The Witch's Heart
Page 25
spell} Valentine’s Day Self-Love
Valentine’s Day is a tough day for many single people recovering from past relationships. All our mass media and retail gear us toward romantic endeavors, and it’s hard to be reminded of it in the midst of our singleness. This is a spell devised for a client undergoing these same feelings near Valentine’s Day. She wanted something positive to focus on during the day, rather than get depressed.
1 fragrant rose
Glass of wine (or romantic beverage of your choice)
Piece of chocolate (or other food you would associate with love) on a plate
1 smooth stone (such as a polished rose quartz or favorite river/beach stone)
1 candle—white, green, or pink
Set up an altar with these objects, with the stone farthest away from you, the wine to your left, the candle in front of you, the rose to your right and the food/chocolate in the center.
Start by holding the stone and thinking about love. Let the stone absorb all blocks you have to feeling love and creating self-love. Ask the stone to fill you with its healing energy. When done, put it down.
Hold the candle. Think about sparking love and igniting passion for yourself and, when the time is right, for a partner. When ready, light the candle.
Hold the wine. Think of filling yourself with love and healing. Think of the waters of life that renew and resurrect you, no matter what you’ve gone through in the past. Drink a sip of the wine.
Hold the plate with the food/chocolate. Think about nourishing yourself on all levels. Think about the sweetness of life. Eat a bite.
Sit before the altar and feel yourself loved and loving, on all levels. When you are done, the ritual is done. You can finish the food and drink. Snuff the candle. I’d suggest letting it burn as long as possible, snuffing it out, and then relighting it as you would a traditional candle spell. Continue the process until the candle is gone. Wash the stone under running water, and then carry it with you to remind you of this power of love.
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All Magick Is Love Magick
While this is primarily a book on romantic love—modern and traditional lore on how to find and grow a partnership with someone you are attracted to—love magick is so much more. Almost all spiritual traditions value the concept of love, though their vision of love can be different. Most of us from traditional society think of spiritual love as the self-sacrificial kind or the love between parent and child. Usually it is intellectualized and sterilized by scholars and theologians until you can barely recognize it as love, particularly when compared to the carnal love of ancient traditions.
Many of the magickal traditions see the link between romantic and sexual love—the ecstatic union between individuals—and the love of spirit, viewing creation as the act of self-love, creator with creator, sustaining the universe. In Witchcraft, we see the union as the interplay of Goddess and God making love to create, sustain, and transform our universe. Without love, there would be nothing. We are created in the divine image. We want to be filled with this creative force, to flow with it, so we seek love. We seek love in our selves first, if we are wise, for we know if we cannot love ourselves, we cannot truly love another. We seek love with others, making physical connections. As Witches, we see the flesh as divine and the world as divine. We see the unions of nature, of animals coming together in mating seasons, in plants fertilizing, in the unions of the heavens and the earth. Through our physical connection with partners, we find the presence of Spirit that is in all things. We make a spiritual connection and find our godselves. The gods are continuously making love. Love is the fuel of the machinery of the universe.
Love and sex is a path of enlightenment, as sure as any other and perhaps more sure than some of the more aesthetic paths. It’s a powerful path, for it requires only our instinct and our willingness to love with an open heart. It is universal. Though there are many texts written on it and many traditions of practice, it really requires no dogma, no institutions, and no structure other than what you put into it as a practitioner. It’s natural. We want to love. We need to love, so we do. That is what has made sexuality so fearful to those who run organizations and religions. There is no control over it. It’s available to almost any, young and old, and is as natural to us as breathing. That’s why society and religious institutions have created so much structure around it, through taboos and shame, to trick us from finding our divine selves through love and the flesh. If we do, then we wouldn’t need the power structures of our society as much anymore. Love simply is.
In the Indian Mahabharata, it is said, “Love, well made, can lead to liberation.” This is the essence of what we think of as tantric practices in the West, though the proper study of tantra is a wide range of topics, and not all of them have something to do with sexuality. In India, Hindus are not afraid of depicting the sexual nature of their gods through art and myth.
In the ceremonial magick tradition of Thelema, ripe with sexual imagery, the holy text known as The Book of the Law states, “For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.” The divine creative spirit is divided and divided again in the act of creation, and it is our chance of union that makes the division worth it. The Thelemic goddess Nuit and god Hadit are constantly seeking union as the infinite space and infinite center within that space. The sexual imagery of Thelema evokes the union between the two, though it was considered shocking at the time, both to Crowley’s contemporaries and society at large, to use such sexual imagery in a “religion.”
In modern Wicca, influenced by the Thelemic teachings of Aleister Crowley, we have the Great Rite—the union of the lance and grail, the blade and chalice, coming together in token through ritual sacrament or in the flesh through sexual rite. It is the great Goddess and God coming together in union through priest and priestess, and when done in solitary rite, it is the Goddess and God within us reaching union. Both experiences are powerful and necessary in our Craft.
All our magick stems from love. When we perform spellcraft, ultimately it is bringing us closer to the divinity of the universe, and that force connecting us to the universe is love. Our initiatory traditions teach us how to “die” and be “reborn,” and in that rebirth we are “free from fate.” We learn to live as only those who have died ever truly do. Being free from fate, we learn to partner with the goddess of fate as never before, and we can take a hand in weaving our own fate. It is through love we are reborn. Love is central to our great mysteries. The myth of the descent of the Goddess tells us, “For there are three great mysteries in the life of man: love, death, and resurrection, and magick controls them all.”
In some fashion, all our initiatory experiences in the Craft involve the descent to the underworld, the land of the dead and their gods. We emulate Inanna, queen of heaven and earth, and Astarte, goddess of love. Both are patrons to the arts presented in this book. We descend the seven gates of the underworld and find our shadow self, our dark “sister,” ruling the throne of the underworld. By not only making peace with the shadow but learning to love it as a part of ourselves, as a part of creation, we can be reborn and rise again. Our love of our shadow is like the love we have for a sibling. It is often difficult but necessary to have a harmonious inner family.
We emulate Osiris, who is reborn through the love of his sister-wife Isis, resurrected and empowered. Isis has since been called upon in matters of love, marriage, and children. It is through their undying love that Osiris is called back from the realm of the dead and resurrected through her powerful magick. If there was not such a link between husband and wife in this myth, Isis would not have been able to work her magick and revive Osiris or conceive Horus to fight the figure of Set. The love of a spouse with a partner is the love of the anima/animus, setting us free.
The mystery of the initiation through relationship, through love and sex, is common in the Pagan world. The story of Osiris is not just the descent into the underworld of the fallen king, mimicking Inanna and Persephone in their descent to the Great Below. It is the story of the sacred king married to the goddess of fertility and the land. The sacred king, the God, rules by virtue of the Goddess. We see it in Isis and Osiris, and we see the theme repeated in more human terms through the mythos of King Arthur of Camelot and his queen, Guinevere. Despite modern retellings and Christian interpretations, the ancient theme is one of a sacred king ruling through his “right” relationship with the land through the queen. When their relationship fails, the land withers, and the wasteland must be regenerated by the grail, the cup, the tool of elemental water and love. If you look further into the myth, you see the same pattern of sexual initiation between Merlin, as seer and magician, with his muse, or tutor, through various stories as teacher or student with Nimue, Vivian, or Morgan le Fay, his wife Guendoloena, and his sister Ganieda. His relationships with these women, for good or ill, bring him deeper along the initiatory path. Without those loves, those attractions, those erotic experiences, the cycle would cease, and the path, as well as his story, would not continue. Love, romance, and sex as a spiritual path has a long tradition in both the East and the West.
The magick of initiation awakens and opens the Witch’s heart, the potential for Perfect Love and Perfect Trust within us all. One who has the Witch’s heart within has been to the depths of darkness and found the light of life and love. We have been torn asunder by love, both human and divine, like the victims of the ancient maenads, or bacchante, the frenzied women worshipers of Dionysus who rip both man and beast apart in emulation of their god.
Those with the Witch’s heart awakened keenly feel the world, as they are led by their heart and see through their heart. We feel the pains and joys of the earth and our sisters and brothers in the world. Yet we are, despite our intense connections, separate and apart from our communities—other and different. That is the blessing and the burden of the Witch’s heart until we live in an age where everyone is led by their own Witch’s heart, filled with Perfect Love.
Until then, our relationships with ourselves and with others—romantic, family, or friends—are great teachers into the mysteries of magick. When we are inspired by our relationships, we are truly “in spirit.” We can know the divine presence in flesh by those around us and in ourselves. We recognize that presence through the feeling of what we call love. Attraction, romance, lust, friendship, ecstasy, warmth, and fun all act like arrows pointing us toward this love. This is the feeling we ideally evoke when doing our healing magick, when doing our prosperity spells, when doing prayers and devotions, and ultimately when living life day to day, moment to moment. Every moment of life is potentially filled with this magick. Every moment of life is potentially filled with this love.
Love is the source of our magick. It is our love—the same force that draws the attention of the ancestors, spirits, angels, and gods to our altars and rituals—that attracts lovers and spouses. It is through the love between us and the Divine that we make our magick. All the universe is waiting to receive our love and gives of its own love freely and continuously. We simply have to notice it and awaken our heart. All of our magick is truly love magick, for it is through love we feel our connection to all things, everywhere.
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