Love Spells Actually

Note: I prefer the spelling magick to refer to the occult and spiritual practice.

Love magick is the easiest, most intuitive magick you can do. Find a feather, and put it in your hair. Lover, fly to me. Pick up a shiny rock to wear at the hollow of your throat. My one true love, look at me.

Love magick is also the oldest form of natural magick — assuming you define magick as the ability to manifest desires using occult means. I would argue love magick is older than the human race.

When a peacock shivers his feathers to fix the attention of his intended, is he not performing a kind of hypnosis? Gaze into the moving eyes at the center of my feathers. You are becoming fascinated with me. Very, very fascinated.

I can feel the pearls being clutched even as I type. “Wait a minute,” people say. “You can’t be doing love spells. You’re interfering with the other person’s free will.”

Did anyone say this, even once, before 1982? And then, quite suddenly, everyone was saying it. Overnight, love magick was decided to be problematic.

The magick at the heart of all true magick. The spark without which we’d all still be one-celled amoeba brooding in disgusting green water. That’s suddenly a problem?

Yeah, I don’t think so. Maybe love magick isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s us.

Why people disparage love spells

When somebody tells us love magick is wrong, they usually include some mumble about karmic boomerang. Love spells are reputed to have a lot of blowback. It goes back to the idea that love magick works by enslaving someone else’s true will.

Evidently, somebody out there is arrogant enough to think their love spells can annihilate their target’s free will. If you’re that much of a wizard, absolutely, break your wand and sit down. But I haven’t met that wizard yet.

This idea of blowback probably comes from a misunderstanding of the Wiccan Rede — the concept that whatever you do comes back on you three times. Maybe and maybe not. That’s a religious belief we don’t all share.

As ethical crystal workers, we do share a belief that it’s wrong to use magick to control somebody’s mind and take over their free will. Fair enough.

Does love magick really do that? C’mon. You know it doesn’t. The peacock may dazzle the peahen, but just as often, she turns up her beak and dances away in search of more popcorn.

Nobody’s magic binds anybody to become a mindless love-zombie. This is natural magick, not a Stephen King mini-series.

Love magick tweaks the universe to make love more likely. You may look more attractive. You may find yourself running into your crush more often. But, in the end, if the target isn’t open to being swept off their feet, on their feet they will remain.

So what’s the real problem with love spells?

• Love is a four-letter word
• Love stinks
• Love hurts
• Everybody hurts

Oops, sorry. That’s my Spotify list.

Seriously, though, it’s in our nature to desire and be desired. It’s perfectly fine to do the little magic things that make us seem more attractive. Is putting on eyeliner a karmic event?

Even if it makes your eyes bigger and your crush suddenly notices your eyes and now he’s feeling things he never felt before and…

Well. It’s a question we all have to answer for ourselves.

As a crystal worker, I don’t have the ego to think a simple pink stone cupped in the palm of my hand will “bind” anybody’s free will. All I ask of a love spell is that it touches the beloved’s heart.

Crystal love magick is a quiet voice breaking through the dull dailiness of ordinary life. It isn’t pushy or demanding. Rather, it gifts the target with an opportunity to see the sparkle within another’s heart.

You can nope out of love spells, but you can never nope out of making choices that have consequences. When you choose not to sparkle, that too is a choice that impacts the other person’s ability to form an opinion based on so-called free will.

Who is to say the mundane vision of life is more real than the magickal vision? Crystal workers believe the opposite is true. The great moments of life come when you see the miracle that was in front of you all along.

Ask yourself this. If I hide the real me, the magickal me, is that less subject to karmic boomerang? Would my beloved make a different choice if they saw me more clearly?

One genuine danger

Sometimes, all this hand-me-down wisdom about not doing love magick goes back to ego. Nobody wants to feel foolish by doing something that might not work. So they make a big, elaborate reason why they shouldn’t even try.

That said, there’s one issue you should think about before you pick up your first love crystal. The very first step in any magickal working is to form a clear intention. There are as many kinds of love spells as there are love objects, but they all come down to one basic intention.

Please love me. Look at me, notice me, stop taking me for granted, see me. Love me.

Oho. Here is a possible origin for those stories about karmic boomerang. On the spiritual and metaphysical levels, where you focus your attention is where you can expect to see increase.

The more you concentrate on the beloved, the more you love them. Before it ever crosses the room to work on the beloved, love magick works on you. Your spell changes your aura first.

I can’t stress this point too much. Crystal magick is natural magick. Gentle persuasion, not the psychic binding of anybody’s will.

Well, it isn’t the psychic binding of anyone’s will except your own.

Make sure you’re not putting your focus on an unworthy target. Many people do a reading before they perform any spell. In the case of love magick, I highly recommend it.

If the cards and the stars and the psychic and your mom and your best friend all say, “nope,” it’s a nope.

Rose Quartz as a non-karmic love stone

Quartz is one of the world’s most common minerals. Most people’s first love stone is Rose Quartz. It’s the perfect stone to start with simply because it’s pretty, affordable, and easy to find.

A pebble can be fished out of a stream or a fishbowl. A whole pound of polished pebbles can be purchased for a few dollars online or at your local rock shop. Pretty polished spheres or other sculptures can be purchased for a bit more.

Rose Quartz is a relaxed stone on the metaphysical level. The soft pink reflects its nature. It’s a gentle heart stone associated with gentle love, pets, friendship, fidelity, and lasting relationships.

As a result, it’s the go-to stone when you know there’s something or someone missing, but you don’t know what or who. You don’t have a target already in mind with this stone. Rather, you’re looking to heal an emptiness in your heart.

A very basic spell starts with a smooth, polished Rose Quartz pebble. Purify your new stone by letting it bathe in the light of the full moon. When the time feels right, visualize the silver light of the moon taking on a warm tint of pink. Love and peace are now flowing into your life.

Later, wire-wrap the Quartz pebble as a pendant or slip it into a tiny medicine bag before placing it on a chain that lets it fall to your heart. Some women have popularized the wearing of (small) stones in their bra. You can also choose to carry it in your pocket.

This stone isn’t critical or nitpicky. Rose Quartz is there to open your heart to the possibility of peaceful love. It may draw new friends or even new pets into your path, not necessarily passion. It may also reawaken an older love or remind your spouse to look at you with fresh eyes.

But the heart wants what it wants

Of course, we all know that so many, many love spells are inspired by a passionate crush on a particular beloved. Rose Quartz is gentle, and sometimes we’re aching for intensity. That’s what the dire warnings against love magick are really all about.

A lot of traditional love folklore involves getting hold of your target’s hair. It’s a bit chicken-and-egg. If you’re not that close to your crush, how on earth are you going to clip that stolen curl? Crawl through a window, scissors in hand, while your target is snoozing away?

Some of these spells are a sanity test. Are you really nuts enough to break into somebody’s house to commit a love spell? I don’t think so. We’re practical magick workers looking to improve our lives, not attention-hungry stalkers with a craving for high drama.

Remember the first law of magick. Harm none. Humoring an obsession is harming yourself. If you find yourself considering something illegal, dangerous, or gross in the name of a love spell, step back.

What do I mean by gross? An example: in the 1970s, a spell went around that said a woman could catch a man by stirring her menstrual blood into his coffee. Ugh, no. Putting bodily fluids into people’s drinks is not what positive, practical magick is all about.

Always consider how you would feel if the same magick was worked on you. A gentle crystal working to open a heart to a possibility is one thing. A bloody “binding” spell is quite another.

A simple spell

I like the following simple spell adapted from the Scott Cunningham classic, Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem, and Metal Magick. Find a Rose Quartz cut into the shape of a heart. If it’s a large Rose Quartz bead, so much the better.

Purify the stone. Then, make it into a piece of jewelry you can wear at your heart under your clothes. How you do this is up to you and your level of skill.

In the photograph up top, you can see a rather advanced example of a necklace I made years ago that included Rose Quartz heart-shaped mini-beads as well as a large Rose Quartz central heart. A sterling silver clasp and sterling accent beads finished the project.

No need to design anything that complicated. You could wire-wrap your Rose Quartz heart. You could tuck it into a small pink bag. You could even join that group of women who prefer to slip the stone into a special cache inside their bra.

However you plan to wear the stone, visualize your desire for love as you work on the project. Don’t be surprised when you begin to encounter your crush more often. The universe will give you opportunities to get to know each other better.

What you do with those opportunities is up to you and your crush.

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