Mortar and Pestle

Recently, several Consortium members and I were working on a project to make chalk for magical usage. In addition to grinding salt, herbs and eggshells, I used my mortar and pestle to grind some resin, which left it in a bit of a mess.

I have a marble mortar and pestle that I got years ago, from a kitchen supply store. I've seen them for sale at specialty occult stores, but mine serves me just fine (and was a good sight less expensive). It is a pretty decent size, being about four inches diameter, so still easily held in a hand for grinding, but big enough to give me room to work with a decent sized batch.

I'm very much a kitchen witch when it comes to my mortar. It gets used for everything that needs grinding, from spices for dinner to magical supplies. Normally, I just grind a bit of salt in it, and that cleans it right up. This time, even after several batches of salt, I had some resin still clinging to it.

After a bit of reading online, I tried using rubbing alcohol to clean that last bit of resin out. I poured enough in the bowl to cover the bottom grinding part, and set the pestle in it to soak as well. A few minutes later I swished it around, rubbed it a bit with my fingers, and rinsed it well in hot water, and it worked brilliantly!