Love Baby, Love

Part 1......

"You ever put your arms out and spin really, really fast? Well, that’s what love is like. It makes your heart race. It turns the world upside down. But if you’re not careful, if you don’t keep your eyes on something still, you can lose your balance. You can’t see what’s happening to the people around you. You can’t see that you’re about to fall." 

- Practical Magic

Practical Magic is quite the font of wisdom when it comes to love and love magic. I remember watching this movie back when I was a young little witchlet and loving everything about it. To this day it still is my fuzzy comfy blanket witch movie – I will watch this over and over again and never tire of it (it is a movie adaptation of the book by Alice Hoffman). But this post is not actually a post on Practical Magic but it is a post about magic.

Love Magic to be precise.

There seems to be a frightening trend of late in the realm of love magic; every single person out there wants a love spell, has cast a love spell that went haywire, wants to cast on a specific person who has no interest in them, wants all sorts of things from love magic. It is disturbing; not least for the reasons love magic can go horribly wrong. There seems to be a pervasive need within the community to manipulate others using magic designed to target the heart. Whether it is for bringing a specific person into your life, ending a relationship of someone else in order to wreak havoc or get that person for yourself, revenge, and obsession, control…the list is endless. Workings for love can be powerful if done from a place of good intent and they can be just as powerful if done from a place of desperation; now before people get the wrong idea that I’m about to go all happiness and positive rainbows on you – I’m not a love and light person. I will work baneful magic just as easily as I will work non baneful magic. I’m not against it and this is not designed to be a lecture but more of an observation. So without further ado, let’s look at some common scenarios that are rearing their head of late. (And yes, I will be using mostly male pronouns because my experience has been mostly of women talking about this but also because it simplifies things when writing – it can go both ways and apply to both men and women):

1) “He’s cheating on me with other women but I want to tie him to me so he loves me and only me and stays faithful”

Unless there are children involved, I often wonder at this and feel sadness that a person would think so little of themselves that they are willing to tie themselves to someone who doesn’t deserve them. It speaks louder about the conditioning people face in society when we are willing to put up with a lot of crap in order to not be alone.

“It had made her too helpless, because that's what love did. There was no way around it and no way to fight it. Now if she lost, she lost everything.” 

― Alice Hoffman

A man (or woman) who would cheat on you has no real feeling toward you in any depth or meaningful fashion so while the spell will work and tie them to you, make them faithful, the behaviour and lack of emotion will manifest in the relationship in other ways. He may no longer cheat, he may even appear to love you but if it is against his natural inclination; he may also begin to act aggressively, obsessively or carelessly within the relationship. My advice would always be to cut loose the problem person and do the work to find yourself someone who is deserving of your devotion and love.

2) “He has a new woman; I want to break up their relationship and make him come back to me”

Hell hath no fury and all of that; mean spirited revenge magic to ruin a relationship and get back the offending partner – or in this case, the partner who has moved on and is clearly quite happy with someone else. Love magic forged in bitterness is always going to echo that bitterness within the relationship. I always tend to think that someone who has won the heart of another in this way is eventually going to resent the magically induced person. They will always know on some level that the person doesn’t truly love them and is likely held to them through the spell or working they performed.

Having them come back doesn’t magically fix the issues that broke you apart in the first place; and those issues will happen again. Think of it like this; you have basically restrained the other person, and while they might believe they love you, there is going to be a part of them that will eventually struggle against that restraint. Unless the work is done on a mundane level to fix the issues that broke the relationship; there will be a repeat down the line. It might not be for months or years but they will come back around again, you can be sure of that.

3) “I cast a love spell; got what I wanted but now I don’t want it anymore. How do I break the spell?”

Be careful for what you witch for dears because quite often, once you have what you thought you wanted, you might discover you don’t want it anymore. It might be all sunshine and roses to begin with. He (or she) seems so incredibly perfect. You begin building a life; you begin to make future plans but something just feels off. On paper it’s all perfect; it’s what you asked for. You love the person, you have your dream person, the other half of yourself, the person who ticked all the boxes but for some reason those boxes aren’t lighting your fire anymore.

“Love is the hardest habit to break and the most difficult to satisfy”

-Drew Barrymore

Chemistry is an important part of love; actual, real love. You can specify in your spell or working that you will have amazing chemistry with your checklist….oops I mean perfect match but the funny thing about the heart - it wants what it wants and no manner of intellectualising or rationalising will change that. Your checklist might seem like your soulmate until you realise that your heart is desiring something else completely. Love is a tricky emotion for a reason and it is so nuanced and layered that it is impossible to quantify in any true measure. You may find that your perfect match is actually someone who you would never have thought of in the first place; someone who didn’t fit a checklist but makes your heart sing and soul catch fire. The person you want could be someone who you can sit there with in comfortable silence and know that it doesn’t mean you have nothing to say to one another but that you don’t need to say anything to know that you love one another.

Reversing the spell is easy enough; cut chords, undo the feelings but make sure you learn your lesson from it.

4) “I want (insert name) here to become obsessed with me, think only of me and want to be with me” followed later on by “Help. He’s become obsessive and controlling”

Welcome to serial killer hell people. You opened the door to the crazy and now you’re dealing with someone who is very obsessed with you. The problem with obsession is that it will eventually become unhealthy. You are going to be dealing with a person who thinks only of you, wants to be with you only, whose sole purpose of living is to be all about you. Sounds romantic to begin with until that person is swiping your phone to check for messages, follows you to work because they can’t bear to have you out of their sight, wants to be friends with all of your friends or doesn’t want you to have any friends because that means you have affection and attention focused elsewhere. You’ve now obtained yourself a second skin, congratulations.

"Oh. Sarah, I can't stop thinking about you. I can't eat, I can't sleep. I think I love you. I've never loved anyone before... well, except for my mom and this puppy I had when I was little..." Chris - The Craft

This person will begin to control you, will begin to dictate to you how you can live, who you can hang out with, what you can do, what to think, how to behave…..not so romantic now is it? This is the worst case scenario of what can happen when you perform obsessive person specific love workings. This person could be a rapist, killer, wife beater, aggressive or abusive. Less so is that they simply have no life outside of you; you will be their everything and without you they have no reason to exist or think or be independent or motivated. You could literally be living with a full grown adult child who expects you to spend every waking moment with them, who can’t bear to be apart from you and will expect you to feel the same way.

See that hot new guy at work might seem like a bit of a catch but you don’t know him. You don’t know his story. He could be the biggest asshole in the world, he could be the type that expects you wait on him hand and foot, could expect all sorts of nasty shit from you because he’s that way inclined. He could have seven bodies buried in his backyard, an ex hiding from him because he’s violent, he could be slovenly and disgusting once he gets home. You. Just. Don’t. Know. This kind of spell is much harder to undo because there are going to be several layers to it. Unbinding, hot footing, separation, protection……lots of work.

“A woman could want a man so much she might vomit in the kitchen sink or cry so fiercly blood would form in the corners of her eyes. She put her hand to her throat as though someone were strangling her, but really she was choking on all that love she thought she’d needed so badly.” Practical Magic

5) “My partner is cheating on me and I want to curse the woman he’s sleeping with”

Oh dear. No. Just no. If she knew he was married and set out to ruin your marriage, okay she’s kind of fair game I’ll grant you but I never have never quite understood the inclination to bypass the partner and go straight to the other woman/man. Ultimately the blame lies with your husband/partner/significant other. Any person can throw themselves at your other half like a cat on heat but it is completely your partner’s responsibility and choice to say no. If they say yes, then sorry love, but they own most of the blame and ire in this situation. If the other woman knows you are married, is your sister, your best friend or known to you and knows what she is doing – it makes her a shitty person but still, your other half has the choice to walk away. So I would say, you want to go hell bent with revenge, at least be fair on how you portion the blame.

“Love is more powerful than reason” – Tyrion Lannister

You ultimately have to look deep within yourself and understand your needs and desires before you begin looking to make manifest that one person that will complement you in love. When I wanted to call love into my life I meditated on what I wanted and how I wanted to feel with this person. I could have written a very specific and somewhat epic checklist of what I thought I wanted but I think I would have missed out on what I have. My fiancé and I have our moments; don’t get me wrong, our relationship can be far from perfect on the occasion but we complement each other even though there are big parts of our individual personalities that are completely opposite. But it works. For whatever reason, it works.

Decks: The Wildwood Tarot and the Tarot of Sexual Magic