Poppet Magic: What a Poppet Is and How Witches Make One

A poppet is a small doll of cloth, wax, clay or straw. In folk magic it stands in for a person, a home or a hope, so the care you give the figure reaches what it represents. Here is how witches make one, tend it and retire it.

How to Make a Poppet: Step by Step

This walk-through makes a cloth poppet, the most common kind. Wax, clay and straw versions are in the materials table further down. Lucya Starza, a London witch and the author of Pagan Portals: Poppets and Magical Dolls, writes that she treats a magical doll "in some ways like a little child." Make yours in that spirit.

What you need

• Two pieces of natural fabric, about 20 cm square: cotton, linen or wool felt. An old garment you have worn is ideal, because it already carries you.
• A template: a gingerbread-person shape drawn freehand on paper.
• A needle and cotton or linen thread.
• Dried herbs for the purpose, plus cotton wool or wool fleece for bulk.
• A personal link: a strand of your hair, a nail clipping, or your signature.
• Optional: a small stone, a folded petition paper, embroidery thread for a face, and an anointing oil you know is safe on your skin.

The steps

1. Name who it is and what it is for. Write one sentence, such as "This is me, and this poppet is for rest and recovery." Keep it to one purpose, because a poppet asked to do four things rarely holds any of them well. Make a poppet of another person only if they ask you to, and use their own words for the purpose. Otherwise, make one of yourself or your home. A healing poppet supports how you feel and is not a treatment. If something physical is wrong, see a doctor, and let the poppet run alongside that care, never instead of it.
2. Choose a time, if you want one. Timing is optional. Some practitioners use a waxing moon for building up and a waning moon for release. See working with moon phases if you want to go deeper.
3. Cleanse your space and materials. Use whatever method you normally use for cleansing your space. Wash new fabric first, because the sizing makes it stiff to sew.
4. Cut and sew the body. Pin the template to the doubled fabric and cut around it. Sew the edge with small stitches, leaving a gap at the head or side for the filling. Speak your purpose sentence as you go. Matching the words to the rhythm of the needle going in and dragging through settles the intention into the work in a way a single recitation does not. Turn the poppet right side out if you like a clean seam.
5. Fill it. Pack in the bulk filling first, then the herbs (see herbs for the filling) and any stone (see stones by purpose). Wear gloves with any plant you do not know well, since some irritate skin or are toxic. If you might bury or burn the poppet later, use no polyester. Where you can, buy or gather your herbs with care; sourcing herbs ethically covers how. Place the personal link near the heart. If you want, tuck in a folded petition paper (see writing a petition). Then stitch the gap closed while the dried herbs crackle under your fingers.
6. Give it a face and marks. Embroider or draw a simple face. Add your initials, a scrap of a favourite colour, or a tiny charm. These details help the poppet become its person.
7. Name and awaken it. Hold it and say aloud, "I name you [name]. You are [name]." Breathe on it, anoint it lightly, or pass it through incense smoke. Then state the purpose one last time.
8. Give it a home and tend it. Wrap it in clean cloth, set it in a box with herbs, or keep it on your altar or by your bed. Keep filled poppets out of reach of children and pets.

Caring for Your Poppet While It Works

How you tend a poppet depends on what it is for.

• Healing poppet: Once a week, re-anoint it, speak a little encouragement, and wrap it in fresh, clean cloth on a bed of herbs.
• Protection poppet: Let it sit where it can "see" the door. A high shelf, a drawer by the entrance, or the eave of a shed all work, as long as you never damage the building.
• Self-care poppet: Keep it warm and clean, and speak to it the way you would want to be spoken to on a bad day.

Hiding a figure in the house has deep roots. The historian Ceri Houlbrook, writing for Folklore Thursday, describes objects concealed in old homes as "supernatural safeguards." For more ways to guard a home, see protection spells and wards and the witch bottle, a sister concealed charm.

In my view, small and regular tending does far more than a single grand charging. Five quiet minutes every Sunday beats an hour of candles and chanting followed by the poppet sitting forgotten in a drawer until spring. A poppet you look after stays alive in your attention, and that attention is where the working lives.

Consent and What Poppets Are For

1. Yourself first. A poppet of yourself needs no one's permission.
2. Others only on request. Make a poppet for a friend only when they ask, ideally with something they choose to give you.
3. Home and pets. A household guardian or a pet guardian is a gentle, common use.
4. No harm, no compulsion. Harm poppets and love-compelling poppets appear in the history below, and they are not taught here. For love magic, try ethical love workings that respect choice. For the darker side of the record, read about curses in folklore.

How to Dispose of a Poppet When the Work Is Done

Retire a poppet when any of these happens:

• Its purpose is complete.
• The person it represents has recovered.
• A protection season has ended.
• The poppet itself is damaged.

To retire it:

1. Thank it. Say, "Thank you for your work."
2. Unname it. Say, "You are no longer [name]. You are cloth and herbs and thread."
3. Remove the personal link. Take out the hair, nail clippings or handwriting, and bury or burn them separately.
4. Choose the ending. Use the table below.

If you are undoing a working rather than finishing one, read retiring or reversing a working.

Troubleshooting: Synthetic Stuffing, Second Thoughts, and Old Poppets You Find

Your poppet has synthetic stuffing. Dismantle it instead of burning it. Unname it first, take out the stuffing, and return any herbs to the soil.

The person you made it for has changed their mind. Their consent ends the working. Unname the poppet, give back or bury the personal link, and dismantle it.

You found an old poppet in a wall or chimney. Most finds like this were made to protect or to heal, not to harm. The Concealed Revealed project, written up on Queen Mary University of London's History of Emotions blog, finds that the leading reading of hidden household objects is that they were apotropaic, meaning protective of home and family. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic's catalogue entry for object 1166 describes two tiny wax poppets, each in a walnut shell bound with rag, found in a chimney in Sale, Cheshire, and kept for healing. If you find one:

1. Photograph it where it lies.
2. Then tell a local museum or the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, or simply leave it in place.

Poppet Types, Fillings and Materials

The fillings below are common folk-practice examples, drawn from Wikipedia's "Poppet" summary of everyday practice. They are traditional correspondences, not treatments.

For the full lists, see the full herb chart and crystals by purpose. A kitchen-witch poppet sits naturally within kitchen witchcraft. If you like filled charms, spell jars, another filled charm work on a similar logic.

Is a Poppet a Voodoo Doll?

No. Danielle N. Boaz, an associate professor of Africana studies at UNC Charlotte and the author of Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur, writes in Anthropology News ("Ten Facts about the Racist History of 'Voodoo'") that the "voodoo doll" did not come from Haitian, Louisiana or West African religions. It came from European witchcraft traditions, which used cursing images long before the Atlantic slave trade.

Wikipedia's "Voodoo doll" article summarises the scholarship the same way. The pin-stuck doll is not prominent in Haitian Vodou or Louisiana Voodoo, and the stereotype grew from a 1933 travel book and from films such as White Zombie (1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943).

Haitian Vodou is a living religion. It honours Bondye and the lwa, it is led by oungan and manbo, and Wikipedia's "Haitian Vodou" article describes it as an initiatory tradition whose rites are not open to outsiders. This page borrows nothing from it. Boaz also notes that practitioners prefer the spelling "Vodou." For more, read the Voodoo vs Hoodoo primer and what a closed practice is.

The Boscastle museum even holds a mass-produced novelty pin doll that jokes about "fleas" and "kittens." It is a product of the stereotype, not of any faith.

Why a Figure Works: Likeness and Link

The folklorist James George Frazer, writing in The Golden Bough as an outsider, gave names to two principles practitioners still recognise. In what he called homoeopathic magic, the magician "can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it." In contagious magic, "whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact."

A poppet uses both:

• Likeness: Its shape imitates the person.
• Link: Hair, handwriting or worn cloth connects it to them. Modern practice calls this a taglock.

Frazer's record holds tenderness too. He describes a Batak woman of Sumatra who held a wooden image of a child in her lap, believing it would help her become a mother. It was a hope poppet, made by her, for herself.

The word itself comes from Middle English popet, a small child or doll, and in Britain it is still what a grandparent might call a toddler. Starza prefers "poppet" because it is older and less tied to cultural appropriation than "voodoo doll."

A Short History of Poppets

Ancient figures

Egypt. Egyptian execration figurines from the 6th Dynasty, described in Wikipedia's "Execration texts" article, were unbaked clay statuettes of bound foreigners with names written on their chests. More than 1,000 deposits of them are known. The Penn Museum's Expedition Magazine ("Secrets of Ancient Magic") explains that destroying an enemy's name was meant to destroy the threat they posed. These were state rites of protection as much as curses.

Around 1155 BC, the conspirators against Ramesses III reportedly smuggled wax figurines into the harem, according to the Gurob Harem Palace Project's summary of the trial records.

Greece. Plato's Laws (Jowett's translation, The Internet Classics Archive) mentions men unsettled by waxen images left at their doors, at crossroads and on their parents' graves. A lead binding tablet now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, dated 345-335 BC, was wrapped twice and pierced with a nail.

In Theocritus's second Idyll (Edmonds's translation, Theoi Classical Texts Library), Simaetha melts a wax "puppet" to make Delphis melt with love. Read it as history, not as a model. Compelling a particular person's love is a working most modern witches decline.

Healing figures. These run alongside the darker material. Starza describes people leaving wax images of themselves or of an injured body part at sacred sites, and a Mesopotamian tablet recording a clay-effigy spell for a dog bite. This healing line leads directly to the modern healing poppet.

English records

Most English records reach us through accusers, so they show what people feared more than what anyone did. Bridget Bishop was hanged at Salem in 1692.

For the full story, see the Salem witch trials and curses in folklore.

The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

Wikipedia's "Museum of Witchcraft and Magic" article gives the museum's story:

• 1951: Cecil Williamson founded it on the Isle of Man, where Gerald Gardner was its "resident witch."
• 1954: Williamson sold that site to Gardner.
• 1960: Williamson settled his own collection in Boscastle, Cornwall.
• 1996: Graham King took ownership.
• 2004-2005: The Boscastle flood damaged the museum, and it reopened the following year.
• 2013: Simon Costin took over on Halloween.

The 2017 exhibition Poppets, Pins and Power: The Craft of Cursing, curated by Dr Louise Fenton and described by WhichMuseum, called curse poppets the museum's most controversial holdings. It found that their makers were often "suburban husbands and wives, middle class families," with motives ranging from a sense of justice to protection and healing. The museum's own English guide puts the heart of it simply: "Protection magic is closely connected to healing magic."

Brídeóg and Corn Dolly: Seasonal Cousins of the Poppet

At Imbolc, according to Wikipedia's "Imbolc" article, the Brídeóg ("little Brigid") was made of rushes or reeds and dressed in cloth, flowers or shells. In the Hebrides, a bright shell or crystal called the reul-iuil Bríde, the guiding star of Brigid, was set on its chest. Girls carried it from house to house and then put it to bed with lullabies. For ways to work with the festival today, see Imbolc rituals.

At harvest, Wikipedia's "Corn dolly" article explains, the corn dolly was woven from the last sheaf to shelter the corn spirit, left homeless once the field was cut. In spring it was ploughed into the first furrow. That is the oldest model of a poppet returned to the earth it came from, and it fits Lughnasadh first harvest rites beautifully.

The Poppet in The Crucible

In Act Two of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Mary Warren gives Elizabeth Proctor a rag poppet she sewed in court. She sticks a needle in its belly for safekeeping while Abigail Williams watches.

That night Abigail stabs herself with a needle and blames Elizabeth. The court officer Cheever finds the needle in the doll and arrests Elizabeth. A gift has become evidence.

Miller drew on real testimony: poppets really were cited against Bridget Bishop. You can read more in Salem history and myths. The lesson for a witch today runs the other way from the courtroom's. A doll is not proof of harm, and most poppets are made for care.

Made with care and kept with respect, the poppet remains one of the oldest tools of tenderness in folk practice.