Everybody who has ever offered their services as a magician for hire, taught magic, or even given a cursory look at the esoteric section of the local bookstore knows that love spells are at the very top of the list of things people are looking for when they decide to take a walk on the wild side and dip their toes into the occult.
From the day-to-day experience of office romances and the joys and tribulations of Tinder, to the hot dreams about ripped werewolves with angsty pasts and stalkerish ways, or soft-spoken tradwives who have popped out six babies but still naturally look like they are twenty and CAN’T WAIT to hear all about your fishing trip, one thing is clear: everybody wants love and connection.
Even if our ideas about how romantic relationships should look may differ, the desire to find someone who will love and cherish us is a need that is buried deep inside our souls.
And whenever there is a strong desire, magic is sure to follow.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that love spells are probably the single most popular kind of spell. If you don’t believe me, just go talk with someone who manages an occult shop, because no matter what trendy books might say and what people might be willing to admit to in public, the things that sell the most in magic have been the same since time immemorial: love and curses. Usually in this very order.
However, the kind of information one can find on love spells very often ranges from watered-down new agey nonsense, which is as likely to work as I am to become the new Pope, to downright malicious and toxic stuff I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, with very little to be found in between.
Because what many people don’t realize is that there are many different types of love spells, and some of them are outright curses that can have even more devastating consequences on the lives of both the target and the caster than a curse that was directly meant to cause harm would have.
Does this mean that ALL love spells are curses? Of course not. This is why understanding the different types of love spells and how they operate is very important.
I just want to meet someone
Sometimes what people are seeking is more along the lines of injecting new lymph into their social lives and meeting new, interesting people, among which interesting candidates for romantic adventures and sexy interludes may be lurking. They are not necessarily seeking to meet the love of their life and could just be looking forward to having a good time and gaining some positive experience when it comes to various kinds of relationships.
The kind of spell that addresses this need is more similar to what is usually called a “road-opening” spell, which acts by opening up avenues of possibility and bringing the potential for positive change into a stagnant situation. It does not have a direct target, nor does it act upon the caster to enhance their attractiveness. Its aim is to tweak things here and there so that the potential for new, promising social interactions, with a romantic or sexual undertone in this case, can be brought to the table.
This is a very low-risk type of spell, but it can be incredibly effective.
Rise and shine
Who doesn’t want to show their best cards? We would all like to go on a date with the guarantee that the other person will get to see us at our best, and this is exactly what this kind of spell is aimed at.
These spells work by temporarily enhancing our best qualities and allowing them to shine through in a brighter, clearer way. Think of it as akin to wearing the most flattering dress you have in your closet. It is not creating an illusion by making you perceive something that is not there, but it is showing you at your best advantage. Some types of subtle glamour magic can work in this way, or even special blessings received from deities or other powerful beings.
It is a kind of spell that is low-risk and can be useful for short-term work, but it doesn’t “keep” for long unless it’s constantly reinforced, which is something I advise against anyway, as you ultimately want to be known for the entirety of who you are.
Being irresistible
Some people are born with it, but most are not. I’m talking about that magnetic charisma that makes you stare at them across a crowded place, that fills the air with the power of their presence and forces you to take notice, and that makes you think that you just can’t have enough of being around them, even if you can’t really explain why.
Most of the time, powerful charisma is not really about the actual person who exudes it as much as it is about the illusion we see when we observe them. This is also true in the field of seduction.
There are spells whose aim is to weave a cocoon of illusion all around you in order to make you project an extremely attractive and magnetic allure that is not inherently engineered to target specific people, but can be funneled and conveyed, through action and focused attention, more specifically towards someone.
As long as they are handled with at least a modicum of good sense, for example, don’t weave a “you NEED to jump my bones right NOW!” kind of spell and then take a stroll through the violent offenders wing of a prison, these are generally medium-risk-level spells.
Be aware, though, that aside from the opportunity to first sink your hooks in and get noticed, this is not the kind of spellwork that is likely to result in a healthy, balanced relationship and that it is also quite likely to get you undesired attention and encourage over-the-top behavior in targets, whether planned or accidental.
One day, my prince(ss) will come
Have you ever seen that scene in “Practical Magic” where the young protagonist picks flowers and petals while reciting all the qualities her future ideal partner will have? Well, that’s a perfect example of this kind of love spell.
If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4v5FcBARE
The goal of this kind of spell is not to attract a specific person, but a person with specific qualities or characteristics. It is, at least in my opinion, a form of light binding in which the caster is shifting around the threads of fate so that a person with those desired qualities will show up in their life and they will be pushed towards one another. It is very hard to define the risk level for this spell, as there is a chasm of variable dimensions between what we WANT and what we NEED, but generally speaking I would place it at medium-risk level, as its results are usually not as destructive as forcing a specific person to be with you no matter what. Just be aware that no matter how you idealized your partner-to-be, the one who is going to show up will be a real person, with everything that goes with it, good and bad, and not a character starring in one of your fantasies.
This is the kind of spell I wove when I was a very young witch and that made me meet my husband, so even if it’s not one I would advise most people to cast, I guess I do have a soft spot for it.
This is bound to go wrong
Here we go. This is, unfortunately, the kind of spell that most people go seeking.
The one that will bind a specific person to you and apply strong pressure so that you will be together, as a romantic couple or at least bound to orbit around each other in that fashion, for as long as the spell is active.
Even when it is performed willingly by both parties, and most marriage rituals are a form of consensual binding with varying levels of intensity, this kind of spell can sometimes be quite destructive. Casting it on an unwilling target is akin to inviting all kinds of toxic, unbalanced, obsessive, and sometimes even violent behavior into the lives of both parties involved.
Because magic can’t fabricate love, it can only create the right conditions for it to sprout, so what these spells are going to do, since you are basically saying “to hell with the right conditions, I want this to happen no matter what!”, is fabricate obsession. And obsession is not love.
I am not going to address the ethics of this (spoiler alert: I think it’s wrong) because lecturing never works when it comes to dissuading someone from attempting a misguided spell on something they are obsessed about, so I am just offering up a point of reflection: mistaking obsession for love is the kind of thing that drives people to abuse, or even kill, their partners.
Needless to say, I consider this to be a high-risk kind of spell, but more than that, I have yet to see a case in which casting it on an unwilling subject ends well. It just never does.
Love me to death
By now you will have guessed that we are going through a climax and so this one is probably going to be the worst of the worst and, sure enough, it is. This kind of spell is an outright curse, and a vicious one at that.
Technically speaking, these are binding spells that have a built-in punishment system for the resisting target. The caster is ensuring that whenever their target tries to oppose the pull of the spell they will suffer from it and that they will keep suffering until they give in.
In ancient Greece this kind of spell was usually called agogé and it enjoyed quite a bit of popularity, especially when it came to forcing young maidens, or boys, from good families to disregard all social rules and personal inclinations and to present themselves at the door of the caster, or of the client who commissioned the spell, in order to have sexual intercourse with them. Many examples of this type of spell are analyzed in my course on ancient defixiones.
Depending on how the spell is constructed, the punishment can manifest in the form of powerful nightmares, physical ailments, or, in the most extreme cases, even death. What I personally find is that people who attempt these spells most of the time do it because they think, either openly or subconsciously, that the suffering that is threatened upon the target is just an inflated metaphor describing the pains of love. Let me assure you, it is not.
This is extremely nasty stuff that carries with it all the risks and implications of a binding spell and tops it all with a nice serving of sadism.
This is how I would personally categorise what we usually refer to as love spells, even if, as you may have surmised, some of them have very little to do with love.
I hope everybody reading this will find the kind of love they need and that they will bring it into the world and the lives of the people around them.