“Actually all of that is garbage!   Traditionally witches were illiterate (as were, of course, most people the world over until the mid twentieth century), so they owned no special books and were certainly too poor to be able to afford any magical paraphernalia, most of which — including the original Book of Shadows — were invented by the self-styled King of the Witches’ Gerald Gardner in the 1950s, or by Alex Sanders in the late ’50s and early 1960s.

“As for performing spells, or concocting potions ‘authentically’, originally this meant going through the act sincerely with emotion and natural aptitude for the Craft.   It’s a lot like baking a cake or mixing a chemical reaction, or having a green thumb for gardening.   All three require you to put in something of yourself to make it work.   An uninspired cook could use the best recipe in the world, using the ‘correct’ ingredients in the ‘correct’ amounts and orders and still not produce a great cake.   Likewise with chemical reactions, which sometimes other scientists cannot readily reproduce.   Often leading to the original scientist being labelled as a charlatan by his peers and dying in shame and poverty.   Only to be vindicated years, or even decades later, after some other inspired scientist has finally managed to reproduce his results.   So it is with magic also:

“The exact words and ingredients aren’t as important as the sincerity of those performing the rituals: you must believe magic will work, before it can work for you!   If you do believe you can virtually make up your own spells and charms.   And although magic potions sometimes require specific ingredients, usually a sincere witch can make them work with a few substitutes.   Which is particularly fortunate with some of the more ancient recipes handed down by word of mouth from century to century, since they often ask for weird ingredients such as Belladonna, Faery saliva, dragon teeth, Devil’s semen, and so on.   Which either don’t exist outside of fairy stories, or if they do exist in the real world, no one knows what they really are, or what their modern names are.

“Likewise with costume.   It doesn’t matter one whit whether you perform your rituals naked, in ceremonial robes, or in street clothes.   Whatever your coven feels comfortable in (or out of) is right for you….”