Also called sangre de drago, dragon's blood incense, Daemonorops draco, Dracaena cinnabari
Dragon's blood is a deep red resin from several unrelated plants, including the Socotra dragon tree and Southeast Asian rattan palms. Prized since antiquity as dye, varnish and medicine, it is used in Hoodoo and modern witchcraft as a protective, power-boosting incense and as the base of a red ink for writing petitions.
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Take care: Burn only on incense charcoal in a fireproof dish, with ventilation, and never unattended; keep birds and pets out of the smoke. Do not swallow the resin or ink, and do not use incense-grade dragon's blood on wounds, since you rarely know which plant it came from. The powder stains skin, fabric and grout.
Rootworkers burn powdered dragon's blood on charcoal to clear a new house of evil before moving in, sometimes mixed with camphor. A chunk may also be carried in a mojo hand for luck and protection.
Uses: dragon's blood powder, camphor (optional), charcoal
Resin dissolved in alcohol with gum arabic makes a red ink used to write seals, petitions, wishes and talismans. It is the standard magical ink in American occult supply catalogs.
Uses: dragon's blood resin, alcohol, gum arabic
In South America the name goes to the red latex of Croton lechleri, painted onto cuts and sores. It is a different plant and product from the incense resin, which is a good reason to check labels.
Uses: Croton lechleri sap
The first-century Greek sailing guide, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, lists dragon's blood among the products of Socotra, where Dracaena cinnabari still grows on the island's limestone plateaus. Roman writers confused the resin with the toxic mineral cinnabar, and medieval encyclopedias claimed it was the real blood of dragons and elephants killed fighting each other. Fifteenth-century voyagers also gathered it from Dracaena draco in the Canary Islands.
Today most commercial dragon's blood comes from the fruit of Southeast Asian rattan palms (Calamus, formerly Daemonorops). Painters used it for flesh tones in the 1600s, Chinese craftsmen as red varnish, and pharmacists as a medicine. In twentieth-century American Hoodoo and occult supply catalogs it became a resin for protection, luck and power, burned on charcoal and made into ink for writing petitions.
A hoodoo protection formula and candle spell that pictures a ring of fire around a person or home, meant as a shield that keeps harm out without sending any back.
A pair of rituals for leaving one home and entering the next: a thank-you sweep for the house you are selling, and a first-entry blessing with bread, salt, rice and a new broom for the new one. It draws on moving customs from Eastern Europe, China, Japan and Appalachia.
A mojo bag is a small cloth packet holding an odd number of roots, herbs, stones and written petitions, made for one purpose and carried on the body and fed so it keeps working. It is a core tool of African American Hoodoo, and its Louisiana relative is the gris-gris.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
