How accurate are those "witchcraft necessity" lists really?

You've seen them around. Lists that tell you what tools you "need" to do witchcraft. Here are the results of a recent poll I did to see how accurate they really are.

I sent out a poll on Tumblr to gather information for an article I’m working on about those pesky “10 things you need to practice witchcraft” lists. I sampled the most common items and asked if people use them in their practice. I was able to get 78 witches to take the survey! I am using the results in a much larger article, but I thought I'd publish just the poll results as its own little article.

Here are the results (there will be a lot of images and graphs in this article, but I’ll also have captions with the statistics in case the images don’t load). I also linked the spreadsheet containing the raw data at the bottom if you’d like to see every result.

Qualitative data:

Do you use candles?

94.9% yes - 5.1% no

Do you use an Athame?

20.8% yes - 79.2% no

Do you use a chalice?

22.1% yes - 77.9% no

Do you use dried herbs?

92.3% yes - 7.7% no

Do you use fresh herbs?

73.1% yes - 26.9% no

Do you use tarot or oracle cards?

93.6% yes - 6.4% no

Do you use crystals?

78.2% yes - 21.8% no

Do you use a book of shadows?

67.9% yes - 32.1% no

Do you use/ have an altar?

821% yes - 17.9% no

Do you use a "smudge stick" or a smoke cleansing bundle of herbs?

42.3% yes - 57.7% no

Do you use a bell?

47.4% yes - 52.6% no

Do you use a wand?

33.3% yes - 66.7% no

Do you use incense?

75.3% yes - 24.7% no

Do you use a caldron?

47.4% yes - 52.6% no

Do you use a besom?

17.3% yes - 82.7% no

Do you use a pentacle disk/mat?

22.4% yes - 77.6% no

Do you use a mirror?

39% yes - 61% no

Qualitative data:

I also asked questions that can’t really be graphed. They’re really interesting to read, so if you want to look at those results, you can find them on this spreadsheet. Scroll to the right to see them. They’re all very interesting.

But to sum them up:

The first question asked: What is a tool you would describe as essential to your witchcraft?

Many people said that there wasn’t any object that was essential for their craft. Besides that, candles, water, herbs, and divination objects were popular answers.

Do you have a tool you use more often than others? What is it?

Candles, tarot cards, and crystals were popular answers to this question.

Do you have a tool that you bought and never use? What is it?

Thankfully, quite a few people said no. But some other popular answers were chalices, pendulums, and athames.

Have you ever bought a tool for witchcraft because you heard it was "necessary"? Do you use that tool?

Thankfully, a lot of people also said they haven’t bought something that was deemed “necessary” just because they were told it was. I applaud you guys for your discernment! For those that said yes, they had bought stuff bc it was on a list, some said that they use them, but of those who didn’t, common bought but unused items were: incense, a wand, a chalice, and crystals.

The last question was: Have you ever seen a list of witchy items you "need" posted online or in a book?

This was a really fun survey to conduct! It has inspired me to do more survey-based questions for further articles. (If you have a topic you’d like to see, please comment!) Numbers are fun, and I’d love to be able to do really big sample sizes (but 78 is still a nice size!)

I want to thank everyone who participated. You made this article possible!

Wanna look at the raw data? I put it in a spreadsheet here for people to view:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c0t2M6ulnA6ZHYp7Ri0cDCtXt1OC-J7XrOvYrlGC-0g/edit?usp=sharing

Was there anything from this list that surprised you? I’d like to hear about it in the comments!

Thank you for reading! I hope you found these results interesting.

This publication will never be behind a paywall! But if you’re feeling generous, you can throw a couple dollars into my cauldron. Here’s the link to my Venmo.

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You can find me on TikTok too @ phthalo.blue.witch

Thank you so much for reading! Have a magical day!