Love Spells and Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble

I was not going to write about love spells. Partially because I have no interest in them, partially because in my opinion such spells are almost always pure trouble...

But too many people, when they hear I am a witch, after a minute of silence, end up giving me a detailed description of their love life, or lack of, and ask for a spell to fix the problem. On the other hand, it is Beltane, so what better night to write about love spells?

Love... When I think of love, I think about the one emotion that shapes our lives more then any other. We wish for it, we bathe in it, we long for it, we fight it, we run away from it, we cherish it... Sometimes we yearn for it so much that we see it where it is not, other times we are so scared of it, we can not see it even when it is there... Love... Love for one's family, love for a lover, for things and possessions, for moments, for friends... Sometimes love for nature, or a stranger... Love for a day or a lifetime... The love we give, the love we are given, or the one that is lacking... Used wisely, it has the power to lift us to the top of the highest mountains... When the wisdom is lacking, love is the one that can take us to the bottom of despair...

There are many people and many things I love... My family and my ancestors, my children, my friends... I love my coffee in the mornings when my brain is still half asleep... I love the wind blowing wildly in a storm and the breeze gently blowing in a hot day... I love the sunrise with the promise of a new day, the sunset with the culmination of another... I love the moon, gently lighting a dark night sky... So many things I love... More often then not, I prefer to count my blessings in the love I give, rather then in the love that is given...

And there are loves I avoid out of fear, because I have been hurt too deeply.

But most of the love spells I am asked about, are more precise, more to do with love from a man or a woman... I do not know if it is possible to use magic to make someone love you... and I don't even care to find out... What I do know, is that you, yourself should be magic enough if someone is wiling to give that love. Because Love is an emotion you offer, but you can never request. And I also know that forcing someone into love, it breaks one of the only laws I respect as a witch: An' it harm none,
Do what ye will.

And yet, love is not about you, but about the other, about you offering without the need to wait for a return. Forcing someone into love hurts not one, but both people.

However, there are some love spells I do agree with. The only one I would freely practice, with no buts attached to it, would be love for oneself. I noticed in life how people freely offer love to everyone and everything around, and I always thought it is beautiful. But more often then not, self love seems to come hard to people, and lacking this important ingredient in life, always gives birth to resentment. If you can not love yourself, how can you expect another to do it?

Another type of love spells I am not against, is wishing for love in general. I want to meet, love and be loved in return, by someone that can be my best friend, someone I can respect and be respected by, someone responsible, reliable and mature, someone that can have a good laugh... I wish for someone that could be a good father figure to my children and care for them... Someone I can talk to and shares some of my interests... Someone I can sit with in silence and be comfortable doing so... Someone who is kind and compassionate, generous and empathic... Someone I could have a pillow fight with, or cry on their shoulder... I wish for someone that I can be fully myself with and be accepted and loved for it... The list could be longer, or shorter, or more, or less specific... I find that for me, these would be the things I would really wish for... As long as that list does not have a specific person at its center, it is all good.  If it does have a specific person, it is trouble...

And lastly... When one wishes for love, the wish should come with the implicit understanding that effort needs to be put in, or all is for nothing...

Another Beltaine...

Another Beltaine is approaching... My house is decorated for Halloween, as my children can not accept my reasons that in the Southern Hemisphere, Halloween is actually in April, in autumn, not in October, in spring. Even though I lived here, in the South of this wonderful planet for ten years now, even though my body sings of the approaching summer, my brain still argues that October is autumn...

Ignoring the names of the months, I look out of my window at the riot of blooming flowers, at the jacarandas in purple mist, and I know without doubt that is spring. Even blind, even without being able to feel the warming sun on my skin, just from the quickening of my blood, and I would still know that Beltaine is only few days away...

I had made the choice of being single, and staying single, a choice I am happy with, for a countless reasons, including to be able to focus more deeply on me, my children and my craft. And yet, regardless of my mind being at peace and my heart being content,  the instincts that come from an immemorial time, are searching for that elusive something that is passion and love, that is the connection between the divine feminine and the divine masculine. And interestingly enough, it is not the call of a relationship I hear, thank Goddess or I would really freak out, but the abandon of rules, the crazy thirst for life and being alive...

Normally I love Beltaine. As much, and yet differently from my love for Samhain (Halloween), when my soul craves the solitude and peace that allows me to transcend the worlds in the search for my dear loved ones that I lost or never met. At the opposite side of the Wheel, sits Beltaine with the craving for crowds and thirst for life, with the need to start anew and forget the wisdom of winter. Beltaine, when my soul wants to forget the teachings of the Crone and just enjoy the innocence of the youth, when years drop by and for a short while I can be again the girl I once was, full of dreams and illusions, acting on powerful instincts, rather then the wary wisdom I had learned.

Last year, Beltaine was meant to be a party with friends that I cared for and it become a night with a lover. The year before, Beltaine was an amazing ritual in a group of strangers, with a man that by then was not my lover anymore. The year before that, Beltaine was celebrated with a friend I loved dearly, and I still miss so much, and the Gods found their place in the deep connection of friendship. This year is different. This year it seems I need to learn how to spend Beltaine on my own, with no friends I love, no lovers for a night or years, no big ritual where I can lose the edges of myself, no party where I can abandon convention. The part of me that learned to read the signs, knows without doubt that the reason for it is because while I had learned so many lessons over the years, the one I skirted about is how to really connect with myself, outside the meditation moments. The witch in me, the one that is old beyond time, and young the same, knows that the only love I have to share this year is with myself. Maybe the hardest type of love, especially for one such as me, that finds it easier to love and accept others, but not myself. But the woman in me, the one used to having a friend or a lover near, the one that is human and is tired of learning, would have preferred a different, more joyous Beltaine. 

Two years ago, on Beltaine, as I knotted a wish on a red string, I wished with all my soul for freedom. The remembrance and the repercussions of that wish, reminds me of something my mother used to say when I was a tiny child still, wishing aloud: "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it". The wish made on Beltaine two years ago, came true, as wishes made in sacred moments tend to do. For the last two years I had never regretted that wish, one that my soul needed to mend and to live. But now, I understand the danger of an incomplete wish. Wishing for freedom more then anything, I forgot to ask for the wisdom of learning how to use it.

And yet, beyond wisdom, my soul still stirs wildly in my blood, asking for something elusive...

A Cup of Coffee

How is it possible that a single cup of coffee can bring the past back so vividly? In my dreams, in my rituals, in moments of painful loneliness, I do sometimes call on the spirits of my loved ones that don't share this world anymore. But it is done with respect and preparation, with a clear intention. How can a single cup of coffee bring forward the ghosts of the past, not of the people that passed away, but of the ones that are still here?

Looking in the dark eyes of someone I once loved, the present stopped existing and with it all the years of hard work that I put into erasing the vengeful ghosts of my past. It seemed like the five years of fighting and growing, of learning to look within as well as without, never existed. I found myself obsessively watching the time again, fearful of an unpredictable future, and even repeating myself that I am free, that no swords will hurt me if I linger longer, my heart kept beating faster, expecting my phone to ring and be faced with words that cut.

I could still feel the sunshine in my hair, the ground beneath my feet, but the woman I became beyond the odds, could not be there, not while the broken, fearful young mother that I was was caught in a past no longer real, but equally as painful.

I chose to forget sometimes that once, not so long ago, I was scared of my own shadow. I forget that it was a time when I would think over and over again before saying something, and still the punishment would come, for a nonexistent mistake. The divine blessing of forgetting the tears that followed every act, every word, every thought. I chose to forget most times what it meant to be a living dead with no escape and no hope, with no help and no dreams...

With the present gone, I could see the eyes of the girl that was me and yet, not me. The same green eyes that over the last five years learned to smile, and laugh again, and to not run away from a confrontation, maybe to trust... But the eyes of the girl that used to be me carried no smiles, even the memory of them was lost to her; no dreams, no hopes... Those eyes could just reflect back the sadness of a world filled with terror, the helplessness of the one that knows that the dark cage will never be opened... In the girl that was shaking at the ring of her phone, there was no life beyond fear and punishment...

From across the table, separated by a simple cup of coffee, I see the ghost of the young mother that was me, of the man that I once loved and of the friend that I once foolishly trusted. I look at them then, in that time with no sunshine and no moonlight, and I remember running on dark streets wishing for death, because it seemed like the only possible escape from a nightmare I could not wake up from. I remember a night when I sat under a tree on a bench in a school, shaking at the leaves moving in the breeze and crying for the girl full of life and full of dreams that gave her world, her soul in exchange for love. I look at these ghosts and I see the day, when with a broken body as well as with a broken soul I realized that maybe, just maybe there might be an escape...

Now, looking back, I know that it was not courage, but a bottomless despair that gave me strength. Not hope but the fear that I will kill or be killed that gave me the power to risk the little that I barely had.

With the cup of coffee in my hand, I make an effort, from the bottom of my soul, and the past is gone, leaving behind a sunny spring day with children laughing. I am me again, the one that walked between the stars to gather the broken pieces of my soul, the one that fought to melt them back together. The me that is now, sheds a tear for the young broken woman I was, a tear not of pity, but of compassion. The me that is now, knows to the depth of her being that she will never be again that dead young woman that was yet living. But the me that is now, knows equally as well that she will never again be the young girl that gave up her world and her dreams, her soul and her heart in exchange for love. And if sometimes there is regret for knowing that I will never have again the open trust that I once had, for knowing that I will never risk my entire being for a dream, but only pieces of me, if at times there is regret for having had to learn how to store every part of my soul into tiny, pretty boxes, with safe compartments that will ensure that if one falls, the other will remain standing, I smile and I remember to be proud of the one I became, the one that in losing so much, never lost the compassion and the caring...

When I ran to fight the monsters of my nightmare, I was scared, not strong. Mending together the pieces of my soul. like a smith working at a forge, even though the blade that is my soul will never be the same again, I had learned its weaknesses and it strengths...  By learning how much I can risk before the danger will approach, by learning the steps between approaching danger and the risk of breaking, I became stronger, if not wiser, strong enough to take a risk if my heart so wishes and wise enough to know if the risk is worth taking... And for that, I am grateful.