Spelled Fragrance Oils vs. Ritual Oils: What’s the Difference?

Hey guppies!! 🫶 One of the questions we get asked all the time is what’s the difference between our Spelled Fragrance Oils and our Ritual Oils? While both are intentionally crafted here at the Crossroads, the way they’re formulated, worked, and ultimately meant to be experienced is actually pretty different. So we wanted to finally give you guppies a little peek behind the waves 🫧

✨ Our Spelled Fragrance Oils

Our Spelled Fragrance Oils live right at the crossroads of fragrance, skincare, glamour, and spellwork! (see what I did there 🙂‍↕️) We use cold pressed sweet almond oil as the base of this collection. Sweet almond oil is an emollient naturally rich in fatty acids, particularly oleic and linoleic acids, which help soften the skin and reduce moisture loss! This makes it such a beautiful base for something designed to be worn on the body.

But of course… we’re witches. The physical properties weren’t our only consideration.🙂‍↕️ Almond also carries symbolic associations with abundance, fertility, prosperity, sweetness, blessing, and attraction!

🌸 Creating the Fragrance

Every Spelled Fragrance Oil begins with its scent. Instead of choosing a fragrance and deciding what magic to attach to it afterward, we build our blends around the intention and energy we’re trying to create. Fragrance and essential oils are layered together so that the scent profile and magical correspondences can complement one another, and if you’ve ever wondered about those three scent notes highlighted on your bottle, those are the stars of that particular blend! But before your fragrance ever meets its carrier oil, there’s another part of the process.

🌙 The Magic BTS

Our fragrance concentrates are given time to rest in master jars before blending and bottling. This allows the aromatic profiles of each essential/fragrance oil to settle and marry together, helping the finished fragrance develop into a more delicious scent.

And while they’re resting? Like Kim said, We get to work!

The master jars undergo several workings centered around the intention of that particular fragrance, including being worked with through at least one full moon cycle before they’re ready for their next stage. Once we’re happy with both the scent and the working behind it, the fragrance is blended into its carrier base and finally bottled. It’s genuinely one of our favorite processes because you’re not just receiving something that smells beautiful, you’re receiving something we’ve spent weeks intentionally building from the scent profile to the energetic work behind it, and every time I receive those sweet guppy messages complimenting their scents it makes it all even more magical for us, truly <3!

🌿 So… What About Our Ritual Oils?

This is where things get a little witchier and a little slower. Our Ritual Oils are created in smaller batches of 6-8 oils and at a much slower pace, and we promise they’re worth the wait. Unlike the fragrance collection, which begins heavily with scent development, our Ritual Oils usually begin with one thing, An idea for a working.

We’re constantly pulling inspiration from spells, traditional magical correspondences, mythology, the ocean and its creatures, both real and mythical and sometimes simply from ideas we bounce off one another while creating. Once something clicks, it’s time to start building the oil.

🕯️ Building the Working

Before we touch a carrier oil, we choose the botanicals and other ingredients that will become the foundation of the working. We look at their traditional correspondences, how their intentions interact with one another, and equally importantly whether they actually make sense together in the formula. Because adding twelve magically corresponding herbs doesn’t automatically make something twelve times stronger. 😭 We want every ingredient to have a reason for being there.

Once we’ve finalized the botanical mixture, we perform our awakening ritual and begin choosing the carrier blend, this is another major difference between our two collections. Our Ritual Oils don’t all use the same carrier base…

Depending on what we’re creating, we work with oils like rosehip, sweet almond, castor, sunflower seed, grapeseed, raspberry seed, rosemary infused oils and others. We choose our blend based on both the physical characteristics we want from the finished oil and the intention we’re building around it. Then comes one of the longest parts of the process.

🌿 The Infusion

Our herbal mixture is given an extended cold infusion period in its carrier blend. Cold infusion allows oil soluble compounds from our botanical ingredients to move into the carrier oil without relying on high heat. Some botanicals are especially beautiful in infused skincare preparations, one of our favorites being calendula, which is exactly why our skin loving Calendula Single Herb Ritual Oil has such a special place in our collection. 🌼

But while those jars might look like they’re simply sitting on a shelf. They’re definitely not being ignored. Throughout the infusion period, our Ritual Oils undergo a much more involved magical working process. Depending on the intention of the oil, this can include candle workings, prayer, repeated energetic work, and deity or spirit offerings when appropriate to that specific formula. Every Ritual Oil has its own magical process.

Once we’re satisfied with the infusion, the botanicals are strained from the oil and the finished blend receives its final working, only then is it ready to be bottled. Each bottle receives a fresh pinch of its corresponding botanical blend along with a carefully selected essential/fragrance oil chosen to complement and deepen the intention behind the oil.

And finally, It’s ready for the Crossroads 🖤

🫧 So Which One Should You Choose?

Think of our Spelled Fragrance Oils as wearable glamour magic.

They’re scent forward, skin loving, intentionally worked, and designed for those moments where you want your fragrance ritual and your magical intention to become one experience.

Our Ritual Oils are more working forward.

They’re created more like a spell in a bottle, botanically infused and built specifically around magical intention. They can become part of candle workings, ritual preparation, anointing practices, or however you personally incorporate ritual oils into your craft. Neither collection is the “stronger” version of the other. They’re simply different forms of magic.

And that’s exactly why we love having both at the Crossroads. From Our Crossroads to Yours 🫶 Creating these oils takes time. Sometimes the process is exhausting, sometimes our workspace looks like a tiny apothecary exploded in it 😭, and sometimes an idea that sounded PERFECT in our heads has us going straight back to the drawing board, LITERALLY . But watching an idea slowly turn into something you guppies can actually hold in your hands makes every bit of it worth it!

We’re so so so excited for all of the new goodies making their way to the Crossroads, especially as our little product look revamp continues to come together! and more than anything, we’re incredibly thankful for every single one of you who’s purchased, shared, reviewed, posted, recommended us to a friend, or simply stuck around to watch this little Crossroads continue to grow.

You guppies aren’t just watching us build it.

You’ve become part of building it with us. 🤍

Thank you for being here.

Dorian’s Crossroads ✨🐬🐬🐬✨