The Witch's Heart Read online

  In forms of folk magick and cunning craft, there is not the same amount of ritual preparation, yet the practitioner becomes prepared, opened, and aligned with the forces of magick through gathering herbs and other ingredients and walking through nature. Any type of magick requires preparation, even if that preparation is only for a few minutes, to obtain the proper mindset for successful spellcasting.

  Love magick is the same as any magick; you must be prepared for it. Love magick is some of the most experimental magick. Many people pick up a spellbook and, with no prior knowledge and training in magick,and not looking at the complete instructions, flip to a spell and do it. When it doesn’t work, they assume magick is silly or deceptive and chalk the whole experience up to a wild lark that didn’t amount to anything. I’m sure many people will do the same with this book. They were not sufficiently prepared, so the chance of success was slim to begin with. Though I ultimately did experience successful love magick, my first few times were not what I had hoped for, even though I had been formally trained in magick.

  Love magick is one of the hardest magicks to be well-versed in. Magick requires a certain amount of detachment, of letting go of your intention, and when you are lonely and desiring a mate, it’s hard to let go, even with a magickally trained mind. Since it is so hard for most of us, love magick requires even deeper forms of preparation if you want true and lasting success. Sadly, when people pick up a book on love magick, that’s not what they want to hear. They desire a simple series of steps guaranteed to work without any pesky preparation or introspection.

  Like Attracts Like

  One of the basic magick principles is “like attracts like.” In our spellwork, we use magickal correspondences—colors, scents, herbs, and stones—that have a similar spiritual vibration to what we are seeking to create. The qualities of the items denote their signature. Based on a principle known as the Doctrine of Signatures, it’s as if Mother Nature has signed everything with little instructions in the item’s shape, form, and quality to tell you how it may be used in medicine and magick.

  If we are seeking prosperity, we use rich things such as candles or stones colored in royal blue and purple, or herbs that have a rich, full, and spicy flavor like cinnamon or cloves. They have similar spiritual vibrations. These correspondences align with royalty and wealth, as in ancient times the poor did not have access to them. They can be used to create the vibration of wealth. With the vibration of wealth in your ritual, you can attract the energy of wealth and manifest your desire. Likewise, for protection you would use dark, reflective, and dense material—black and brown, lead and iron, or plants with a fiery or spiky signature—to create a boundary. For love, we use material that has the vibration of love. Traditional love correspondences can be found in chapter 6, though we will each have our own personal love correspondences based upon our own preferences, experiences, history, personal symbolism, and even allergies.

  The most important tool in any form of magick, but particularly in love magick, is ourselves. Our own body and our own consciousness are the primary instruments to be used. If we cannot vibrate in harmony with love ourselves, we will never be able to attract love. You must be able to feel true love for yourself in order to attract and create love with another. It seems like the classic catch-22: if I’m lonely and depressed and want a relationship, how can I feel happy, fulfilled, and loved while alone? If I felt those things, I wouldn’t need a relationship that badly—and that’s the key. While magick fills our needs, when you are focused on what modern practitioners call “poverty consciousness”—a level of awareness anchored in wants and needs, a level where you lack—you vibrate with the energy of wants and needs and only attract more wanting and needing.

  Ritual and magickal training helps us shift our consciousness, so even while we may feel a lack, we can focus our thoughts on the blessings and, while vibrating in the energy of love and blessings, attract more love and blessings to us. Love magick is learning to sharply focus that attraction to get exactly what you want, not just a general love and blessing. It doesn’t take away the longing and the need, but if the lack is the predominant factor in your consciousness, you’ll never attract what you really want.

  Letting Go

  A second principle of magick is that we must let go of our intentions so they can manifest. When we hold on to them, unless they manifest instantly, we begin to doubt our magick. As we doubt, we suck back tiny amounts of energy from our spell. The more we doubt and worry, because we are anchored in a place of need, the more we sabotage our spell until it no longer works. Like a magickal leech, we have drained it, and when it no longer has any energy, it dissipates and our spell never reaches fruition.

  While letting go of our intentions is a key factor, it’s sometimes seemingly impossible, as we are also told to follow up our working with real-world action. How do you detach yet follow up with actions in the real world? You must not be rooted in the poverty consciousness of lacking what you want. Some will say that they found love when they stopped looking for it, focusing on their own goals and dreams, and creating the space and relaxation in their life for love to find them. Though I agree that can work, because desperate hunting only yields more desperation, I do believe in traditional follow-up. Believe it or not, doing a love spell is not enough.

  I had one friend who sought magickal training specifically to do a love spell. I give him credit for trying, though so much of his training was done with only his love-spell goal in mind, he missed out on a lot of other deeper, personally fulfilling experiences of spiritual education. He did the love spell and in all likelihood did everything correct and by the book, yet he didn’t go out and make an effort to meet anybody. He worked an odd-shift job that left little time to socialize during the week, and on the weekend he stayed at home watching television and movies in his boxers. We joked that unless his dream girl delivered pizza, there was no way he was going to meet her.

  If you do a love spell, you have to be open to dates, personal ads, going to clubs, and being social with friends who have single friends. You have to make yourself available. In magick, we call it leaving many doors open for the magick to manifest. If you are set on only one way the magick can manifest, you have closed out many opportunities to success and made your spell less likely to succeed. If you focus on what you specifically want but not on how exactly you will get it, and you are open to seeing it anywhere, you have greatly increased the chances of your success. Put whatever limits are necessary on your magick to make sure you get what you really want, but the more specific, the more limited you get, the harder it becomes to manifest.

  Love and Fear

  So how do we become more in tune with the vibration of love and release our attachment from our needs and wants? That is where magickal training comes into play. My teachers emphasized that self-love was the key to all magick. Opening the heart and feeling self-esteem opens you to all other blessings and powers. It’s not to say that those who feel anger and hate can’t do successful magick, but they typically don’t have successful lives (as I would define success, by lives I would want) by fueling their magick with anger and hate all the time.

  The two major emotional, energetic forces in the universe are not love and hate but love and fear. While love expands, fear contracts. While love brings opportunity and optimism, fear closes us down and gives us a more pessimistic view. I won’t tell you one is good and the other is bad, for both are needed. Some fears are sacred. Fear tells us when we are in danger, when we need to run or fight to protect ourselves. Good fear can lead to self-defense and even righteous anger to change ourselves and the world. Fear can also help in initiatory experiences, to make our way through the challenges.

  But to live in a state of constant fear contracts us and limits us. When we are anchored in fear, we cannot receive, and we don’t feel love. We can be anchored in love and still acknowledge fear and use it appropriately as a tool, with
out shutting down to other information. So out of the two states of emotion, anchoring in love in the heartspace is much more desirable, both to live a happy life and to make happy, fulfilling magick.

  Most spiritual trainings encourage you to face your fears through intellectual examination, magickal exploration, and direct confrontation to determine which fear responses are healthy and which ones are limiting you. Magickal and mystical training also encourages you to experience love. In Witchcraft, we craft our Witch’s circles with Perfect Love and Perfect Trust. They are the keys for entering the circle, given in British Traditional-style Wiccan initiations from initiator to student. In such rituals, one is threatened with the point of a sword. If the student cannot enter the circle in Perfect Love and Perfect Trust, then it is better to fall upon the sword than enter.

  We all don’t have to undergo traditional initiation to understand the power of love. One of the first exercises I learned (and honestly hated when I first did it) was an affirmation mirror exercise. Affirmations are considered basic, and at times trite with modern pop-psychology lingo, but they are extremely effective if practiced regularly. I credit affirmations with changing my life—or at least changing the way I thought about myself and my life. Once I changed my thinking, my life then changed. Doing this preliminary work diligently in my early training made my later, more complex magick much more effective and made me a happier and more effective person in the long run.

  exercise } Mirror Affirmations

  This affirmation exercise can be done with eyes open, staring into a mirror, or with eyes closed, in a deep meditative state. Those with good focus can get into a meditative state while standing before a mirror (or holding a hand mirror) and opening their eyes without breaking the meditative state, finishing the affirmations, closing their eyes, and returning back to a normal state of consciousness.

  The purpose of saying affirmations in the mirror is that you are clearly directing them to yourself—you are clearly blessing yourself as well as facing who you are in a given moment. This makes some people feel nervous or silly, but you will soon move through those feelings and get closer to your true self. One of the tools of Witchcraft is the mirror. The glyph ( ) of the planet Venus (named after the goddess of love) is said to be a mirror. It is also the modern symbol for woman, the circle topping an equal-armed cross. Mirrors are used for divination and protection magick, and having a hand-held mirror on your altar for magickal work, including affirmations, is of great advantage.

  The advantage of saying affirmations in a meditative state is that your full consciousness—the three minds of your conscious self, psychic self, and superconscious self, also known as the middle, lower, and higher selves—hears your program and works together from your new instructions. Meditation aligns all parts of your soul.

  The instructions below count you into a meditative state. You can either opt to open your eyes and look at the mirror before you (or a mirror in your hand) or keep your eyes closed and still say the affirmations. Affirmations are best said out loud, but if you are in a deep meditative state, you might find yourself saying them silently, and silent, internal affirmations work too.

  1.Start by closing your eyes and relaxing your body. Give your entire body permission to relax, starting at the top of your head and relaxing down through your body, down to the tips of your fingers and the tips of your toes. Imagine waves of relaxation sweeping through your body and releasing any tension or stress out to the universe.

  2.Relax your mind. Imagine your mind is like a clear-blue, bright sky. Any unwanted thoughts are like white, wispy clouds, and your will blows through the sky, clearing it, until it’s completely peaceful and empty.

  3.Feel your heart beating with love. Feel the love flowing through your body, circulating around and inside you. Feel the love you have and the love the universe and the Divine have for you.

  4.Within your heart, feel the light of your soul, your inner fire. This inner fire will guide you and protect you in all things, leading the way.

  5.Imagine a screen in your mind’s eye, and on that screen draw the number 12. Hold it for a moment, and then erase it. Draw the number 11. Hold it and erase it. Continue downward in your count until you reach the number 1. You are now in a meditative state where everything you do is for the highest good of all involved.

  6.Release the screen of your mind and hold no image. Simply and silently count backwards from thirteen to one, going deeper into meditation, where anything is possible.

  7.If you have a mirror with you or before you, slowly open your eyes and gaze into the mirror. Look deep into your own eyes and say the following affirmations. If you don’t have a mirror or simply desire to keep your eyes closed, keep them closed. Say each of these affirmations at least three times in a confident manner, either out loud or strongly but silently in your own mind:

  I love myself.

  I love others.

  I am loved by the universe

  (or Divine/gods/Goddess and God/Powers—

  whatever term you prefer);

  I am able to give and receive love.

  I forgive myself.

  I forgive others.

  I am open to love on all levels.

  Feel the affirmations becoming planted in your mind like seeds, and when you repeat this exercise, you are watering and nourishing these spiritual seeds. They will soon take root and grow strong. If your eyes are open, close them and relax for a moment.

  8.When done, count yourself up from one to thirteen and then one to twelve, with no visualizations. When you reach the last one, feel your fingers and toes, arms and legs. When you are ready, open your eyes.

  9. Bring both hands above the head, with palms facing the crown. Sweep down the front of the body, over the face, neck, heart, belly, and groin, pushing out and then down toward the ground. Say:

  I release all that does not serve my highest good.

  Repeat the sweeping motion two more times, following each with one of these two additional statements:

  I am in balance with myself.

  I am in balance with the universe.

  10.Ground yourself as needed. Feel your feet extend into the ground, anchoring your physical body in the physical world.

  Not only are positive or constructive affirmations important, but we must also be vigilant in our thoughts to understand our unconscious negative affirmations about love, romance, and relationships. One of the most insidious ways they sneak into our consciousness is through music. When we hear a catchy tune and naturally want to sing along, rarely do we ask ourselves if the lyrics are something we want to reinforce in our personal programming. Most songs about love are about love gone bad, and singing the lyrics over and over again reinforces that imagery and idea in our mind.

  Now, before you protest, let me tell you I had a very difficult time with this magickal teaching. I felt it was an attack on my music. I love my music. My college degree is in music; I’ve been a songwriter; and I’ve found dark, depressing, and even angry songs to be very therapeutic. I feel the same way about movies and books. So when a magickal mentor told me this teaching—to purge yourself of such “negative” thoughtforms from your music and other media—I resisted. Yet, looking back many years later, I realize she had a point, but there was something missing from her simple teaching to understand the role of sacred art and healing.

  There is absolutely nothing wrong with any art that is considered depressing or angry, and it truly can be therapeutic, giving you a method by which you can express similar feelings. We are all a part of the human condition and go through many of the same basic responses, even though our own situation and perspective is unique. The problem is when we get stuck in them. A really good performing artist in any genre knows how to channel the energy of the art or the energy of the character. They don’t get stuck in the song or performance; it moves through the
m and they let it go.

  In magick, we have a practice known as invocation, where we invoke into our bodies an energy, a spiritual entity, and then, when the ritual is done, there are banishings and releasings to bring the magician back to normal. A good performer does that too, though it might be done intuitively. “Bad” performers, who can be very good at their art but not in this release process, find themselves in the tabloid dramas of continually reliving their worst moments. The bad times that fueled their art then become programmed into their consciousness, and they cannot escape them to live a happy and fulfilled life.

  If you can sing along with a song and be with it in the moment but not dwell on the times it brings you back to—in other words, to let it pass through you—you are doing well. If you get stuck in a song and, after singing it, you notice it alters your mood or outlook, even though you like the song and think it’s fun, you are probably impressing these unwanted programs into your consciousness. You might want to take a break from depressing or angry music, or heartache and break-up songs, particularly when you are feeling like you are blocked to love, romance, and affection. When you do sing them, try to think of such songs as specific performances with a beginning, middle, and end, and when you end, release the spirit of the song.

  Love and Healing

  Much of our preparation for any magick is through healing. Keeping our thoughts in good order and in harmony with our intention is an integral part of healing. Love magick is a form of healing magick, for we must heal our relationship with, and our connection to, the force of divine unconditional love. Through healing that connection, establishing it firmly in our lives, all things are possible. If fear is a roadblock to love, we must examine our fears in relationship to love. We must be brutally honest with ourselves when it comes to love magick if we truly seek success. Sadly, many people are not reaching for true success and true love but a quick fix without the work. While the spell might last for a bit, you must build a foundation to achieve lasting lifetime results.