The Witch's Heart

by Christopher Penczak

  If you are planning on marrying someone, make sure you’ve discussed long-term life goals. Are they compatible? Where do you want to live long-term? Do you want children? How involved are your families in your life? What expectations and boundaries do you have toward sexuality? Those are all important things to discuss first.

  Once the basics of premarital counseling are out of the way, we discuss how “witchy” or Pagan the event is to be. Some handfasting ceremonies are full magick circles, while others involve different kinds of rituals to create a sacred space. Many are low-key in terms of esoterics, in an effort to be more welcoming to non-Pagan family members. Most Pagan handfastings involve the basic elements you find in many wedding ceremonies. You can have the traditional exchange of vows and exchange of rings. To make it a handfasting, there is an actual ritual of fastening the hands together.

  The traditional handfasting uses a cord that is the length of the bride’s middle finger to elbow plus the length of the groom’s middle finger to elbow and ties the couple’s hands together in the ceremony. The couple faces each other, holding hands and imitating the “figure eight” infinity loop as they hold hands. The cord is tied around them (see next page for an illustration).

  Usually the cord is released by the end of the ceremony so the couple can walk out hand in hand. A variation of the handfasting for those who want to keep it tied during the entire ceremony is to simply have the couple hold hands side by side and join the hands together that way, wrapping the cord around them.

  figure}The Handfasting card from

  the Well Worn Path deck

  (art by Mickie Mueller)

  Another traditional element is the couple “jumping the broom.” The broom is a symbol of hearth and home, and jumping together marks them starting a new life together, joined together and in a new home. Traditionally, Witch’s brooms are made from ash handle, birch bristles, and willow to tie it all together, but handfasting brooms can have a variety of different herbs and woods to confer more blessings. The broom is then displayed in their home somewhere to bring blessings, love, health, and fortune.

  Here is an example of a simple handfasting ritual to inspire your own ideas. I use this as a template for when I speak to couples seeking a handfasting. We adapt it and draw upon other sources to make each wedding unique for the couple. For some couples, we do a ceremony of intricate ritual and high Witchcraft; for others, we make it Pagan friendly but very down-to-earth for non-Pagan family and friends.

  ritual} Handfasting

  •Cleanse and prepare the space and the participants.

  •Wedding party procession.

  •Cast the circle.

  •Call the quarters.

  •Say the evocation to the gods:

  We call to the two who move as one in the love of the Great Spirit. We call to the Goddess and the God, the Great Mother and Great Father of Creation, to bless this union of hearts and lives. Hail and welcome.

  If the couple has a special relationship with any specific goddesses or gods, we also call them or tailor the evocation to suit those deities.

  •Welcome and introduce the tradition of handfasting to the guests.

  •Poetic reading of blessing by the best man and/or the maid of honor. Here is an opportunity to engage the wedding party or other family members. Sometimes a poem is read, either from traditional material or one composed specifically for the couple. As options, the Charge of the Goddess and the Charge of the God have been read by the maid of honor and the best man respectively, or there may be an offering of song or dance.

  •The Great Rite is shared by the couple:

  As the sword is to the grail, the blade is to the chalice, truth is to love. Together, in Perfect Love and Perfect Trust, we drink in the blessings and powers of the Goddess and God. Blessed be.

  One holds the chalice while the other one holds the blade. The blade is plunged into the chalice, blessing the wine or mead.

  •Unity candle—In the tradition of the unity candle, which is not specifically Pagan, two candles are lit to represent each family of the couple. Then the unity candle is lit to recognize the joining of the two families with the couple. One of the parents, or a close friend or member of the wedding party from each side, can light the family candle.

  I light this candle for the family of (name). May they shine bright and strong.

  Repeat for the other family. Then the couple, together, lights the central flame with both of the family candles.

  We light this candle of unity together, joining our lives, our homes, our families. May our new family shine bright and strong.

  •Exchange vows.

  •Exchange rings.

  •Handfasting.

  •Pronouncement.

  •Say the devocation of the gods:

  We thank the two who move as one in the love of the Great Spirit. We thank the Goddess, the Great Mother; we thank the God, the Great Father; we thank all spirits who have come in Perfect Love and Perfect Trust to bless this union. Stay if you will, go if you must. Hail and farewell.

  •Release the quarters.

  •Release the circle.

  [contents]

  ten

  Be Careful What You Ask For . . .

  … because you probably will get it. But once you get it, will it be everything you thought it would be? Probably not. Many people enter into relationships and love magick thinking it will solve all their problems. If they just find the right person, then everything will be great. It doesn’t work that way. Sometimes the overwhelming desire to be coupled outweighs common sense, and we stay in relationships that we intuitively know are not right for us. Sometimes our romantic illusions and erroneous beliefs or attachments to how things “should be” poison our relationships. Magick is not the quick fix to these issues.

  Love magick is powerful; there’s no denying that. My friend Chris, who has worked in several metaphysical bookstores, likes to tell people that you can always tell when love magick is working. People will call up after doing a spell and be irate that the love spell is not working—the object of their affection is not paying attention to them. How can they fix the spell? They expect to hear that the sign a spell is working includes some tale of grand signs from the gods or the behavior of the person who is the object of desire, but no. Chris tells them that obsession about the spell or person by the spellcaster is the first sign the spell is working—not necessarily working well, as not all love magick is successful, but it is doing something, mostly to the spellcaster. If we can’t go into it with an open heart and sense of divine connection, we can still get what we ask for and technically have a successful spell, but it might not be what we really want or need. In the end, it might cause more heartache than be a cure to our loneliness.

  There is a power to our obsession that gets us what we asked for but not what we truly need. When a love spell is working in a healthy way, there is a sense of letting go and of being sure that the forces have been set in motion and, when the time is right, will bear fruit. You can’t rush a love spell any more than you can rush a plant growing.

  In the end, true love magick includes the preparatory work to recognize our own illusions and pitfalls as well as the magick to make healthy and clean separations when a relationship ends. Finally, for love magick to truly be useful, it must help us heal the traumas of previous relationships so we can learn to love again with a full and open heart.

  Breaking Illusions

  A big piece of successful love magick is not only getting what you asked for but getting what you truly want. We must do the introspective work to sort through our own illusions, the self-sabotaging ideas and behaviors we have that prevent us from having successful relationships, and hope our potential partner has done similar work. While this can be done through serious journaling, talk therapy, or any number of se
lf-help techniques, the ritualistic and meditative practices of Witchcraft can help us greatly to see, understand, and transform our patterns.

  Here are some common patterns in the quest for love that we need to be aware of. Do any of them strike a cord within you?

  I’m Not Worthy—If a relationship does not turn out the way we envision and expect, or if we’ve never been able to have a relationship, there is a tendency to think we are not worthy of having a successful relationship. The issue becomes less about our relationship with a potential partner and more about our relationship with ourselves. Self-love and self-esteem are the keys to breaking this illusion. With the way magick works, if you really believe you’re not worthy of having a successful relationship, then you won’t be able to create one.

  Tragic Love—Many people are strongly attached to the idea of tragic love. Love must be a struggle. There must be a dramatic tale before we can truly make a commitment. Those with such beliefs then create drama in their lives and the life of their potential partner so life can live up to their dramatic expectations. Some find a potential partner they have a real connection with and assume the partner is their soul mate and will always be there, despite the drama. They go through break-up and reunion cycles over and over again, and usually one partner gets healthier and ends the cycle rather than be stuck with someone who is not mature enough to make a commitment and work through any issues that arise. Others will find a potential partner but then put career ambitions first, believing they cannot simultaneously work on two aspects of life at once. Anyone in a strong relationship knows that you are working on all areas of your life, including relationships, all at once. If you wait for a time to focus on a relationship only, you’ll be waiting a long time.

  Prince/Princess Charming—We look to a partner to be the ultimate lover, fulfilling all our fantasies like a prince or princess from a fairy tale. And at first, they can appear to be that perfect, but as the relationship continues, we realize they are not so perfect and have not only their own problems but their own needs. If we focus solely on our needs being fulfilled by a partner, we create a very imbalanced relationship. If our partner wants to satisfy our needs and be the perfect love, they will not always speak up about their own needs, assuming that their partner will “know” somehow. Things are left unsaid until the imbalance is very critical, and most relationships of this nature don’t survive unless the imbalance is addressed with open and honest communication.

  Unhealthy Apotheosis—Apotheosis generally refers to the deification of another, elevating an individual to the status of a god. In some ritual context, it is the identification of your own godself, but in a relationship, it refers to the glorification and deification of a partner beyond the bounds of humanity. Many people will glorify their partners to such an extent, particularly talented magickal or psychic partners, mistaking magickal gifts for total enlightenment. The partner doing the glorification assumes their elevated partner will know everything they are feeling and doing, therefore verbal communication will be unnecessary. One cannot live up to such a superhuman ideal one hundred percent of the time, no matter how spiritual or psychic one is. Like anyone put upon a pedestal, once they are discovered to have clay feet—to be only mortal—there is disappointment and disillusionment. But only then does the relationship have the possibility of growing into something true and honest.

  Codependence—Codependence is a popular psychology term used for those who exhibit caring for others that is excessive and inappropriate in our society. Usually the object of such attention is someone they are in a relationship with, romantic or otherwise, and there is some sense of need or dependence upon the codependent. Actions and patterns of the codependent include excessive caretaking, controlling behavior, distrust, perfectionism, and hypervigilance. Such behavior is more common in families that have undergone traumatic conditions, but the behavior can then affect other areas of life. Those who have lived in a codependent family can seek to re-create those conditions in their own adult relationships. Codependents usually seek out people who are either emotionally needy and want to be taken care of or are emotionally unavailable, creating relationships that are ultimately unfulfilling for the codependent, who attempts to control the relationship. For true happiness, one exhibiting codependence patterns must learn to identify and heal those patterns in order to create a stable, intimate, and healthy relationship.

  Unconditional Love vs. Unconditional Relationships—While as spiritual people we aspire to live a life of unconditional spiritual love, we can easily mistake unconditional love for unconditional relationships. In Witchcraft, our Perfect Love is not an unconditional relationship. Too often we fall into the illusion that if we could just love enough, love unconditionally, then our relationship would be fine. You can love someone spiritually and not like them. You can love someone both spiritually and romantically and not accept their behavior and draw a boundary when something unacceptable is said or done. Some relationships can only be healed when both partners are willing to work on all aspects. As a spiritual practitioner, you do not hold the burden for making something work. You must learn to love yourself as well. An ended relationship is not a mark against your spiritual development or qualities; in fact, it can be quite the opposite.

  Magickal Stipulations—One of the greatest reasons our love magick “fails” is the conscious and unconscious stipulations we put into our magick. Often these stipulations are safeguards and work well in the end, but when we question why our love magick isn’t working right now, this can be the reason. We have to become conscious of our stipulations if we are not already, and then decide to either retain them and wait or break them and hope for more immediate success yet less predictable results. A good friend of mine had a successful love spell to find his husband. In the spell, he asked that the right man for him be at least twenty-eight. He passed his future husband almost every day walking to work for years, but they never spoke until nine days after his future husband’s twenty-eighth birthday. I also had an age stipulation but simply worded it as “when we are both ready for each other.” I got a direct message that my partner was at a club. I went to that club. I left disappointed that I left alone, without meeting anybody new. I found out years later, he was often at that club at that time, but we were both in a place where we said we wanted a relationship but weren’t really ready for it until two years later. While both those examples eventually worked in our favor, some people’s stipulations are on how much money a potential lover makes, specific physical requirements of height, eye color, hair color, or specific zodiac Sun signs. I know when I released all my physical stipulations on body, height, build—my “type”—I was open for the perfect partner. My only physical stipulation was “that I find him very attractive and he find me very attractive.“ It worked out perfectly.

  When Relationships End

  Everything earthly has a life cycle. Everything is born, everything lives, and everything must eventually end. While we have this romantic notion of true love lasting our lifetime and beyond—and I truly do believe that is possible for many of us—we must face the fact that many relationships do not last our entire lifetime and beyond, at least as romantic relationships. While we put a lot of our magickal energy and time into finding a relationship, and sometimes into sustaining a relationship, rituals of separation and release are neglected. They are just as important, if not more important, for they help us release what no longer serves us or our life and move on, beginning the healing process. They should not be ignored.

  Before moving on to the separation rituals for a relationship, one of the frequently asked questions is whether a spell can be done to return a lost love and start over. The simple answer is yes, such a spell can be done—but one must ask if there is wisdom to such an action. When we are in heartbreak and really want our lover back, wisdom and common sense go out the window, and we find ourselves crossing lines, magickally and morally, that we might not otherwise cross
. Sometimes we get obsessed with the spells to return our love, and we lose sight of our own spiritual evolution and day-to-day happiness.

  Most spiritual practitioners who aid others would suggest doing a return spell only if you feel it is absolutely necessary upon deep reflection. Once you decide to do it, give yourself twenty-four hours to think about it. If you still want to do it, do it, but impose limits for yourself and stick to them. I suggest a limit of doing it three times at most, and if the love has not returned of his or her own free will without you having to manipulate the situation further, then stop. If you have to arrange your paths to cross or otherwise stalk your ex to make contact, then you have gone too far. If the love does not return within six months, give up and do rituals of release and separation. Move on, and focus on other interests and other potential relationships. Realize that your period of “rebound” will be longer because you’ve put more energy into the end of the relationship and recapturing what you once had, making it even more difficult to move on and recover.

  spell} Lost Love

  Take a piece of amber and cleanse it as you would any ritual object. As the Moon is waxing, hold it and think of your love. Pray to the gods to return your love if it be for the highest good of all involved. Pour into the amber all your emotion regarding the return of your love. Then put it someplace dark, like a box at the bottom of one of your dresser drawers, and forget about it, letting it work its magick. Amber is a great “stone” for this spell, as it has both projective and receptive qualities. If the love is good for you both, it will draw you together, but if it’s not, it will project you away from each other. Amber is also very healing and can absorb your hurt emotions as you do this spell, helping you recover from the breakup and prepare to reconcile or move on separately.