Method 1: Solar infusion This is my preferred method for herbal infusions, it’s gentle and charges things well. That said, it’s a 2-3 week process, and many of you won’t have time for this. If you start something using a heating method, it’s best to make a small batch if you’ll be using it long enough, and to start more using this method at the same time, so you can roll into using this.
Directions
First, you’ll gather everything you need. The Herbs you’re going to use, and a base oil. If you’re not sure what base oil to use, almond oil is a good bet, and my favorite is a light sunflower oil. If you have a particularly Biblical bent, an olive oil can work well, and you can buy lighter olive oil if needed. Amounts depends on the size of your jar, but you’ll want about ¾ of the jar filled with herbs. Use roughly equal amounts, and let your nose guide you somewhat about the exact blend. Next, you’ll want to pray over your herbs or set the intention of what you expect them to do for you. I keep this as easy as I can, and just kind of treat each herb as having a personality, and talking to them. I do also invoke a higher power, but I am a believer. To a certain extent, you can get good results with just the “spirit of the herbs”.
Place herbs in a clean, dry jar. Make sure it’s pretty dry, because you want as little water as possible in the resulting mixture. Non-dried herbs might do better baked in an oven as low as you can get it for an hour or 2. Add your oil in, stirring clockwise for things that are designed to bring something to you, and counterclockwise for things designed to send something away. If in doubt, stir clockwise. Speaking in the same way to the resulting herb and oil mixture as in the previous step, or otherwise blessing it. It helps for these things to visualize an energy either in your hands, carried on your voice or the like, going into your oil. Cap the jar tightly and shake well, then place the jar in a sunny, warm windowsill. Shake once or more per day. This is a great time to tell your mixture what to do again. After 2 to 3 weeks, strain the herbs out of the oil using cheesecloth or a mesh strainer. Make sure to squeeze out as much of the oil as possible. Then I run mine through a funnel with about half a cotton ball stuffed in the bottom of it. Takes a while to run through, and I find it best to strain into several containers, and change the cotton balls regularly. We’re just getting all the particles out that we can. Make sure to date these, and label with your ingredients and intentions. It’s nice to also come up with fancy magic sounding names like “cast off evil” or “firey wall of protection” but it’s not necessary and usually those fancy names are more generic formulas, but that have been tweaked with a whole bunch so that the formulas are really spot on.Store in a cool, dark place. The internet says that this will keep for up to a year, but I’ve found them to have a shelf life of closer to 9 months. Re-bottling them in smaller containers might help, but I’ve never really tried. I should probably sell tiny bottles of these oils at some point, as I never use it all when I make one.
I’m a big fan of magical oils and the like, so I tend to give these out regularly. I’ve written this guide to making them so I can save us all time and get everyone the recipes at the same time. Credit where it’s due, I’ve been doing this a while, but when I was learning about this, Mountain Rose Herbs was a great resource. All of mountain rose herbs is wonderful. They're not a sponsor, I'm not an affiliate, nothing like that, they've just got good stuff, and there’s a lot more instructions there. They’re not magically based, but herbal based, and a wealth of knowledge, as well as a source for many of the herbs and things that I use or suggest.
QUICK METHOD FOR HEAT-INFUSED OILS
This is almost all the same as the method above, except that what you’ll do here is heat the oil and herbs up. Just replace step 5 with the following: If you do it in a crock pot, throw them in the jar first, and use the keep warm setting in some water. Enough water to heat them, and I always put the lid on to keep water out of the ingredients. Twist the lid of the crock pot 90 degrees so it’s only about half covered. With the right thermometer, you want the water and/or the herbs to be around 100. Let sit in that overnight, take them out and cool, then proceed to step 6 This doesn’t last as long as the natural sunlight oils, so maybe make a small batch of things this way, and let it get you through the 2 to 3 weeks you need for the other method to work.
