9. In the day and hour of Venus, strain the tincture again, taking out any remaining herbal powder and discarding it. The resulting tincture should be bottled in a dark glass bottle and a convenient dropper bottle for your own dosage. Label them Lady’s Mantle Spagyric Tincture with the date.
For those wanting to go the extra mile, you can add the following step between steps 8 and 9: You can dissolve the powdered ash in distilled water before adding it back to the tincture. Pass the water through an unbleached coffee filter. Discard the filter and evaporate the filtered water in a glass dish, which should have dried salts at the bottom. Scrape the salts off and then add them back to the tincture.
Take one to nine drops daily, on the tongue or in a glass of water. It can be taken at the start of the day, before meditation or ritual, or at the end of the day, whatever is intuitively appropriate for you. Consuming the small amount of tincture daily will transform your relationship with your body, with your womb, and with the goddess of nature and fertility. Be introspective. Journal. Talk. See a counselor. Things will come to heal and transform you. Lady’s mantle will readjust your relationship to the feminine powers within your body and within the universe.
A similar tincture can be made by men for virility issues using Martian herbs such as nettle and parsley.
Detrimental Herbs for Pregnancy
While many Witches and advocates of herbal care popularize the benefits of herbs both magickally and medicinally, there are quite a number of herbs that a pregnant woman should avoid as being detrimental to the health of the unborn fetus. This list is provided not as a guide to herbal abortions, as such a procedure can result in your own death, but to educate herb users as to what is and is not safe during pregnancy. Many of these herbs are used at times to aid giving birth, but such use should be left to an herbal healthcare expert, not home use. This is by no means an absolute and complete list, but it is a good starting point.
Angelica, Chinese (Dong Quai)
Black Cohosh
Blue Cohosh
Cotton Root Bark
Mugwort
Nutmeg
Papaya
Pennyroyal
Rue
Slippery Elm
Tansy
Vervain
Wild Carrot (Queen Anne’s Lace)
Wormwood
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1. See “A Note on Synthetics,” page 181, regarding both musk and civet oils.
nine
Magickal Relationships
While many love magick teachings simply focus on finding either a romantic partner or a sex partner, few really talk about sustaining a relationship. Most of us have the ideal that once we find a perfect partner, it will all work out. All our movies and television shows make the finding of a partner the central theme, the quest of most romantic stories. Once the couple finds each other and truly connects, they ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after, like a fairy tale. No one wants to write a story or film a movie that checks in on the couple twenty years later, or even ten years later, as that ruins the mystique and romantic notion we have of how love should work. While we think love should work that way, in my experience, it doesn’t.
Finding your love is only the first step of the journey. We focus on it because everybody can relate to the search for love; it’s a common denominator to the human experience. But not everybody can relate to the day-to-day reality of the work put into a healthy and mature relationship. That’s less common in life, so it’s less common in music, books, and film. The finding is the first step, the bare minimum, while the next step is learning how to care for your relationship, to grow it and sustain it through all its cycles and phases.
One of the most important lessons we can learn as magickal people is that we must put our effort and our magick into our relationship as it is developing and as it continues to grow, rather than wait for things to go wrong. When things are good, continue to do love spells for you and your partner—just do different types of love spells. Follow them up with real-world action. But do not wait to use your magick or to put effort into your relationship only when things are failing. Most people look to magick only as a last resort, but if you are living a magickal life, it is a part of your everyday reality, including your romantic relationship.
There are a lot of natural analogies that can be used for the relationship and the wisdom of the Witch. My friend Kris says that relationships are like a candle flame in a room. One problem new relationships often have is the intrusion of other people, rather than focusing on getting to know the new person and building a foundation. If you keep opening and closing the door, bringing in new people to see, judge, and give advice in the relationship rather than giving more attention and fuel to the fire itself and your partner, you risk the breeze from the opening and closing door snuffing out your new flame. Such a danger can occur in a long-standing relationship where the flame has dwindled low and can be easily snuffed as well.
My friend Dave, who is not practicing a magickal spirituality, looks at relationships like a gardener with a flower. One partner is the gardener, tending to the relationship, while the other is the flower, looking pretty and appreciating the tending. Though at the time I thought it was a very astute observation of many people, I think this attitude dooms a relationship to failure. Though everybody has individual strengths, assets, and weaknesses they bring to a relationship, if you look at one partner as solely the caretaker and the other as the “caretakee,” then you have a recipe for resentment and imbalance. Many people look at relationships exactly this way, even if they are not conscious of it.
I prefer to think that when two people come together, the relationship they create is an individual entity unto itself, composed of the energy they have both contributed. When a Witch joins a coven or a ritual circle, he or she is joining a collective group mind consisting of the energies placed into the group relationship from the individual members. The same can be said about members joining any magickal lodge. Though it is different, when one has only one magickal partner, a group mind is formed between the two. Such group consciousness is considered a thoughtform, a type of artificial or human-made spirit. That spirit must be cared for and fed. As it grows, it confers special benefits to those practitioners attached to it.
A relationship is much the same way, and to borrow from Dave’s flower metaphor, I like to think of the relationship as a complex garden with two gardeners. Each one must take care of it. Each one adds to it. Each one has his or her own space, yet the garden must work together as a whole. Everything each gardener does should ultimately complement the work of the other and add to the overall health and beauty of the garden. The two gardeners must plant together and develop it together. If they have very different styles of gardening, they must work it out through communication. Some like to meticulously plan out the garden, while others like to plant things as they come along, in a whimsical fashion. Their life together must be approached like a garden, and those with complementary styles in their approach to life will get along better than those who don’t complement each other. Sometimes they are complementary because they are similar and sometimes they are complementary because they are different, each contributing an aspect the other partner lacks.
Compatibility
Sometimes in a relationship we get swept up in the passion—the intensity of physical attraction and the experience of sex and romance—and forget to look at our potential compatibility. Passion, attraction, sex, and romance are all important, but they are the initial spark, not what sustains the relationship. We have a lot of erroneous assumptions about love—or at least incomplete ideas about what it means to be in a relationship. When we act from these assumptions rather than using our Witch’s eye to see things as they truly are (as opposed to how we’d like them to be), we set ourselves up for failure. By looking at our assumptions abo
ut love and romance before we’re in a relationship, deprogramming ourselves from some societal expectations as well as looking at the reality of our relationship once we are in it, we are more likely to have a truly successful partnership.
One folk saying tells us that opposites attract, and we see that in nature as well, with positive and negative charges. Yet opposites also collide, react, and form new things totally different from the originals. While in magick we know that all things have polarities, or opposites, opposition magick is often used to cancel out another form of magick. Some traditions teach us that opposites negate. In magick, similars attract. We use the principle of correspondence, “as above, so below,” to show us that an herb will have a similar energy and principle to a planet, and we can use the herb to attract the energy of the planet for our rituals. They correspond. In homeopathy, healers tell us that “like cures like” through the law of similars. Two things that are similar can be used to restore balance. So we have the competing principles of opposites attract and like attracts like. Both can be true, and both attract in different ways.
When we are attracted to someone who appears to be our antithesis, there is a greater charge of energy. We find such people unusual, captivating, or exotic. We respond both physically and mentally with more energy than when presented with someone similar to us and our background. Yet unless there is a lot of effort and communication on both sides, such relationships are difficult to sustain. There is a lot of initial energy, but the lack of common ground makes it difficult to stoke the fire and keep it burning over time. If there is little kindling in common to add, the flame can burn out. In our garden analogy, you’ve bred an exotic flower that does not thrive in either of your native soils. You either have to come up with a medium, a mix of the two, or let the flower die.
When we are attracted to someone who shares our values, background, or worldview, we have a common platform even though the initial spark may or may not be as intense. Sometimes people appear to be very different from us, giving us that intense charge, but through the relationship process, we realize we share much in common that was not obvious at first glance. Such commonalities can build a solid foundation.
In either case, couples must then develop new common ground by exploring new realms and exposing each other to their own private worlds if the relationship is going to be sustained. One cannot rely on the past alone. Each individual in the couple must continue to grow and develop as an individual, to have new things to share in the relationship while time is being invested in the relationship itself.
Soul Mates and Twin Flames
Along with the concept that opposites attract and can therefore easily and effortlessly sustain a relationship, we have a cultural belief in soul mates. Many people will ask me how to find their soul mate. In the quest for love, they believe if they just find the right person, everything will fall into place. They will be extremely mutually attracted to each other and be able to take care of each other’s needs, knowing what the other needs on a soul level without the need to speak about it. I don’t care how spiritual or psychic you are, if you don’t learn communication skills with your partner, you and/or your partner will be very unhappy. The idea that one person can take care of all your needs without even being told what your needs are is ridiculous, but it’s one of the insidious programs we carry around with us in the notion of romance.
We have this idea that we are incomplete—that something is missing. And as romantics, we think the missing thing is a romantic partner. We all long for it, so if we find the right one, the one that is the other half of our soul, we’ll be fine. Everything will be perfect.
In the metaphysical world, the concept has expanded into the idea of twin flames. Though the theology of twin flames is not quite the same as soul mates, and few people define twin flames the same way, I’m not a fan of the terms soul mate and twin flame. Generally, twin flames are thought of as two halves, two flames, from the same source. I think it sets us up for unnecessary expectations and heartaches, even in otherwise healthy relationships, because it gives many of us the illusion that we don’t have to work or grow in a relationship—that once we find the right “one,” we will be rewarded with happiness. Life doesn’t work that way.
We are complete in and of ourselves and have no need to be completed. Partners complement us, but our souls are already whole. They are not halves. We might find someone whom we have known in a past life or had romance with in a past life and rekindle it this time, yet that does not mean we are destined for a perfect relationship. We have “soul family” in many roles, and sometimes what I think of as our soul mates have nothing to do with romance—it could be your mother, sibling, or child that is your soul “mate.” From the soul level, it is not about romance or sex, but about spiritual connection. When we talk about romance and life building, I prefer the terms life mate or life partner. I am also old-fashioned and like husband or wife. It confers a sense of this lifetime, and the vows you take in this lifetime can be for the entire life but are released in future incarnations. You might need to be married to someone else in a future life, and the mate you have today can reincarnate as your best friend, parent, child, or sibling. Each new facet of the relationship helps the soul grow and develop.
One of the biggest impediments to romantic happiness when one holds on to the soul-mate notion is the egocentric viewpoint, intentional or unintentional, that the partner is here to complete me rather than look to see how the partner views the world and looks at life and romance. One of the ways I’ve found it most interesting to look at another’s point of view is through astrology.
Relationship Astrology
People are always seeking readings to predict their relationship. Those who are wiser use divination tools and sciences such as astrology to help them understand their own patterns and their partner’s, and how to communicate better. When discussing what I call “party” astrology, where people will mention their signs and the signs of lovers and spouses, those with a little astrological knowledge will immediately pipe into the conversation things like “those two signs get along very well” or “those signs are doomed to failure.” Their knowledge is based on just a smattering of true astrological wisdom and perhaps their own observations of people with the same Sun signs, as well as their own personal biases for and against those signs.
True exploration of astrological compatibility is actually far more advanced than a simple Sun sign comparison. While there are some guidelines to Sun sign comparison, every good astrologer knows that compatibility is based on several different factors, and two people can have zodiac Sun signs that are seemingly incompatible and still have a long and happy life together.
One of my most spiritual astrology teachers told me that no two signs are totally incompatible and no two people are totally incompatible. It all depends on how they manifest the energy of their signs and how much effort they both want to put into the relationship. But that being said, in my experience I’ve found certain combinations of people, not necessarily signs, to be ultimately incompatible. Perhaps the amount of effort to sustain it simply outweighed the benefit of the relationship and they sought someone with a similar viewpoint.
While this book cannot be a complete course in astrology, you need a simple understanding of the common ideas and terms to talk about compatibility in the astrological charts of two people. When you are born, the position of all the planets and signs in the sky determines the patterns of your life, including your talents, challenges, and likely outlooks. Charts cast for the moment of birth are known as natal, or birth, charts. They are usually looked at to see the forces at work in your life, including romance and sex.
We have four major divisions, or parts, in our understanding of astrology. They include:
Planets—Planets are the larger heavenly bodies in our own solar system. Each has its own orbit, except for the Sun, and while we know intellectually that the planets
orbit the Sun, from our perspective they appear to orbit Earth. Astrology is all about how the patterns of the sky appear to us on Earth, so we act as if they do orbit around us. Each planet embodies a component of ourselves, of our psyche. Each has a different function and purpose in our life. The ancients knew seven basic planets: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. With the additions of modern discoveries, astrologers also use Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, as well as some other smaller heavenly bodies such as Chiron and the larger asteroids of the asteroid belt. Though it’s debatable as to what is a planet technically, anything with its own orbit in our solar system can be used like a planet in astrology.
Signs—The signs occupy a specific area of the sky. That area is divided into twelve segments. Each segment of thirty degrees is a sign. There is a pattern to the signs: Taurus always follows Aries, Aries always follows Pisces, Pisces always follows Aquarius, and so on. The planets appear to occupy a sign, and that sign is said to influence the way that planet operates. The Sun in Libra operates very differently from the Sun in Scorpio. The band of zodiac signs also rotates around Earth.
Houses—Houses are areas in the sky that the signs and planet seem to occupy. Astrologers mathematically divide the sky into twelve sections, six above the horizon and six below. Different methods of calculation yield different types of houses, and each astrologer has his or her own favorite method, but generally the houses are fixed areas in the sky that appear to be larger or smaller, depending on where you are on the planet. The houses look different near one of the poles than they do at the equator. This is why most astrologers ask for a location as well as a time and day to create a natal chart.
Aspects—The aspects of a chart are specific angles made between planets if you consider the center of the chart, the planet Earth, the joint connecting the two planets and creating the angle. Not all angles are considered aspects, only very specific ones, and the angle between the planets determines whether the energy of each planet supports or conflicts with the other. When planets are not making these specific angles, they are considered fairly neutral toward each other. Magickal timing comes from maximizing the times when the planetary energies you need for your intention are in harmony and supporting each other and minimizing the times when the planets you want to call upon are conflicting.
The Witch's Heart Page 19