It’s no secret that skilled cooks don’t need to measure ingredients meticulously or follow a recipe. The same can be said about many practiced witches who have experience in their chosen area of spellwork. Spells come down to correspondences, sort of like a matching game. Add a little of a waxing crescent moon and the color red, sprinkle in some sage, and on it goes as you develop a customized framework for your spell. However, everyone must start somewhere, and going with a spell book to guide you will ensure you don’t end up with odd outcomes.
Spellbooks take the guesswork out of spellwork, and that’s something everyone can benefit from now and again.
We’ve combed through hundreds of spell books to locate or top options for 11 areas of magic. Ahead, the 11 best spell books that both experienced and baby witches will find beneficial.
Our team tests, researches, and carefully curates all our recommendations. This post may contain affiliate links. We may receive commission on purchases made from our links at no additional cost to you.
1. The Modern Witchcraft Spell Book
Best Overall
If you’re looking for the ideal comprehensive spell book then you can look no further. The Modern Witchcraft Spell Book gives you a modern look at crafting and casting spells. You’ll get a healthy introduction to spell crafting if it’s a new-to-you area of witchcraft before diving into the spell recipes. Each of these spells can be customized to your needs and range from spells for prosperity to spells for manifesting love. There’s a bit of everything in this spell book and that’s why it made the top of the list.
2. The Spell Book for New Witches: Essential Spells to Change Your Life
Best for Baby Witches
The Spell Book for New Witches includes 130 spells touching on romantic love, money, career, friends, family, health, protection, and abundance. We picked this option for baby witches because it gives an introduction to spellcasting to teach you the terms and magic types you’ll need to know to navigate spellwork. Get the basics covered like what spells are and what types of witches cast spells.
This spellbook is especially lovely because it includes a format that could pass as your grandmother’s favorite cookbook. It even gives you the specifics like where to perform the spell and how long it should take you to complete.
Let’s face it, the author is important when you’re committing to a book of their spells. Ambrosia Hawthorn wrote this spell book and has the credentials to back herself up. She is the owner of Wild Goddess Magick and the founder of Witchology Magazine.
This book gets five thumbs up from us but we do want to point out that there aren’t substitutions included in the book (not that you can’t do this legwork yourself if you want to) and it does focus heavily on the Wiccan path.
3. Spells for a Magical Year
Best Gift
This spell book was gifted to me and thus I feel it’s only right to recommend it as a good gift-giving option. It’s a gorgeous hardback book with spells for each month of the year with a total of 100 spells included. I love the seasonality aspect of this book as it’s one you’ll return to again and again as the months and seasons change. It’s also aesthetically gorgeous on the interior pages.
4. The Jar Spells Compendium
Best for Jar Spells
If jar spells are your preferred way to complete magic then you’ll want to hunt down a jar spell-specific book. Luckily, there are tons of these on the market thanks in part to the soaring popularity of this type of spell casting.
Of the options, which we covered in our roundup of jar spell books, this one is the best option overall. It features easy-to-find ingredients that won’t leave you searching high and low for especially expensive and rare ingredients. Within the book, there are 100 recipes.
5. Tea Witchcraft
Best for Tea Magic
Tea magic has more complexities than other forms of magic (in our opinion) as you are not only casting a spell but also trying to make sure your tea is bearable to drink. If you’re interested in dabbling in tea magic we highly recommend you do some research upfront or invest in a book like this one.
This book covers the history of tea, tea magic, base teas and their magical properties, magical tea recipes, and more. This book is hefty on information and definitely isn’t a light recipe book. You’ll get over 160 recipes spanning all the important areas like love, abundance, and spiritual health.
6. Candle Magic for Beginners: Spells for Abundance, Love, and Healing
Best for Candle Magic
Candle Magic for Beginners gives you 30 spells for love, healing, enlightenment, and more. You’ll learn about how to choose, charge, consecrate, and dispose of your candles properly. This book also covers the color correspondences of candles to help you determine which candles you should be using in your candle spellwork.
7. Hoodoo For Beginners
Best for Rootwork
This spell book covers the history of Hoodoo and Rootwork. It touches on candle magic, mojo bags, and working with ancestors. This book is designed in a way that is easy to follow and understand making it perfect for those who don’t have extensive knowledge of Hoodoo.
8. Knot Magic: A Handbook of Powerful Spells Using Witches’ Ladders and Other Magical Knots
Best for Knot Magic
Knot Magic touches on, you guessed it, knot magic. This isn’t as mainstream as candle magic and jar spells but it is an intriguing form of spell casting. The book includes a knot director and teaches you how to reinforce your desired outcome with additional knots or how to unknot a charm. This is one of the more intriguing books in this roundup in my opinion simply due to the subject matter. I’d recommend you give it a read to expand your spell-casting palette beyond more mainstream options.
9. The Old Norse Spell Book
Best for Practice Norse Magic
Finding a spell book that aligns with your path is integral in this whole spell-casting process. You want to align with the spells you’re trying to cast, obviously. We recommend The Old Norse Spell Book if Nordic magic is up your alley. This book covers the history of Norse magic but also gets into rune casting which is a magic form of spellwork in Norse Paganism. This book is a little lighter on the recipe-style spells and heavier on the divination and history of magic.
10. Protection and Reversal Spells
Best Spellbook for Self-Defense
If you’re at a place where negative energies seem to be following you everywhere then your spellcasting needs might be focused on self-defense through protection and reversal spells. This book focuses completely on axing hexes and nixing harmful energies.
11. The Modern Witchcraft Book of Love Spells
Best for Love Spells
The Modern Witchcraft series has a number of useful books and while this one is on the niche site we still think it’s a good option if you’re in the market for love spells. Love spells don’t have to be what you might think initially. This can be about attracting love and working on self-love.
The spells in this book include candle spells, crystal spellcasting, amulet magic, plant magic, edible spells (our favorite!), and more. There are even spells that can be used for the seasons and sabbats like an Ombolc Creativity Spell and a spell for blessing a new baby.
We also like how this book touches on rituals you can do with a partner to influence and promote love. It even touches on how you can craft your own spells which is the next logical step to spellcasting once you feel comfortable following others’ recipes.
What Factors to Consider
When you’re picking a spell book, you need to know right off the bat that they aren’t one size fits all. You should consider what type of spellwork the book focuses on (jar spells, knot magic, etc.) and what path it might focus on (Wiccan, etc.).
At the very least, if you can’t flip through the book because you’d making an online purchase then try to check out the table of contents to get an idea of what types of spell recipes are included in the book. You might be looking for a specific focus such as abundance or protection and the table of contents will give you the quickest idea of which book is right for your needs.