What to Do With Inherited Ritual Tools
A practical order of operations for a box of somebody else's practice: what may not be legally or culturally yours to keep, what old collections can contain that is genuinely unsafe to handle, and the question nobody names — whether you want the previous owner cleansed out of the object or kept in it. What it is not is legal advice, and it does not assume you want any of it.
Contents
Work through three questions in order, and do not skip to the third. First: is this object legally and culturally yours to keep? Eagle feathers, Native American sacred objects and initiatory tools belonging to a lineage are restricted by federal law or by the tradition they came from, regardless of who left them to you. Second: is it safe to handle? Old collections routinely contain minerals such as cinnabar and galena, unlabelled substances and degraded containers. Only then comes the spiritual question, and the useful version is not how do I cleanse this, but do I want the previous owner's presence removed or kept — because those are opposite goals and cleansing is not reversible. You are also allowed to want none of it, and rehoming is a better answer than obligation.
Under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act it is a federal offence to possess bald or golden eagle parts, including feathers, with a narrow exemption for enrolled members of federally recognised tribes; members of state-recognised tribes and unenrolled people of Native ancestry are not covered.
Source/tradition: Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, 16 U.S.C. 668; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Possession of Eagle Feathers and Parts by Native Americans
Trafficking in Native American human remains and cultural items is a federal offence, and the repatriation statute itself governs federal agencies and federally funded institutions rather than private households.
Source/tradition: Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq.; 18 U.S.C. 1170
Minerals commonly present in older collections include cinnabar (mercury sulfide), galena (lead sulfide) and realgar and orpiment (arsenic sulfides), which is why unidentified specimens should not be ground, used in water or carried as shedding dust.
Source/tradition: Cornelis Klein and Barbara Dutrow, The Manual of Mineral Science, 23rd edition, Wiley, 2007
Many initiatory traditions hold that certain tools, regalia and hand-copied books belong to the lineage rather than the individual, and are to be returned, passed to a named successor or destroyed on the practitioner's death.
Source/tradition: Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2019; Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, Oxford University Press, 2009
Practitioners routinely cleanse an inherited object before putting it into use, most commonly by time wrapped in cloth, by smoke, or by dry contact with selenite.
Source/tradition: Editorial observation of contemporary practice
Separating the memorial object from the working tool — cleansing the tools and leaving one item uncleansed as the link to the person — is a common way practitioners resolve the conflict between the two goals.
Source/tradition: Editorial observation of contemporary practice
An inherited tool carries the previous owner's energy or intentions, which will affect or harm the new owner unless removed.
Source/tradition: No evidentiary basis; cleansing conventions vary widely between traditions and none produces a measurable change
VERIFIED = verifiable in scientific or official sources · TRADITIONAL = historically or culturally recorded · LIVED PRACTICE = widely practiced, experiential knowledge · NOT PROVEN = spiritual interpretation, not scientifically established.
Quick answer
Work through three questions in order, and do not skip to the third. First: is this object legally and culturally yours to keep? Some inherited items — eagle feathers, Native American sacred objects, initiatory tools belonging to a lineage — are restricted by federal law or by the tradition they came from, regardless of who left them to you. Second: is it safe to handle? Old collections routinely contain minerals such as cinnabar and galena, unlabelled substances and degraded containers. Only then comes the spiritual question, and the useful version of it is not “how do I cleanse this?” but “do I want the previous owner’s presence gone, or do I want it kept?” Those are opposite goals and most people never notice they are choosing between them. You are also allowed to want none of it.
Three questions, in this order
A box arrives, or a room has to be cleared, and inside it is somebody’s practice: a deck softened at the corners, a bag of stones, jars with handwriting on the lids, a pendant, a knife, notebooks. The internet will tell you to cleanse it and start using it. That is the third question, and answering it first is how people end up with a federal problem, a poisoning risk, or an object they never wanted and now feel unable to get rid of.
The order that actually works is: may I keep it, can I safely handle it, and do I want it in my practice? The first two have answers outside your own judgement. The third is entirely yours, and it is the one where you are permitted to say no.
Do you actually want it?
Start here, because it is the question people most often skip and most often regret skipping. Inheriting a practice is not the same as inheriting an interest in it. If your grandmother read cards and you do not, you are not obliged to become someone who does in order to honour her. The object is not a test.
Nor does declining have to mean discarding. A deck kept in a drawer, unused and intact, is a perfectly honourable outcome, and it is a far better one than a deck used resentfully for a year and then thrown out. Several of the options further down — passing it to another practitioner, giving it to a teaching collection, retiring it formally — are ways of saying no that do not involve a bin.
Two feelings tend to get tangled here and are worth separating on paper. One is grief, which attaches itself to objects and makes any decision about them feel like a decision about the person. The other is obligation, which is often coming from other family members rather than from the deceased. Neither is a reason to take up a practice. Give it six months if you can; objects keep.
Temple Tip — photograph and list it before you touch anything else
Before cleansing, sorting, gifting or discarding a single item, photograph the collection as you found it and write a plain list: what it is, where it was, what was next to it, anything written on it. Ten minutes of work that you cannot do later. It matters for three separate reasons. It is your only record if a question of provenance or estate ownership comes up. It preserves the arrangement, which in a working practice is often information — what sat with what, what was kept apart. And it gives you something to hold onto when you decide to let objects go, which makes letting them go considerably easier. Photograph the handwriting on the jar lids especially. Handwriting is the first thing lost and the thing people miss most.
What may not be yours to keep
This section is not legal advice and we are not lawyers; it is a list of the places where inherited occult collections most often collide with rules that exist whether or not anyone in the family knew about them.
Eagle feathers and parts. The most common surprise in American collections. Under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act it is a federal offence to possess any part of a bald or golden eagle, including feathers. The exemption is narrow: it runs to enrolled members of federally recognised tribes, who may hold feathers under permit, acquired before the Act’s protections, passed down within the family, or received as gifts from other Native people. Members of state-recognised tribes without federal recognition are not covered, and neither is a person with Native ancestry who is not enrolled. If you have inherited feathers and cannot identify the bird, the sensible step is to contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rather than to quietly keep or quietly discard them.
Native American sacred objects and human remains. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act governs federal agencies and federally funded institutions, so it does not directly regulate what sits in a private house. But the associated criminal provision makes trafficking in Native American human remains and cultural items a federal offence, and museums and tribal repatriation offices will help with items that appear to be sacred or funerary. If the collection contains anything that looks like a medicine bundle, a pipe, or a burial-associated object, stop and ask before you handle it further.
Human remains generally. Occult collections sometimes contain bone. Rules vary widely by state and by origin, and the answer is not obvious. Do not assume that inheriting something makes possessing it lawful.
Initiatory and lineage tools. A different kind of restriction, and one no court will enforce. Many initiatory traditions hold that certain tools, books and regalia belong to the lineage rather than to the individual, and are to be returned, passed to a named successor, or destroyed on the practitioner’s death. If the person kept a coven or an order, there may be someone who is supposed to receive these things, and that person will usually be findable through their notebooks. Ask before you assume, and be prepared to be told that a given item should come back.
The estate itself. Personal property passes under a will or under state intestacy rules, and until an estate is settled the objects in it may not yet be anyone’s to keep, gift or sell — however clearly the deceased intended you to have them. If the collection has value, or the family is not in agreement, this is worth raising with whoever is handling the estate before objects start moving.
What old ritual objects can contain
An old practice collection is, materially, an unlabelled chemistry set assembled over decades. This is the section nobody writes and everybody needs.
Minerals are not automatically safe to handle. A stone collection built before the current wave of interest may contain specimens sold for their appearance rather than for handling. Cinnabar is mercury sulfide. Galena is lead sulfide. Realgar and orpiment are arsenic sulfides. Malachite is a copper carbonate. Handling an intact, dry specimen briefly is a different proposition from grinding it, putting it in water to make an elixir, or keeping it loose in a pouch that is shedding dust. If you cannot identify a stone, do not make water with it and wash your hands after handling.
Jars and bottles. Unlabelled powders, oils and liquids from an unknown decade should be treated as unknown substances, not as ingredients. Old oils go rancid, old herbs grow mould, and some traditional preparations used materials nobody would choose now. Photograph the label, then dispose of the contents responsibly rather than tasting, burning or applying anything.
Old glass, metal and paint. Vintage vessels may be lead-glazed. Painted statuary from before the 1970s may carry lead paint. Some antique glass fluoresces because it contains uranium. None of this makes an object unusable as an altar piece; it makes it a bad choice for food, drink or anything that goes on skin.
Dust and mould. A box that has been in a damp basement for fifteen years is a respiratory issue before it is a spiritual one. Open it outside, and if the contents are visibly mouldy, deal with that first.
Cleanse it, or keep the link?
Here is the distinction that most advice on this subject misses entirely. “Cleansing” an inherited object and “connecting with” the person it came from are opposite operations, and you cannot do both to the same object at the same time.
Most cleansing practice is designed to strip an object of what has attached to it and return it to a neutral state, so that it can take your intention instead. Applied to an inherited deck, that is precisely a removal of the previous owner. If what you actually wanted was a link to your grandmother, a thorough cleansing is the last thing you should do — you will get a clean deck and lose the thing you were reaching for.
The opposite case is just as real. If the object came from someone whose practice you did not respect, or from a relationship that was difficult, or if you simply do not want to be reading with somebody else’s hands, then removal is the point and you should cleanse it properly and without sentiment.
So decide first, in one sentence: I want this object as a link to the person, or I want this object as a tool and the person is not part of it. Then act accordingly. A middle path exists and practitioners use it constantly — cleanse the working tools, keep one object uncleansed as the memorial — but it works because it separates the two functions across two objects rather than asking one object to do both.
If the link is what you want, this is ancestor work rather than object work, and it is worth approaching as such: starting an ancestor practice is a more solid foundation than an heirloom deck, and it is also the frame in which you can sensibly ask who you are actually in contact with.
How practitioners cleanse an inherited object
Assuming you have decided on removal, the conventional approaches, with their material caveats:
Time and separation. The least invasive and most widely used: wrap the object in cloth, put it away, and leave it for a set period — a lunar cycle is the common interval. Costs nothing and damages nothing, which matters for a fragile or valuable object.
Smoke. Passing an object through the smoke of a herb bundle or resin. Suitable for most things. Not suitable for delicate paper, painted surfaces or anything that will hold the smell permanently, which includes old card stock.
Selenite and other dry-contact methods. Resting an object on or beside a selenite piece is popular precisely because it involves no water, no smoke and no heat, which makes it the default for decks, books, textiles and anything with a finish you do not want to disturb. Selenite itself is a soft gypsum mineral and dissolves in water, so it is cleaned dry.
Salt. Effective in tradition, hard on materials. Salt corrodes metal, abrades finishes and draws moisture. Use it around an object rather than on it, and keep it away from anything silver or steel.
Water and sunlight. Both are traditional, and both are the wrong choice for most inherited items. Water ruins paper and damages soft minerals; sustained sunlight fades cards, textiles and dyed stones, including amethyst. An heirloom is exactly the case where the gentle methods are correct.
Whatever you choose, do it once and deliberately rather than repeatedly. Repeated cleansing of the same object is almost always anxiety rather than practice, and it is a signal worth reading: if you cannot stop cleansing an object, the honest question is whether you want to keep it at all.
Object by object: what to check first
| What you found | Check first | Safe cleansing method | If you don’t want it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tarot or oracle deck | Completeness; notes tucked inside | Time in cloth, or dry selenite contact | Gift to a reader; keep the box as memorial |
| Loose stones and minerals | Identification before any wet use | Dry methods only if unidentified | Rock club, school collection, or sale |
| Jars, oils, powders | Treat contents as unknown substances | Photograph, then dispose responsibly | Keep an empty labelled jar if you want one |
| Feathers | Species — federal law may apply | None until identified | Contact Fish and Wildlife rather than binning |
| Knife, cord, regalia, hand-copied book | Whether a lineage expects it back | Hold it untouched until you have asked | Return to the group or named successor |
| Statuary and altar figures | Paint age; whether a deity was housed in it | Smoke or time; not water on painted surfaces | Rehome to a practitioner of that tradition |
| Notebooks and papers | Read before deciding anything else | No cleansing; these are the documentation | Keep or scan even if you keep nothing else |
Passing it on without discarding it
If you have decided against keeping something, there is almost always a better destination than a bin, and finding one tends to resolve the guilt that makes people hold on to things they do not want.
To another practitioner. The most common and usually the best. A deck that goes to someone who will read with it has a continuous life, which is what most people actually want for it. Say what it is and where it came from; let them decide about cleansing.
To a teaching or study collection. Occult study groups, some university folklore and religious studies departments, and museums of witchcraft and magic accept donations of documented material. Notebooks and correspondence in particular can matter historically in a way that individual objects do not.
Back to a tradition. For lineage tools, or objects belonging to a living tradition that was not yours, returning them is a real option and usually a welcome one.
Formal retirement. Where an object should not continue — because the tradition requires it, or because it was made for a working that is over — most practices have a convention for retiring it deliberately rather than throwing it away. The same reasoning applies as when retiring a deck of your own.
Practically: how to work with this
Open it somewhere you can leave it. A table you do not need for a week. Sorting an inherited collection in one sitting on the kitchen counter produces bad decisions.
Photograph and list before you sort. As above. Ten minutes, unrepeatable.
Make four piles, not two. Keep, pass on, ask about, and unsure. The fourth pile is the important one, and it is allowed to stay unsorted for a year.
Read the notebooks first. They usually answer the questions the objects raise — who else was involved, what a thing was for, what was supposed to happen to it. They are also the part most likely to be thrown out by someone who does not recognise what they are.
Do the legal and safety checks before the spiritual ones. Feathers, remains, unlabelled substances, unidentified minerals. Then everything else.
Choose link or tool, in writing, per object. One sentence each. Then cleanse the tools and leave the memorials alone.
Start with one object. If you do want to take up something from the collection, take one thing into use and leave the rest boxed. A whole practice adopted at once is somebody else’s practice; one object at a time becomes yours.
Selenite Stick, 3 in. — The Crystal That Cleanses Itself
The practical choice for inherited material, because it works by dry contact: no water on old paper, no smoke into card stock, no salt against metal. Rest a deck, a pendant or a notebook beside it and leave it. Selenite is a soft gypsum mineral and dissolves in water, so it is kept and cleaned dry.
$4.95
View the selenite stickQuiz: what should you do with this object?
Answer three questions.
1. What is it?
Voices from practice
Practitioners who have inherited a collection commonly report that the notebooks turned out to matter far more than the objects, and that they nearly threw them away because they looked like ordinary stationery. The recurring advice is to read everything paper before deciding anything about anything else.
It is widely reported that the pressure to take up an inherited practice comes from surviving relatives rather than from the person who died, and that recognising this makes the decision much easier. Practitioners who declined and rehomed the working tools generally describe relief rather than regret.
Among those who kept an heirloom deck, a common observation is that they cleansed it thoroughly, felt they had lost something, and could not undo it. The lesson people draw is the one set out above: decide whether you want the link or the tool before you act, because the removal is not reversible.
What we don’t promise
This is not legal advice. Laws on eagle parts, human remains, cultural property and estate ownership vary and are enforced by agencies, not by websites; where an object may fall under any of them, ask the relevant authority or a lawyer rather than relying on an article. It is not a materials safety assessment either: if you cannot identify a mineral or a substance, our position is that you should not put it in water, on skin or in fire, and that is a precaution rather than a diagnosis. We make no claim that an inherited object carries the previous owner’s energy, that failing to cleanse it can harm you, or that any cleansing method removes anything measurable. And nothing here guarantees a result, predicts an outcome, or substitutes for medical, psychological, legal or financial advice.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to cleanse an inherited tarot deck before using it?
There is no rule that says so, and there is a good reason to think twice. Cleansing is designed to strip an object of what has attached to it, so if you inherited the deck because you wanted a connection to the person, cleansing removes exactly that. Decide which you want — the link or a neutral tool — and act on that decision rather than on habit.
Is it disrespectful to give away things I inherited?
No, and rehoming is usually better for the objects than keeping them unused out of obligation. A deck that goes to someone who reads with it continues to have a life. Notebooks and correspondence can go to a study collection. Where a tradition expects tools back, returning them is the respectful act rather than keeping them.
I found feathers in the collection. What do I do?
Identify them before anything else. Possessing bald or golden eagle parts is a federal offence with a narrow exemption for enrolled members of federally recognised tribes. If you cannot identify the bird, contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and ask — that is a better route than either keeping them quietly or throwing them away.
Are old crystals safe to handle?
Most are; some are not, and older collections were assembled for appearance rather than for handling. Cinnabar is mercury sulfide, galena is lead sulfide, realgar and orpiment are arsenic sulfides. Brief handling of a dry intact specimen is different from grinding it, making elixirs, or carrying it loose in a pouch. If you cannot identify it, keep it dry and wash your hands.
What if I don’t practise at all and just inherited a box of this?
Then you have an object problem, not a spiritual one, and you can treat it that way. Photograph and list it, check for feathers, remains and unlabelled substances, look for a name in the notebooks who might want the working items, and keep whatever has meaning to you as a memento. You are not obliged to take up a practice to honour anyone.
Can I sell inherited occult items?
Sometimes, and there are three checks first. The estate may not be settled, in which case the objects are not yet yours to sell. Certain categories — eagle parts, Native American cultural items, human remains — carry legal restrictions on sale specifically. And where items belong to a lineage, selling them is likely to be a serious breach even where it is lawful.
Sources & further reading
- Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, 16 U.S.C. § 668, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Possession of Eagle Feathers and Parts by Native Americans (fws.gov) — the prohibition and the scope of the tribal exemption.
- Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 25 U.S.C. § 3001 et seq., and the associated trafficking provision at 18 U.S.C. § 1170.
- U.S. Department of Justice, Policy on Tribal Member Use or Possession of Eagle Feathers (2012) — the enforcement policy commonly known as the Morton Policy.
- Cornelis Klein and Barbara Dutrow, The Manual of Mineral Science (23rd edition, Wiley, 2007) — standard identifications for cinnabar, galena, realgar, orpiment and malachite.
- Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2019) — on initiatory lineages, hand-copied books and what belongs to a tradition rather than a person.
- Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford University Press, 2009) — on how magical books circulate, are inherited, and are destroyed.
- Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Boscastle — an example of an institution that accepts documented donations of practitioner material.
If you are cleansing inherited material, our selenite and smudge sticks and sage cover the dry and smoke methods respectively.