I have always believed that if you wish hard enough, your wish has a chance of coming true, and I wanted to share that idea and belief with others by, quite literally, bottling it.
Over the past few weeks, I have been making wishing bottles, my latest obsessive hobby. What began as a simple, playful distraction turned into hours, days and weeks experimenting with little bottles, different liquids and all sorts of filling materials.
My themed bottles are not grand ones to win the lottery, but small receptacles of hope designed to add a little fun and wishing magic to people’s lives, the kind of wishes we all make at this time of year – wishes for happiness, peace, health, love, positivity, adventure, prosperity and for our dreams to come true.
For me, they’ve been a quiet reminder to breathe and take things one day at a time. Creating them has been surprisingly therapeutic!
The idea of “magic in a bottle” goes back many centuries. Across cultures, small containers such as bottles, jars, vials, or pouches were used for protection, blessing, healing, or symbolic acts. In ancient Greece and Rome, people created small amulets and placed magical texts or charms inside tiny containers, often worn as pendants. These were used for love, healing, or protection.
In Europe, between the 16th and 18th centuries, people made ‘witch bottles’ filled with items such as salt, pins, nails, hair, herbs, or even urine! These were buried beneath hearths or thresholds to trap harmful magic aimed at the household, and many have been discovered in modern times, still hidden in old homes.
Hoodoo traditions, an African-American system of folk magic that developed in the 1600s and evolved through the 20th century, still use bottle spells today for protection, love, and justice. These might include hair, oils, herbs, or small curios and were often kept in the home or buried at specific doorways or crossroads.
In Irish and Scottish folklore, there is mention of bottles filled with salt, iron, herbs, or knotted threads and hung by doors to ward off fairies or malevolent spirits. Sailors too carried glass bottles containing knotted ropes, charms, seawater, or oil for safe passage at sea.
However, my wishing bottles are different! There is nothing witchy, mystical, or otherworldly about them. No spells, no symbols, no whispered incantations. They are simply made with love. Their magic is the kind that belongs to Christmas itself, that of imagination, creativity, playfulness, and the gentle reminder that life becomes more enchanting when we let ourselves believe that wonder is still possible, even if only for a moment.
I make them to remind people that it is okay to wish and that a wish made sincerely always carries a little power.
My desk looks like a laboratory as I have experimented with different coloured liquids. I have rocks for ‘strength’, sand and shells for ‘adventure’, golden hearts for ‘love’, healing plants for ‘health’, dice for ‘luck’ and minute scrolls with positive affirmations, amongst others. These have made each little themed bottle a moment of intention in its own tiny world.
However, my favourite ones are the ‘magic’ bottles. Coloured coconut oil, a pinch of stars and glitter and suddenly I am holding a tiny universe. When I shake it, I am enthralled by the sparkling colours that drift slowly inside like a miniature galaxy in motion. It is mesmerising and calming at the same time, providing me with a moment of stillness which I have sometimes needed for my mind. Perhaps that is the real magic, the moment of pause, of reflection, of hope for the future as I make my wishes.
Did you know that we have all been doing a little bit of magic since childhood, but we just did not call it that? Not the sort of magic that involves spells or strange rituals, but the kind that children understand instinctively and which is passed down through the generations to bring hope, possibility and wonder into our lives before we grew up, learned to be sensible and, as adults, forgot how to make wishes.
Children do not worry about whether something is real or symbolic; they just live in the moment of wonder, like believing in Father Christmas or the tooth fairy. From a very young age, we learned to place our hope into the smallest actions. We jumped over pavement cracks to avoid bad luck, weaved daisy chains for love and protection, made wishes on dandelions and eyelashes. We blew out birthday candles making the wish we were not allowed to tell others; we knocked on wood for luck and hugged our teddies for protection. I still do many of these!
At Christmas, we can feel magic in the air as it is undoubtedly the most magical time of the year, even for grown-ups. The world slows down, we decorate our houses with twinkling lights, and the wonder of childhood is palpable as we believe that something good might be just around the corner.
True magic lives in the small things such as shared rituals with the family, the children’s joy in seeing their presents and the companionship of those we love. Magic does not disappear as we grow older, but perhaps we simply stop noticing it.
My wishing bottles remind me that magic is something we create when we allow ourselves to imagine, to play, and to be optimistic and that I am still allowed to dream, and to expect magic in my life.
I have been sharing my bottles with friends and family, and I have so many that friends have started buying them as gifts for others. This way I hope to spread a little more magic into the world and I hope that you too will find your own magic this Christmas, whether it is a moment, a person, a gesture, or a memory. Whatever form it takes, may it remind you of something important, that wonder still exists, and we are all allowed to make wishes.
Have a magical Christmas and may all your wishes come true in 2026.
So now you know!
Read Isobel Costas’s last article: Did you know…Infante Dom Henrique – Henry the Navigator
