marriage or spiritual connection between these two powers that creates a harmonious relationship between the outer, active, masculine force of the sun and the inner, passive, feminine force of the moon.

This is a versatile herb that has an energy of incredible balance and deep strength as a result of its ability to embody both polarities at once.

This really gives us our key understanding of how rosemary functions. Rosemary is deeply balancing and is capable of taking things that are very different and creating harmony out of them.

This is even reflected in the way that rosemary is used in herbal medicine. Rosemary has been shown to calm the nervous system, improve cognitive functions, bolster the immune system, and provide an overall balancing effect on the body.

This is a plant that is sanctifying and this is a word that I really would like you to pay attention to.

In ancient times across various cultures, the sun and the moon were the two most powerful entities in any cosmology.

They affected every aspect of life on earth, and so these were considered the two most purifying and holy energies that humans could interact with.

And this sacredness is what rosemary creates energetically.

3 Magical Uses For Rosemary

So let’s take a look at the three primary ways that we can begin to use rosemary in our magic and bring some of this powerful, purifying, and sanctifying energy into our craft.

Protection

One of the most common uses of rosemary is in protection magic, and there is a very good reason for this.

The solar energy that rosemary has is directly associated with protection.

The Sun is a very protective energy, but not protective in the way that a wall or a fortress might be.

That would be something like Saturnian protection, protection that is about barricades and blocks and limitations.

This protection is bright and open. It’s clarifying.

If we think about the sanctifying nature of rosemary, rosemary protects us by creating a space of sanctification, a space where the profane cannot exist.

It removes anything negative, anything unhelpful, anything that might block your growth or prevent your magic from working or try to harm you, without creating an intense barrier that disallows you from connection with the outside world.

This is a fine line that we as witches and occultists have to walk.

We cannot create protections only by cutting ourselves off and creating barriers, because magic requires that we be in contact with energies and entities outside of ourselves.

We need to be able to contact spirits.

We need to be able to interact with outside energies.

If we create a firm, uncrossable wall around ourselves, then yes, we are safe, but we are also isolated.

Our magic becomes much harder and things in our life will not change and transform in the ways that we are hoping to be able to through the use of our magic.

Now, I’m all for using wards and more barrier-like forms of protection when necessary, but I think in many cases we are better off using something like a solar form of protection that creates a deep sense of safety and well-being and clears away anything that might try to harm us, without cutting us off from other energies that might be useful or helpful or healing for us to have contact with.

This is the kind of protection that rosemary gives.

It clears away all of the negative without touching the positive.

It removes anything that might try to negatively influence you, manipulate you, or harm you without having any impact on those spirits and energies that are helpful to your growth and your magical momentum.

If you are not using rosemary in your protection magic yet, I highly recommend trying it. It can even be combined with other magical herbs like juniper berries to enhance its protective properties.

The energy may be very different from the kinds of protection that you are used to, but it is a kind of protection that will enhance your magic rather than hinder it.

An easy and effective way to use rosemary to protect your home is to hang a sprig of rosemary over your doorways to cleanse and protect your space so that negative energy, evil spirits, and negative influences cannot enter.

Purification

The sun and moon are both powerful purifying forces.

So you can imagine that when we combine these two together, they amplify each other’s purification capacity.

Again, I want you to think about the dichotomy that we have here between the sun and the moon.

The sun is all about removing outward negative energies, the masculine force, and the warmth and freedom that comes from being unencumbered in the outside world.

Whereas the moon and lunar energies help us to become free internally. We use lunar energies for doing shadow work, for spiritual growth, for clearing internal limiting beliefs, for removing spiritual limitations, and creating clarity of mind.

And when you put these two things together, it is essentially allowing you to purify your entire life and entire being on all levels.

This is an extremely potent form of purification, but it’s a form of purification that is not too harsh.

There are many forms of purification that can over-cleanse.

This is one of the reasons why occasionally someone will use something like a salt bath to remove spiritual impurities and find that they feel exhausted and drained afterwards.

It’s not that the salt bath didn’t work properly, it’s that it worked too well. It cleansed not only the things that the practitioner wanted to be rid of, but it took a lot of the practitioner’s own energy and drained that away as well.

Occasionally, a really harsh cleansing is necessary, but with rosemary, you are getting a full spectrum, powerful cleansing without the harsh draining effects that some other powerful cleansing methods may cause.

This is one of the reasons why it is so widely used for purification and cleansing.

You can burn rosemary leaves as incense, make a rosemary infusion for ritual baths, or use rosemary essential oil in candle spells to cleanse and purify your home, your magical workspace, or yourself, both for more intensive ritual purposes such as creating sacred space and for your simple day-to-day magical hygiene and cleansing. 

Fidelity & Peaceful Marriage

The last of the magical properties of rosemary that we’re going to discuss today for this fragrant herb is its use in love magic.

Now rosemary is recommended for love magic all the time, but I think one of the really interesting things that a lot of people miss is the actual undertones of why we use it in love magic.

When we think about the energies that we’re dealing with here, this sun and moon dichotomy, we can really kind of see what rosemary is really excellent for in our love magic.

It is good for creating peace and harmony.

Rosemary is used in love magic to help inspire fidelity, to cool passions when they are running too high, to prevent arguments, to bolster mental clarity, and to create a peaceful, happy, and harmonious home.

It is particularly used in marriage spellwork and has a long history of use in wedding ceremonies for all of these reasons.

One of the reasons I’m pointing this out is that a lot of people will use rosemary in love spells where it is simply not a good match.

For example, if you’re trying to inspire passion in a new lover, rosemary is not going to do that for you.

It’s going to create this solid, stable, harmonious kind of energy, but that’s not really the energy that we want or need when we are starting something new with someone. We want to take advantage of that passionate momentum that comes with a new relationship.

Likewise, rosemary would not be appropriate to use in any kind of magic where you are focused on the sexual aspect of the relationship, or you’re trying to steal someone else’s partner, or are trying to get your ex back, anything like that.

Rosemary is not going to be the plant ally that you think it will.

You want to use rosemary in love magic where you are trying to strengthen an already healthy, happy relationship.

Now, being healthy and happy does not mean that your relationship can’t have problems, or it can’t ever have arguments, because again, rosemary helps us to create a harmonious environment.

But you don’t want to use rosemary in a relationship where the passion is the only thing keeping the two of you together, or you’re trying to create obsession or anything where you want to amp the energy up and create more tension as opposed to less tension.

So yes, rosemary is a fantastic love herb in the right context, as long as you understand this Sun-Moon energy, and how we are using it to create the harmonious growth, healing, and peace that we want from our spells.

Rosemary is an incredible magical ally in so many ways and a popular choice for any witch. Give it a try in your craft and let me know how the energy of this lovely plant works in your own magic in the comments below!

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