The Witchy Homestead: Spells, Rituals, and Remedies for Creating Magic at Home by Nikki Van De Car

The Witchy Homestead: Spells, Rituals, and Remedies for Creating Magic at Home Reviews

• 
  Ophelia Feyre

  Book Review: The Witchy Homestead - Spells, Rituals, and Remedies for Creating Magic at Home by Nikki Van De Car
  Illustrations: Zoe Ingram
  Genre: Mind, Body, Spirit / Religion and Spirituality
  Publisher: Running Press
  Release Date: 17th August, 2021
  
  About the Author and Illustrator
  Nikki Van De Car lives in Hawaii with her family. She is a blogger, writer and crafter with a love of knitting. Her previous book releases include; Practical Magic, Calming Magic, Magical Meditations, Wellness Witch and The Junior Witch’s Handbook.
  
  The illustrator, Zoe Ingram is from Edinburgh, Scotland and her designs and illustrations have been featured on stationery, cards, magazines, book and home decor. She has a lovely artistic style. I love her use of colours and that a lot of her work features animals. Her website or instagram has some beautiful representations of the tarot cards. I’m not sure if she currently has plans to release a tarot deck, but I imagine it would be stunning.
  
  About the Book
  The blurb says...
  
  "Whether we live on a farm or in a high-rise, we can always create a life that is entwined with the natural world. A homestead is a way of being, a life lived with the intention of returning to our roots and tapping into the essential elements of fire, water, air and earth.
  
  The Witchy Homestead is your guide to finding, creating, and living this essential magic. Learn to build a wellspring of magical self-sufficiency and cultivate enchanted resilience through crystal rituals, simple spells, natural remedies, and more, as you hnor the eart and protect all that you have created."
  
  The book is organised in to three parts:
  - Enchanting Your Food - all about growing your own fruit, vegetables and herbs. With tips for foraging.
  - Enchanting Your Health - features things that you can make: body care, face care and hair care (scrubs, creams, toners cleansers). This section also has things for colds, pain relief and sleep.
  - Enchanting Your Home - bits and pieces about houseplants, house-cleaning and creating an indoor and outdoor altar.
  The book is about working with the natural elements, particularly the element of earth and incorporating natural ingredients into your everyday life.
  
  My Thoughts
  Firstly, I want to address the idea that the book is not ‘hearth witch’ or ‘kitchen witch’ focused, which some people may think when talking about the witchy home.
  
  A homestead or the term ‘homesteading’ has become popular recently. Technically, it means a house, usually a farm with land that is used for agriculture. Homesteading as an idea is about being self-sufficient; producing and preserving your own food, homemade products and living on what you can grow and produce.
  
  It is this idea that the book is playing on, but on a much smaller scale, because everyone has different living situations, and although living on a homestead may sound nice it’s not possible for everyone.
  
  The book brings a little of that homestead magick in to different areas of your home: the garden (growing your own fruit, vegetables and herbs), the bedroom (getting a good nights sleep), the bathroom (home-made recipes for body and hair care), and a small section on house-cleaning. Which, no matter how much I try or how nice these homemade products sound, I just can’t seem to embrace the idea of cleaning as part of my witchy practice!
  
  I think there is a part of all of us that likes the sound of getting back to nature and the simplicity of it. The modern world is busy and chaotic. Sometimes we need to take a step back and reconnect with the earth and that’s what this book allows you to do.
  
  The section that I appreciated the most was, 'Enchanting Your Health'. I’m really into beauty products, so it was nice to have those recipes for creating products with all natural ingredients. The book is organised in a really nice way with the ingredients you need, the recipe to follow and an illustration by Zoe.
  
  One thing that would have been nice is to have a magickal element to the making of the products. There is the list of ingredients you need to make something, the instructions of how to put it together or create it, but I would have liked to have a spell or ritual element to it. After all it’s called 'The Witchy Homstead'. Some people may find the process of making their own products from scratch a ritual within itself, but I would incorporate a blessing or set some intentions when combining the ingredients just for an extra magickal touch.
  
  Nikki has done this in the gardening section. There is a boundary spell and an enchantment for your garden, which were really nice witchy touches to the otherwise practical advice for testing your soil, composting and beginner herb gardens. However, like i said it would have been nice to have a little ritual or enchantment when creating the natural things through out the rest of the book.
  
  Coming back to the idea of self-sufficiency, there are just a few things that I wanted to mention. For a lot of witches, and people in general, being self-sufficient sounds great but it’s not always possible. With a lot of the products that are featured in the book you would probably have to buy most of the ingredients to make them. Some things you may have: honey and olive oil. However for the beauty products in particular I generally don’t have coconut oil, argan oil, bees wax and shea butter in my home. And I know there are not going to be many people that keep their own bees.
  
  It’s also important to consider the cost. I know that this will be a factor for a lot of people. The featured recipes for cleaning products include Isopropyl alcohol, which is obviously the main cleaning ingredient. However, at the moment it is quite expensive to get hold of as it is the main ingredient in hand-sanitiser, so you can imagine why it’s in demand. For a lot of people it wouldn’t really be cost-effective to make these products at home.
  
  I did also mention that some of the recipes include bees-wax so just a note for the vegans out there that some of the recipes are not vegan friendly, but I am sure things can be substituted.
  
  Personally, I prefer the idea of supporting small businesses. Businesses that are creating sustainable, vegan, cruelty free and all natural products. If you want to make sure you are using products that are not causing harm to the environment or to animals, products that use natural products and are sustainable then a little bit of research is all you need. A lot of homesteads do sell the products they make.
  
  Saying all of that, I know that people will enjoy making the products at home and it might be something that you do every now and again as a spell or ritual for yourself, rather than a permanent replacement for the current products you use. Remember that using particular products themselves can be made into a spell or ritual. I know a lot of Witches out there already do bath and shower rituals for cleansing and self-care.
  
  I was also slightly disappointed that the author hadn’t really put much about her personal craft or homestead in to the book. I just have this image of Nikki living with her family in Hawaii with her own lovely little homestead and I think I wanted a bit more of that in the book. For example: what she grows or makes at home and how she incorporates that into her craft. I think it’s always nice when authors draw on and talk about their personal craft.
  
  The book is really beautifully illustrated and organised and it’s probably something that I will come back to occasionally when I want to incorporate a spell or ritual with a homemade product for self-care.
  
  Final Thoughts
  Overall, I think this is a really lovely book and it allows for a connection to the earth for everyone, no matter where they live. As someone who practices green witchery I know how fulfilling it is to grow your own herbs and then use them in your spells and rituals. It’s an easy way for anyone to reconnect with the earth element. If you are interested in starting that aspect of your practice then the book has some good beginner steps for that.
  
  Similarly, the book has some nice ideas for making your own products to use and helps you consider the impact you currently have on the environment.
  
  Remember to consider what works best for you. The homestead is about being self-sufficient, but like I mentioned, to be completely self-sufficient is not possible for everyone. Instead just think about a small change you can make or incorporate into your life. This book may give you some ideas of where to start.
  
  Thank you to Running Press books for sending my an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a review.
• 
  Lady Yennefer

  I’ve been practicing the craft nearly my whole life, but am always interested to see new books on the subject. This book is a great starting point for someone seeking to get more in touch with magic and natural existence; however, there’s a significant amount of pseudoscience and negligence. Largely, multiple claims are made regarding the efficacy of an herb or mineral without explanation for the reader, and some of them are straight up false (the most glaring being the baking soda somehow does the work of your liver via dermal osmosis??) while others neglect to warn of risks (most concerning being the omission of just how many plants and oils are deadly to house pets). With the misinformation omitted, I’d easily give it a 4/5 for being accessible and inclusive of those new to the craft, but the lack of due diligence really drags it down and makes it a better choice for someone with a fundamental understanding of physic.
• 
  Megan Thomas

  What a great book! The info in here was accessible and easy to follow and implement. I love the artwork and design of this book, and how easy it is to find what I'm searching for. Looking forward to referencing this often in the future!
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  Samantha

  A great introduction to several basic home spells and rituals. I got it as a guide to help me as I begin to learn more about herbalism and found it to have many great resources to save for later use.
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  Rachel

  I can see myself using a couple of the practices/recipes from this book, but your mileage will definitely vary with this one. One section on foraging encourages the reader to "test" things to see if they're poisonous: skin check, chew on it and wait 15 minutes to see if your tongue or throat swells (!!), then make sure you haven't eaten for eight hours, eat the plant you found, and don't eat anything else for another eight hours. I'm not positive that's a wise thing to publish?? Like I said, your mileage will vary.
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  Lowrie

  was very excited, and i learned a few cool things, but didn't find it to be anything new or novel - just similar info that is everywhere else packaged in a slightly diff way. i also didn't find it very adaptable - it claims to include a lot of info for folks even if they live in a tiny apartment, but that didn't seem true to me.
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  Stephi Durand

  I really enjoyed this books take on combining witchcraft and the more homestead-like lifestyle. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll use most of the recipes because they contain essential oils and I don’t want to risk my cats with them.
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  Britt N

  Great book! Easy to follow along, and I love that there are useful recipes in it. It's great for a starter witch. Also has some handy pictures as well for inspiration.
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  Lori

  A very interesting book, I jotted down quite a few recipes, remedies and spells to try later on. Very well explained and covered many areas. Well written and detailed recipes
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  Ginger ~ Pages from Wonderland

  Pretty, but basic and shallow.
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  Zahnii (Suzanne) Artis

  Really was interested in the herb part. Don’t feel a lot about crystals but enjoyed the recipes for some homemade products.