Witchcraft & the Art of Dyeing Things Black

I have commented here numerous times on the wearing of black clothes. It means all sorts of things to all sorts of people, but perhaps it most represents to me my valued plainness. I swear I must have been an old-fashioned Quaker in a previous incarnation, & to that I would attribute my values of plain living, clear thinking, plain speech (to the point of rudeness at times) & which find their embodiment in plain dress. Regardless of what my black may mean to the rest of the world, it represents clarity & nothing high-falutin' going on, at least at the time of writing.

Ironically it can be as difficult to keep black clothes black as it is to look after white clothes. Dyeing things is a very efficient way of restoring clothes' blackness. Given what I've already said, magically it can be a way of putting on, or restoring, simplicity & clarity. In fact I feel the act of dyeing clothes can be both a magical act & an allegory of witchly living.

I will confess to one disastrous attempt at hand-dyeing a shirt purple in my youth, which put me off. And perhaps the reputation dyeing has for being difficult & esoteric is the way in which it best reflects the 'craft of the wise'. So in a spirit of plainness this is where the Hound demystifies the process.

Unless you particularly want to experiment with effects or have lots of experience & a good knowledge of the chemistry, don't waste your time. Get a reputable machine dye & follow the instructions to the letter.

If your intention is to change the colour of a garment you must make sure it's the correct fabric to take the dye: to attempt otherwise is the kind of thing you read on forums: 'how do I undo this spell?'

Don't try to dye too much, it won't work.

Don't try to speed the process up, of necessity it takes several hours. You are actually starting a complex chemical reaction in your washing machine, opening up the 'pores' of the fabric & subtly changing it's composition. 

In addition to these intentional actions there are just a couple of things the witch must accept in life.

The reality is that fabric dyeing has a huge environmental impact, through the amount of chemicals & water used, particularly if bleaching is necessary before dyeing. Of course the lowest-impact clothing is made of unbleached, undyed natural fibre. My personal view is that the witch does well to face the reality that the garments we buy have already undergone these processes before they reach us. Balanced against this is the devastation wrought on clothes industries in poorer parts of the world by the impact of we affluent people giving away numerous clothes which are often exported. By freshening up our black clothes with dye, we can reduce the number of clothes we buy, rather than reusing or recycling them, which are lower down in the environmental hierarchy.

You may need to do an extra wash with bleach afterwards to clean the machine. There is a rumour that a lot of people find they can't wash whites in their machines after using them for dyeing. That's what comes of wearing white, & is a hint from the universe that moving over to black is the way ahead.