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Graveyard Dirt – How To Use It
There’s more to collecting graveyard dirt than simply walking into your nearest cemetery with a shovel and a bottle. Learn more about appropriate collection and ways to use graveyard dirt.
Graveyard dirt is a staple ingredient in many witchcraft traditions and recipes. When properly procured, a small bottle of graveyard dirt can aid you in protective work, banishing spells, and creating poppets.
Graveyard dirt can have different properties depending on where/whose grave you get the dirt from and what you intend to use it for. Taking graveyard dirt from the grave of an ancestor is always preferred, but you can also collect it from graveyard grounds and not exclusively a grave, dirt from a pathway or from under a tree in a grave yard is perfectly fine.
If you are collecting dirt for use in any kind of magical work, considering asking the individual if you can remove dirt from their grave. You may get a feeling that you shouldn’t, it’s okay to honor that feeling and look somewhere else.
Always treat the grave site as if friends or family members of the deceased can walk up and ask what you are doing at any moment, just as you would for any reason when you visit cemeteries.
You should be able to say paying my respects and mean it.
If you’re still not certain, find the largest tree in the cemetery or at the east-most point of the cemetery. Treat the tree as you would a grave and honor it appropriately.
When To Gather Graveyard Dirt
If you’re collecting dirt from an ancestor, go on an occasion of importance to your chosen ancestor. A birth date or death date might be significant, but so might a favorite holiday or marriage anniversary. Knowing that the first Sunday after Easter is the day your deceased grandmother would visit four cemeteries to honor her ancestors because flowers were on sale might have more meaning to you.
In contemporary witchcraft, the full moon is a useful time for collecting ingredients designed to bring things to you. The new moon is useful for sending or banishing things away.
Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day are particularly fortuitous times to visit. Many cemeteries will have a formal blessing or ceremony during these three days.
It’s important to note any rules in your local cemetery. They are often posted near the gates or in another prominent place. Many cemeteries close at sunset or are only open to the public during certain hours. It should go without saying that it may be best to replan your visit to a small cemetery or grave site if funeral services are in progress.
Is It Desecration?
Some cemeteries consider the collection of graveyard dirt to fall under desecration of the grave. You should only be taking small amounts to begin with, but be certain not to alter the landscape. If it is forbidden, try a different location.
Avoid damaging fungi and plant life. In the rare event you find any insects within the dirt, please release them. The soil closest to older tombstones should also be avoided as the ground is often instrumental in keeping older markers upright.
Tools To Bring
It's much more respectful and much less disruptive to the environment to use a small spoon rather than a spade, shovel, or garden instrument. Most recipes only call for a pinch of graveyard dirt anyway, so you only need a little. A small spice bottle (perhaps with a dash of salt at the bottom) is an ideal container; you can mark on the outside when, where, and for what purpose the dirt was collected.
Show Respect And Offer Thanks
Concepts of exchange are common in many traditions. If you’re going to be taking dirt from a grave, it’s customary to leave an offering in return.
Liquids, such as alcohol (whiskey, ciders, and vodka) are common, but if you’re unable or unwilling to utilize alcohol, a fruit juice such as apple or grape is appropriate. You can also leave fresh flowers, acorns, or even a small morsel of honey.
In other traditions, tobacco leaves, burning a candle, or a stick of incense may be appropriate. Small coins or change may be placed near the grave as well.
If you’re visiting the grave of a friend or relative and happened to know the person before they passed, you may consider playing their favorite song, reading a passage from their favorite book (or a book you think they’d enjoy), or bringing a beverage they were quite fond of, these are offerings as well.
Remember The Living
While it is easy to focus on death and the end of life while visiting a graveyard, please do your best to remember that cemeteries are more for the benefit of the living than the deceased. Disrespecting a grave site will have big consequences to living family members or friends who will be hurt by the image of a stranger treating the resting place of a loved one poorly.
Try to make your visit, even if brief, a positive one. Clean up any trash you see around, straighten the fallen flags or candles near your chosen site, and keep volume on any music or conversation low and respectful.
The graveyard dirt tucked away in your bag will be all the more meaningful when collected thoughtfully.
Proper Collection of Graveyard Dirt
Graveyard dirt is essential to many spells and concoctions. However, you can’t just go grab some. At best, it won’t work, and at worst, you’ll have to deal with the ire of the spirits you stole from.
You may wish to choose your grave beforehand, or you can let the spirits guide you to the correct grave.
If you choose your grave beforehand, do your research on the person who died and make sure that their life and death has something to do with your purpose. You aren’t just collecting dirt; you are offering to employ a spirit for your purposes.
You may wish to find the grave of a heroic soldier, police officer, or judge when you desire true justice, or your object is protection. If you desire terrible revenge, those who died violent deaths are usually the best to choose. If you are using your graveyard dirt for love (or protection), you can gather dirt from the grave of someone who loved you, or from an ancestor and so on.
Before you enter the graveyard, pause and declare your intention to the spirits there, and tell them that you wish to treat them with honor and respect. Enter.
Find the grave of your choice. If it is dark, use a natural source of light.
Show your offerings to the intended spirit. Traditional offerings include silver-colored coins, tobacco, and liquor. If you knew the person and know specifically what they like, bring that. If you wish to be especially discreet, bring flowers to plant or bring a potted plant to place on the grave, and no one will think twice about you digging.
Tell the spirit what you need and why. Be brief, but don’t exclude important information that may convince the spirit to help you. Tell the spirit you will pay for the dirt and their help, and present the offerings. Ask them if they agree. Sit silently and wait for their permission.
When you have permission, thank them, and use a ritual knife to dig some dirt from their grave and put it in a bag. (if this is too difficult, you CAN consecrate a trowel, or use one you use in magical gardening.)
Don’t take sod. Once you’ve dug a small hole and emptied it, put your offerings into the hole as payment, the the care to ensure the offerings are of nature or biodegradable at a minimum. If there was sod, replace it. If you were going to plant something here, plant it over the offerings.
Thank the spirit again and take your leave. Before leaving the graveyard, address the spirits again, thank them for letting you do your work, and ask that no one follow you. Spin around three times to confuse any spirits attempting to follow. Once you exit the graveyard, spin around three more times. Before entering your home, spin around three times again.
Getting To Know The Spirit Of The Dead
I believe that you will learn more and do more effective spiritual work if you do not think of what you plan as "capturing" graveyard dirt but think of it by the term that it generally called, namely, "buying" graveyard dirt.
After you enter a cemetery, if you have no particular grave in mind to visit, let yourself be spirit-led to the grave that attracts you. If you wish to learn more about the spirits in a particular graveyard, go to each grave site in turn, individually and respectfully. I would place a small offering of flowers first, keeping other offerings, such as coins, in reserve for possible use. I would speak to the spirit, listen deeply to what was offered or denied, and then i would comply with the wishes of the deceased, which may differ from grave site to grave site.
How To Use Graveyard Dirt In Spell Work
There are three ways that graveyard dirt is commonly employed:
in spells of protection, in enemy hex, in love spells .
Despite its inclusion in harmful formulas, graveyard dirt is not 'evil', and it has uses all its own that reflect its venerable stature in the practice of ancestor veneration.
Graveyard dirt can be used for good or for ill will. There are several well-known protection spells and love-spells that utilize graveyard dirt, and just as many spells to hold someone down or restrain them in some way (what might call a "binding spell.")
In hoodoo, the ritual of collecting graveyard dirt -- by the practitioner him or herself -- is often referred to as BUYING graveyard dirt. The usual payment since the 19th century at least, has been a silver dime, and in the old days, this was preferably a Mercury dime. Customs vary, but although payment may be offered to the dead in the entire graveyard, it is more commonly offered to the specific spirit from whose grave one will dig the dirt.
This practice of the individual buying dirt from a graveyard led early on in hoodoo to the root worker / herbalist buying the dirt and then re-selling it. No stigma is attached to this practice, but the re-seller may be questioned closely as to whether the dirt was properly "bought and paid for." There were even ads in old catalogs dating back to the 1920s in which graveyard dirt was offered for sale, so this is not a recent phenomenon. -- like most of the mercantile aspects of hoodoo, it arose as urbanization made the personal gathering of symbolic ingredients difficult to achieve. The price of graveyard dirt is usually nominal -- it's dirt cheap.
Neo-pagan authors such as Scott Cunningham have written that graveyard dirt is "just code" for certain herbs, such as mullein, but this is easily proven untrue by simply asking the average long time root-worker.
Working With The Spirits of Murder Victims and Those Unjustly Executed
It is important that those who propose to collect dirt from the graves of murder victims and those executed for crimes they did not commit understand that when dealing with the spirits of those who were unjustly put to death, there is no "one size fits all" approach that can be applied, and you should always ask permission and if permitted, always be respectful and don't forget to give thanks.
Some such spirits may seek vengeance -- especially against people of a particular surname, occupation, social position, etc. -- and they may be willingly employed as spirits of vengeance.
Other spirits may be filled with a strong desire to see that people currently alive -- perhaps their lineal descendants or people of their own former occupation, social position; or perhaps all people -- do not suffer injustices as they did, and they may be employed to bring justice to present cases.
Still other such spirits may be filled with the nectar of forgiveness and compassion and may be employed to bring harmony and unity of purpose to difficult situations.
HARMFUL AND COERCIVE SPELLS EMPLOYING GRAVEYARD DIRT
If one wishes to do harm, or to force or coerce someone to act in a certain way, one might buy the dirt of someone who "died badly" -- before their time, through execution, or so forth, because their spirit, once invoked, would be inclined to perform evil deeds or to seek very strong justice with little compunction.
Graveyard Dirt -- along with powdered sulphur, salt, powdered snake skin sheds, red pepper, black pepper, powdered bones, powdered insects or snails, greyish herbs such as mullein or sage, anvil dust (the black iron dust found around a blacksmith's anvil), and magnetic sand -- is a common ingredient in Goofer Dust, and thence in Hot Foot Powder* and Crossing Powder, all of which are materials used in baneful magic.
In some Graveyard Dirt spells -- like similar tricks/hexes involving Goofer Dust, Hot Foot Powder, Jinx Powder and Crossing Powder -- the intent is to harm someone, and the graveyard dirt is used to symbolize death to the enemy. For instance, spells in which a doll-baby or poppet representing the enemy is placed in a miniature coffin and buried in a graveyard fall into this class, as do spells in which a black candle symbolizing the enemy is deliberately extinguished by turning it upside down into a saucer of graveyard dirt.
In harmful spells like the above, the dirt is best collected from the grave of an aggressor or someone who "died bad," that is, a criminal or the victim of a violent death.
You now have an extremely powerful ingredient to use in your craft!
Gate Keeper Lore
There are many spirits you may work with on your path of magic. Some of those spirits are ancient deities that are known from thousands of years ago. Others may be the nature spirits that are in your own backyard. But there are also the spirits of our ancestors and the magical dead. Our ancestors can be honored in our homes, or we can honor them in the place where their bodies are laid to rest: in cemeteries.
Cemeteries are sacred grounds that we must respect when we are working with the spirits that reside there. Before we can do any serious spiritual work in a cemetery we must honor the gate keeper, who can be found in all cemeteries. Though not the gate keeper the very alive employee, the spiritual caretaker from realms beyond.The gate keeper is said to be the spirit of the first person who was interred into the graveyard. With this belief, simply by being the first body laid to rest in the cemetery, you are obliged to be the spiritual caretaker of all other souls that are placed in hallowed ground. In my workings with the dead, I have not found this to always be the case.
I have found that the gate keeper is the spirit of the person who feels a great responsibility to become the caretaker of other spirits. Sometimes that person was a doctor or leader of some sort during their life, and after death, they kept the same characteristics they had in life. Those who are called to help the living in life are often also called to take care of the dead after their own death.The gate keeper is not a warden that keeps the spirits trapped in the cemetery; rather they take care of and nurture the spirits. They energetically keep the living from desecrating graves or doing magick that may harm the ancestors. I have also found that they are able to act as a conduit or battery for spiritual energy to empower the graveyard. If you have ever done energy work in a cemetery or simply “tuned-in” to the spiritual energies, you can feel the power that flows through the roads and the graves. The gate keepers also can help you find the graves of spirits who may be able to help you upon your spiritual path.
The gate keepers usually resides in some sort of vessel. It is very similar to how the energy of a god can reside in a statue to await offerings from devotees. The spirit of the gate keeper can dwell in a statue, a grave stone, or tree. They may even reside in the entrance of a mausoleum. More often than not, I have found them in a statue or grave stone near the entrance of the cemetery. Keeping this in mind, it is easy to find the gate keeper. They are almost always in the very front of the cemetery, near the gate or they are close to the middle. Simply by “tuning in” to the gate keeper, you will be able to feel their presence.In the spiritual tradition I was trained in, one never asks for help from a spirit without an offering. The offering can be food, libations, or simply your own energy. Traditional food offerings can be bread, honey, beans, sweets, or cakes. Libations include water, wine, milk, or ale. Spirits can use your own energy as food, as it gives them strength and power. You can do this by taking a breath and on the exhale send energy from your heart, down your arms, out your hands to the spirit.
The gate keeper will appreciate any offerings you have to give no matter how small. When we give offerings to the gate keeper it is important to tell them what your intentions are. You can say something like, “I wish to work with the spirits of my ancestors so I may have a better understanding of who they were,” or “I wish to work with the spirit of someone who can help me on my spiritual path.” By doing this you are giving a clear intention to the gate keeper. This will help build trust between you and the gate keeper. Once the trust is built, the gate keeper can guide you to the graves of your own ancestors, as well as the graves of other spirits who may aide you.
Protection Spell Using Graveyard Dirt
This spell harnesses the potent energy of graveyard dirt to create a protective barrier around you or your space. Graveyard dirt is often used in various magical traditions for its grounding and protective properties, symbolizing the connection between the living and the ancestral realm. When performing this spell, approach with respect and intention, acknowledging the sacredness of the materials and the spirits involved.
Ingredients Needed
Graveyard Dirt: Collect with permission and respect, preferably from the grave of a benevolent ancestor or a peaceful site.
Black Candle: Represents protection and absorbs negative energy.
Salt: A purifying agent that helps create a protective boundary.
Small Jar or Pouch: To hold the graveyard dirt and other ingredients.
Incense (e.g., frankincense or myrrh): For purification and to honor the spirits.
Optional: Protective Herbs (e.g., rosemary, sage, or basil): Enhance the protective power of the spell.
Instructions
Prepare Your Space: Find a quiet place where you can perform the spell undisturbed. Cleanse the area with incense or by sprinkling salt water to purify the environment.
Light the Candle: Place the black candle in front of you and light it with the intention of protection. As it burns, visualize it creating a shield around you.
Gather the Ingredients: Place the graveyard dirt, salt, and any protective herbs you wish to use into the small jar or pouch. As you do this, focus on your intention for protection and safety.
Invoke Protection: Hold the jar or pouch in your hands and speak words of power. You might say something like:
"Spirits of the earth, I call upon you.
Shield me from harm, and protect me true.
With earth and salt, I draw this line,
Guard me well, by power divine."
Seal the Jar or Pouch: As you close the jar or tie the pouch, visualize the protective energy being sealed within. Imagine it forming an impenetrable barrier that surrounds you or the space you are protecting.
Place the Jar or Pouch: Keep the jar or pouch in a place where you feel it will best serve its purpose, such as by your front door, under your bed, or even in your bag for personal protection.
Conclude the Ritual: Thank the spirits and energies you have called upon. Extinguish the candle, knowing that the protective energy remains with you.
Regular Renewal: To maintain the spell's potency, recharge the jar or pouch by repeating the spell or adding fresh elements as needed.
Banishing Spell Using Graveyard Dirt
Use this banishing spell to dispel negative energy, release unwanted influences, or remove obstacles from your life, allowing room for positivity and growth. Can be used to repel people, situations, and energies.
Ingredients and Tools
A small jar or container
Graveyard dirt (collected respectfully and ethically)
Black candle
Salt
Protective herbs (e.g., sage, rosemary, or thyme)
A piece of paper and pen
Matches or a lighter
Your personal protection or grounding item (e.g., a crystal or talisman)
Perform the Spell
1. Prepare Your Space
Find a quiet and undisturbed area to perform your spell. Cleanse the space with sage or another purifying herb to remove any lingering negative energies. Set up your tools and ingredients on a flat surface, such as a table or altar.
2. Cast a Circle
Begin by casting a circle to create a sacred space. Imagine a protective barrier of light surrounding you and your working area. This will help focus your energy and keep unwanted influences at bay.
3. Light the Candle
Light the black candle and place it in front of you. Black candles are often used in banishing spells due to their association with protection and the dispelling of negativity.
4. Mix the Ingredients
In the small jar, combine the graveyard dirt, a pinch of salt, and your chosen protective herbs. As you mix, focus on your intention to banish the unwanted energies or influences from your life. Visualize these energies being absorbed and neutralized by the mixture.
5. Write Your Intention
On the piece of paper, write down what you wish to banish. Be specific and clear about the negative energy or influence you want to remove. Fold the paper and place it into the jar with the dirt mixture.
6. Seal the Jar
Seal the jar tightly, holding it in your hands as you do so. Speak your intention aloud, clearly stating what you wish to banish. For example:
"By earth and flame, I banish thee, Away from my life, so mote it be."
7. Bury or Dispose of the Jar
To complete the spell, bury the jar in a place where it will not be disturbed, such as a secluded spot in nature. Alternatively, you can dispose of it in a way that symbolizes release, such as throwing it into moving water. As you do so, visualize the negative energies leaving your life.
8. Ground and Close the Circle
Take a moment to ground yourself, holding your protection item and feeling its energy stabilize you. Thank any spirits or energies you have called upon during the spell and close your circle by visualizing the protective light dissipating.
After the Spell
Reflect on your experience and take note of any changes in your life. Banishing spells can be powerful, and you may find that the energies you sought to remove have shifted or dissipated. Remember to cleanse your space again if needed and replenish your energy with rest or meditation.
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