Citronella Essential Oil: Love It Or Hate It

Citronella essential oil is available in a lot of products not just aromatherapy oils. It is available in candles and body sprays and diffusers in drug stores, department stores and garden shops. However, if you do want citronella essential oil, it is one of the least expensive of aromatherapy oils available. Why is it so popular? Because it is a proven bug repellant. And some people just love the fresh, citrus scent. Citronella essential oil is a scent you either love or hate.

What Is It?

Citronella essential oil is made from a tall grass like plant that grows in Sri Lanka. They steam distill the leaves to get the oil. It is often used in combination with other essential oils to tone down the smell. For example, using a combination of peppermint and citronella essential oils is often recommended to keep mosquitoes away. The best of pure citronella essential oils are in small dark bottles that do NOT say For use in Oil Lamps only.

What Else Is It Good For?

If you like the scent of citronella essential oil, you are in luck. There are many therapeutic benefits to smelling the oil and including it in massage, steam inhalations or oil lamps or diffusers. Citronella is said to promote happiness, and to get the grey matter in the brain moving, but yet keep you calm. For physical ailments, a hot compress or a massage with a few drops of citronella essential oil added can sooth aching joints.

Other essential oils that really go well with citronella are lemon, lavender, tea tree, peppermint and cedarwood. Any aromatherapy oil shouldn t be used by heavily pregnant women. Citronella should not be used by a woman in any stage of pregnancy or nursing. Before you use any citronella oil blends that require skin absorption, you really should do a patch test first. This is where you put a drop on your wrist or arm or lower leg and see if there are any negative changes in that spot for the next 24 hours.

Magical Uses

Those of Pagan persuasion know that scents have a way of bringing certain energies about. These scents are like lightning rods they attract or deter certain energies. Citronella essential oil is used in modern magic spells to deter anything. It can be argued that it isn t the citronella oil that does the magic; it s just the magician s heightened sense of awareness about keeping away from undesired elements. However citronella works, it serves as a focus of the magician s personal power to activate a spell.