Magical Data is a reference site documenting magical correspondences — the symbolic associations between herbs, crystals, colors, planets, days, deities, and other elements that have shaped magical and esoteric practice for centuries. This page explains where our material comes from, the traditions we cover, and the traditions we have chosen to leave to others.
What we cover
Our entries draw on a specific lineage: the Western Hermetic tradition, Greco-Roman mythology and natural philosophy, European folk magic, Norse and Celtic tradition, and the modern Western occult revival that grew from these roots. This is the body of material best documented in the public-domain sources we rely on — Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1531), Culpeper’s Complete Herbal (1653), the Picatrix, Pliny’s Natural History, Crowley’s 777, the Greek Magical Papyri, the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, and dozens of other primary texts. Where we describe modern practice, we name it as such and identify how it developed.
Every entry cites the sources it draws from, with specific chapter or section references where possible.
What we don’t cover, and why
We do not cover several living spiritual traditions: Hoodoo, the African Diasporic Religions (Vodou, Santería, Candomblé, Lucumí, and others), Native American and First Nations practices, and white sage smudging. This is a deliberate editorial choice, not an oversight.
These traditions are closed practices. That term has a specific meaning. A closed tradition is one whose practitioners — speaking through their own cultural authorities — have asked outsiders not to take, teach, or commercialize their ceremonies, sacred items, and spiritual relationships. The reasons differ between traditions, but they share a common context: each of these practices belongs to a community that has survived enslavement, colonization, forced conversion, or cultural suppression, and whose ceremonies were often outlawed within living memory. The right to decide who participates and how knowledge is transmitted is, for these communities, inseparable from the survival of the tradition itself.
Some of these practices have public-domain documentation, often in the form of early-20th-century ethnographic reports. We have chosen not to use that material. It was, in most cases, produced under colonial conditions by outside researchers, and reproducing it as reference content extends the original extraction. The fact that something is legally usable does not mean it is ours to publish.
We have also chosen not to cover these traditions through respectful summaries or “outsider’s guides.” Our format — a lookup-style correspondence reference — is structurally a poor fit. The orishas of Santería, the lwa of Vodou, and the spirits of specific Indigenous nations are not items in a correspondence table. They are entered into through initiation, lineage, and relationship, and presenting them otherwise misrepresents what they are.
If you came here looking for those traditions
We respect that you may be searching in earnest. The right path forward is to seek out practitioners and writers from within those communities, who can speak with authority we cannot.
A note on chakras
The chakra system, used widely in modern crystal practice, originates in tantric Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The seven-chakra rainbow form most familiar in the West is largely a 19th-century Theosophical interpretation that has since been further reshaped by modern energy-work writers. Hinduism is generally an open tradition, and we include chakra associations on crystal entries where they are part of contemporary practice — but we frame them honestly as a modern Western adaptation rather than as the source tradition itself.
Questions or corrections
If you find a sourcing error, a citation that doesn’t check out, or a framing concern on any entry, we want to hear about it. This site is a long-term project, and getting it right matters more than getting it fast.