Protect yourself and your craft online

Why you should be careful when posting your Altar, Spells or rituals online.

Ask yourself a question. Would you be happy if someone barged in on you whilst you were doing a spell or ritual? 

Would you let strangers watch over your shoulder?

Then perhaps you should think about this when posting yourself and your Craft online to complete strangers.

If you think we are being overly dramatic or cautious or that we are telling you what to do then that’s fine. You do as you please. But if things go wrong for you then there may not be a way of restoring your balance or correct the situation.

Here’s a practical, no-nonsense guide to digital privacy tailored specifically for witches, occultists, conjurers, and anyone who does real magic (not just the aesthetic kind).

Core Principle

Treat anything you put online the same way you would treat handing a physical photo or personal concern to 10,000 random strangers—because that’s exactly what you’re doing.

What NOT to post (ever, if you’re serious)

•  Active altars with personal concerns (photos of yourself/target, petitions, hair, bodily fluids, handwriting, birth dates, etc.)

•  Spirit vessels, pakets, dolls, or anything that is “alive” or feeds from you

•  Sigils that are currently charging or active

•  Your real full name + magical name in the same place

•  Your exact home address or easily recognizable background (window views, street signs, house numbers)

•  Photos taken inside your actual temple room or permanent working space

•  Anything you have been told by spirits, gods, or elders “do not photograph”

Acceptable compromises (if you must post)

•  Use a completely separate “craft” account that is in no way linked to your legal name, main e-mail, or phone number

•  Create a second “pretty but fake” altar just for photos (90 % of big Witchtok accounts do exactly this)

•  Photograph only after the working is finished and dismantled

•  Crop, blur, or digitally alter anything that could be used against you (faces, handwriting, tags, etc.)

•  Never geotag, and strip EXIF data (use an app like Scrambled Exif or ImageOptim)

•  Post with a 24–72 hour delay so the photo isn’t tied to the actual timing of the spell

Device & account hygiene

•  Use a burner phone or cheap tablet only for witchy social media

•  Separate e-mail (ProtonMail or Tutanota) that has never had your real name on it

•  Two-factor authentication everywhere (preferably with an authenticator app, not SMS)

•  VPN on public Wi-Fi (ProtonVPN free tier is fine)

•  Never log into craft accounts on your work or family computer

•  Password manager (Bitwarden is free and open-source)

•  Turn off “people you may know” suggestions on all platforms

Photos & videos – specific tricks

•  Never let your real face and your altar be in the same frame

•  Flip the image horizontally (breaks facial recognition)

•  Add slight color filters or overlays (again, defeats most recognition algorithms)

•  If you show hands, remove rings, scars, tattoos, or anything distinctive

•  If you speak in videos, use a voice changer app (many free ones exist)

Also be aware of any personal

Photos, documents, certificates etc. that are in your photo or video. 

Special warnings for certain practices

•  Hoodoo / rootwork: never show the inside of a working mojo bag, doll baby with concerns, or nation sack

•  Goetia / grimoire spirits: most texts explicitly forbid showing the actual circle or triangle while work is active

•  ATRs (Vodou, Santería, etc.): many orishas and spirits prohibit being filmed; initiatory items are oath-bound secrets

•  Pact or blood work: posting evidence can literally give others leverage over you or the spirit

Damage-control if you already posted too much

•  Mass-delete old photos (use browser extensions like “Image Delete” for Instagram)

•  Make accounts private or delete entirely and start over with a new handle

•  Do uncrossing + protection work focused on digital spaces (some people use mirror boxes with screenshots of the old posts)

•  Change your magical name or sigil if it’s been widely linked to your face/legal name

The witches who move the most in real life are almost never the ones with 300k followers and perfect altar pics. They’re the ones you can’t find online at all.

Keep your real magic off the timeline.

Post art, aesthetics, book reviews, lore, or heavily staged setups if you want community—but treat your actual power like the nuclear launch codes. Because to someone who knows what they’re looking at, that’s exactly what it is.

Whatis The Evil Eye?

What the Evil Eye Actually Is

The “evil eye” (Malocchio in Italian, Ayin ha-Ra in Hebrew, Nazar in Arabic/Turkish, Drishti in India, etc.) is one of the most universal magical beliefs on the planet. At its core it is unintended (or intentional) harm caused by envy, covetousness, excessive praise, or strong desire directed at a person, animal, crop, business, or object.

It is not always a deliberate curse. In most cultures it is considered something ordinary humans do accidentally every single day just by being jealous or by over-admiring something.

How it works (folk model, not New-Age fluff)

Someone looks at you, your child, your new car, your money spell result, your beautiful altar photo, your thriving garden, etc.

They feel envy or excessive desire (“I wish that were mine” or even unconscious resentment).

That strong emotion shoots out like an arrow or ray from their eyes (hence the name) and “hits” the target.

 The target then experiences sudden misfortune: sickness, accidents, money loss, relationship fights, spell failure, milk drying up in nursing mothers or animals, crops withering, etc.

In places where the belief is strongest (Mediterranean, Middle East, Latin America, South Asia), people will literally stop themselves mid-sentence from complimenting a baby too much without adding a protective phrase.

Intentional vs. Unintentional

•  Unintentional – by far the most common. Someone just admires or envies too hard.

•  Intentional – an actual curse. The person stares with hatred and consciously wishes you harm. This is much rarer and usually requires a lot more force (or ritual) to stick.

Classic symptoms people recognize cross-culturally

•  Sudden unexplained headache, especially at the base of the skull or behind the eyes

•  Lethargy, yawning uncontrollably, feeling “drained”

•  Babies crying for no reason, refusing to nurse

•  Strings of bad luck that feel “too coincidental”

•  Spells or altar work that suddenly stops producing results

•  Feeling like you’re being watched or that “something is sitting on you”

Why social media is the modern evil-eye superhighway

Every time you post a photo of:

•  your new money-drawing altar

•  your glowing skin after a glamour spell

•  your partner who “finally committed”

•  your bank account balance after a prosperity working … you are inviting thousands of strangers to look with desire or envy.
Even the positive comments (“OMG queen!!!” “This is goals”) carry emotional charge that can hit you. In traditional thinking, excessive praise without a blessing is almost as bad as hate.

Traditional protections (a quick list)

•  Nazar boncuk (blue eye beads) – Turkey, Greece, Middle East

•  Red bracelet or coral/azabache on babies – Italy, Latin America, Jewish traditions

•  Hamsa hand

•  Spitting three times (or pretending to) when someone compliments

•  Saying specific phrases: “Mashallah” (Arabic), “Che sarà sarà” or “No evil eye” while making horns, “Tfut tfut” + spitting (Jewish), etc.

•  Cascarilla or salt in corners of photos before posting

•  Covering active altars with a cloth when not in use

•  Never accepting over-the-top praise without neutralizing it (“It’s nothing, just luck,” etc.)

Diagnostic tricks practitioners use

•  Olive oil in water: if the drops break or form an eye shape → evil eye is present

•  Alum (fitkari) melted over charcoal: the way it shapes or smells tells the story (India, Pakistan)

•  Egg cleanse (limpia con huevo) – very common in Latin America

The evil eye is not superstition to the people who grew up with it; it is an observable, repeatable phenomenon.

Modern witches who laugh it off are usually the same ones who suddenly can’t figure out why their workings keep failing after they posted seventeen altar selfies.

If half the planet—from Sicilian grandmothers to Moroccan market sellers to Mexican curanderas—agrees on something for thousands of years, it’s usually worth listening to.

Keep your victories quiet, neutralize praise quickly, and protect what’s working. That’s the old way, and it still functions perfectly in the Instagram age.

Blackthorn: The tree at the threshold

 The Blackthorn: Tree of Winter, Witches, and the Threshold

“Better  the thorn that guards the rose than no thorn at all.”

The blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), a small, dense, fiercely thorny shrub or tree native to Europe, western Asia, and parts of North Africa, is one of the most potent and ambivalent plants in Celtic and European folklore. Known in Irish as draighean, in Welsh as draenen ddu (“black thorn”), and in Scottish Gaelic as draoighionn, it is the dark twin of the gentle hawthorn. While hawthorn is the bright maiden of May and Beltane, blackthorn is the crone of winter, the guardian of the dark half of the year, and the plant most intimately associated with witches, strife, and the Otherworld.

Symbolism of blackthorn

Blackthorn embodies duality: protection and danger, death and rebirth, blessing and curse. Its long, needle-sharp spines (the “pins” and “thorns” of folklore) make it an almost impregnable natural barrier; ancient farmers planted it as living hedgerow fencing long before barbed wire existed. Yet the same thorns draw blood easily, and a traditional belief holds that a wound from blackthorn is particularly likely to fester or turn septic (sometimes attributed to natural bacteria on the thorns, sometimes to supernatural malice).

Its flowering is uncanny: pure white blossoms appear in very early spring—often in February or March—while the branches are still bare and seemingly dead from winter. In Britain it is said to bloom on or around Old Christmas Day (6 January) or even on Christmas Eve in some districts, earning it the nickname “Mother of the Wood” or “Lady of the Woods” in contrast to the hawthorn’s “May Lady.” The sudden eruption of bridal white flowers on black, corpse-like wood gives blackthorn a death-and-resurrection symbolism that Christianity itself could not entirely erase.

The fruit, the bitter blue-black sloe, only becomes edible after the first hard frost (or, traditionally, after All Saints’ Night). This “frost-bitten” transformation again reinforces the theme: suffering and cold are necessary for sweetness and nourishment. Sloe gin, a deep blood-red liqueur, carries the same initiatory symbolism—pain transmuted into pleasure.

Folklore and Superstition

Blackthorn has a darker reputation than almost any native European tree.

•  In Ireland it is one of the “noble” trees of the Ogham alphabet (straif), but also one of the most feared. Cutting a blackthorn stick on 11 November (old Samhain date) or 11 May (old Beltane) was believed to summon the Devil himself.

•  It is the classic material for the Irish shillelagh (a cudgel or walking stick), valued because the wood is extremely hard and heavy once seasoned, but also because a blackthorn stick was thought to give its bearer power over enemies and supernatural beings.

•  Witches were said to ride blackthorn stems (not elder or rowan) as “flying brooms” in some British and Germanic traditions, and a blackthorn staff was the traditional mark of the Púca (or Pooka), the dangerous Irish fairy trickster who appears as a black goat or horse.

•  In English folklore, the “Blackthorn Winter” is a late, bitter cold snap that coincides with the tree’s flowering. Farmers dreaded it, believing the blossoms brought frost that killed early crops.

•  Sleeping under a flowering blackthorn was considered fatal or madness-inducing, because the tree was a favorite haunt of the fairies—and not the benevolent kind. In parts of Scotland, the tree was called “the witch’s tree,” and carrying a blackthorn charm on Halloween or during the dark half of the year was said to protect against malevolent witchcraft—while paradoxically being proof of witchcraft if you were caught with one.

•  The Crown of Thorns worn by Christ is traditionally said to have been made of blackthorn in British and Irish folk belief (rather than the Middle Eastern Zizyphus spina-christi more likely in Palestine), reinforcing its association with suffering and sacrificial kingship.

Magical and Traditional Uses

Despite—or because of—its dangerous reputation, blackthorn has always been a plant of power in folk magic.

•  A blackthorn walking stick or staff is one of the most potent protective tools in British and Irish tradition. It is said to repel baneful magic, break hexes, and give courage in battle (both literal and spiritual).

•  Thorns were used in “witch bottles,” poppets, and curse tablets. Driving a blackthorn thorn into an enemy’s footprint was a classic malefic spell, yet the same thorn driven into one’s own door lintel kept witches out.

•  In Scottish Highland tradition, a blackthorn rod was used by the taibhsear (seer) to “open the way” between worlds or to compel spirits to speak truth.

•  The Ogham letter straif (blackthorn) is associated with inevitable strife, sudden change, and the forging of the self through hardship—very much like the rune hagla (hail) or thurisaz (thorn/giant).

•  Sloe berries, once frosted, are used in modern witchcraft for spells of transformation, protection, and “sweetening the bitter.” The stones were carried as amulets against the evil eye.

•  In contemporary druidry and hedgewitchcraft, blackthorn is the tree of the Crone aspect of the Goddess, of Samhain, and of necessary endings. Its wood is still used for blasting rods (for banishing or cursing) and its thorns for blood magic or binding spells.

Blackthorn refuses to be domesticated. It is neither wholly benevolent like rowan nor wholly malevolent like yew; it is the plant of the liminal, the necessary wound, the dark before the dawn. To work with blackthorn is to accept that protection and pain, death and rebirth, sweetness and bitterness are not opposites but two sides of the same thorn. In the words of one old Irish saying: 

The blackthorn stands at the gate of the Otherworld, white-flowered and black-hearted, daring the traveler to pay the price of entry.