Honey Jar

What it is

The Honey Jar is a container spell from African American Hoodoo rootwork in which a petition paper — the target's name crossed with the caster's name and ringed with a written intention — is sealed inside a jar of honey together with herbs, roots, and sometimes a crystal. A candle dressed in condition oil is placed on the lid and burned, typically on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, to continuously "work" the spell. The sympathetic logic is simple: honey is sweet, so surrounding someone's name in honey is meant to sweeten their disposition toward you or toward a situation. Applications range from romantic attraction to court-case favor, workplace harmony, and financial luck.

How to do it

1. Prepare a petition paper: write the target's name three times vertically on a small piece of paper, then rotate 90 degrees and write your own name three times across theirs.
2. Circle the crossed names with your written intention in a single continuous line of script without lifting the pen.
3. Add optional personal concerns (a strand of hair for love work) and herbs matched to your goal — rose petals and cinnamon for love, basil and cloves for money, lavender and chamomile for peace.
4. Fold the paper toward you three times while speaking your intention aloud, then drop it into a glass jar filled with honey (or syrup or molasses).
5. Optionally add a small crystal to the jar — rose quartz for love, green aventurine for money.
6. Seal the jar with a metal lid. Consume a small taste of the honey while affirming your wish, as is traditional in Hoodoo.
7. Dress a colored candle (red for love, green for money, brown for court cases) with a condition oil, fix it to the lid with its own wax, and burn it fully.
8. Repeat the candle burning weekly — traditionally Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — until you see results, refreshing herbs or honey as needed.

What people use it for

• love / specific person (SP)
• reconciliation with an ex
• sweetening a judge, boss, or landlord
• money and financial luck
• career and job success
• home and family harmony
• general goodwill and social favor

Where it comes from

Rooted in African American Hoodoo folk magic, which blended West African spiritual traditions, Native American plant knowledge, European folk magic, and Caribbean influences. Folklorist Zora Neale Hurston documented a New Orleans rootdoctor's sweetening jar in her 1935 book Mules and Men. Catherine Yronwode of Lucky Mojo Curio Company codified and widely disseminated the modern honey jar format online from the late 1990s onward; Deacon Millett published a dedicated book through Lucky Mojo in 2013. The practice was popularized beyond rootwork communities by WitchTok and neo-pagan social media from roughly 2019–2024.