I am a love story...

I would make a love spell, if I could, made of the torn pages of a romance novel, rose petals plucked under the darkness of night, and the bloody suture that stitched the pieces of my heart back together after I was so careless with it.

I would take these things and mash them together between the teeth of my mortar and pestle, along with dandelion seeds and olive oil and dirty thoughts and ground cinnamon and the sweetness of a spring morning.  I’d bind it with my spit and tears and hope.

I would even drink this potion if I could. Swallow it all down with a spoonful of honey to soften the intensity of this longing and think of nothing but seeds and fruition as it slid down my throat.  

If a love spell would bring me what I want, I would dance naked under the moon and use strands of my hair to weave together an impossible unbreakable love story. I would work long hours just to be able to afford that small crystal bottle full of hazy pink liquid tucked safely behind the glass counter in that one occult shop everyone knows but says they’ve never been to.

But it’s no use. 

No use trying to conjure warms hands and a beating heart from chicken bones and ribbon.  Or the soft sincerity of an appreciative gaze from glitter and sanding sugar, let alone the gooey warm feeling of being safe in another’s arms—you could try melted chocolate on the tongue or cocoa butter rubbed into your skin.  But it won’t work.

These sorts of love spells never do.  

I’ll tell you what does—though you won’t believe me.  Amateurs never do.

It starts inside, a slow steady drumbeat in your body. Follow that song—out into the meadows and let the birds join in the symphony.  Don’t try to pin down the feeling or stuff it in a jar.  Just let this lightness wrap around you and tease your skin like a lover’s fingers.  

Don’t look too hard, either, for the thing you think you want. Just fill yourself up with the luscious energy that makes you feel whole without arms to hold you—those will come in time.

Now here comes the hard part: Shake off the desperation.  Shut out the voices that say too old too hard too picky too aloof too needy too demanding too sexy too strange too wild too much. All they’re really saying is that they wish they were brave enough to dance with the meadow bees in broad daylight. Unafraid and safe in the knowledge that the Universe is wiser than you and easily bypasses your childish attempts to control your future.  What you want right here and now—the thing you try to capture with your butterfly net—it’s inside you, not in paperback pulp and shredded roses.

So stop waiting for it to happen to you. This love story. 

You are a love story.  Know it. Feel it.  Let it saturate every part of your being.  Say it and embody it:

I am a love story. 

I am a love story. 

I am a love story. 

Hold that phrase up like an offering to your soul.

Aren’t you eager to see how it unfolds now that you are no longer swallowing the torn pages of someone else’s story?

Too much work!  I know that’s what you’ll say. 

This, from the person willing to swallow their own nasty spit and stitches and dance naked in the moonlight—or work overtime to pay for pink-stained water pretending to be an aphrodisiac.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Protection Spell

Tools:

Rusty nails for every wisp of old ghosts you have

1 hammer blessed by your sweat and elbow grease

1 beeswax candle

1 box of matches

1 brush strong enough to sink its teeth into your hair and come out with a mouthful

Ingredients:

Wisps from old ghosts knocking on your door, as many as you have

3 sprigs of rosemary gathered under a full moon, for She protects all worthy things

3 sprigs of rue gathered in full sun—the better to chase away the darkness

Whiskey, amount varies, depending on how much courage you need

Stitches holding your heart together

Basement shadows, as many as you have the courage to face

1 mouthful of hair, collected from your brush

1 handful of grit (please tell me you have some, otherwise this will never work)

1 bottle of sunshine

Directions:

Step One: Tie wisps from old ghosts to rusty nails then plant them in the earth around your home. Be sure to make the knots strong, as ghosts are slippery, always looking for a way back in. Use your blessed hammer to make sure those specters are firmly rooted in the earth. Again, they’re wiggly little things, sly things, so don’t take any chances.  Hammer the shit out of them. If anyone asks, say you’re mending a fence. Who cares if they can’t see the magic foundation you build upon?

Step Two: Use your teeth to mash up rosemary and rue until they form a thick paste.  Alternately spit paste and handful of grit along the perimeter of your rusty-nail fence until your hands hurt from the emptiness, and your mouth is dry and full of the tastes of green things.

Step Three: Drink some whiskey. Repeat as necessary until the taste of mashed up herbs has left your mouth, and you are no longer afraid to go into your basement. 

Note the First: This could be a literal basement or a metaphorical one where you lock away all the secrets and dark crawly things you can’t deal with day-in, day-out. In either case, the liquid courage at the bottom of your glass and the shadows you find down there are real. Best to know that going in. 

Step Four: Before you go into the basement, you will need something to tether the shadows you find there. Something sweet enough to trap them and strong enough to bind them—the stitches from your mending heart. After washing your hands, carefully reach inside your ribcage and worry the fat, ugly scar tissue around the suture that kept you from bleeding out once upon a time until the thread breaks free. Keep pulling until you have enough bloody string to tie to as many shadows as you can gather across the energetic fence around your home. 

Note the Second:  This part is going to hurt—another reason the whiskey will come in handy. 

Note the Third:  This might take a while. If you pass out from the pain, simply resume your scar picking when you come to.

Note the Fourth:  It is likely that you will begin bleeding again. Don’t worry. It’s a sign you are still alive. If you do start bleeding, light one of the matches and press it to your heart to cauterize the reopened wound. Repeat as necessary. And don’t even think about not surviving. Your passionate heart can stand the heat. Your scars are proof enough of that.

Step Five: When you’ve gathered all the blood-soaked sutures you need, and the pain is no longer debilitating, light your beeswax candle with one of the matches from your matchbox. 

Step Six: Go into the basement.  Bring the handful of grit with you. You’ll need it. Whiskey can only take a woman so far.

Step Seven: Let the shadows come to you. The string soaked in your heartbreak knows what to do. Just be brave enough to keep the candlelight burning. 

Step Eight: When you’ve gathered all the shadows you need, take them to your new fence. Weave your shade-laced string in and around your rusty nails until you have no more string left, and your heart stops throbbing at the memory of having the stitches pulled from it. 

Step Nine: Run a brush through your hair 101 times or however long it takes to get rid of all the tangles. Take those tangles—they should be stuck in the mouth of your brush—and weave them in and around your suture-bound shadows.  

Step Ten: Remember the beeswax candle?  It should still be burning. Take the pool of melting wax and use it to seal your protective ward. Alternately pour drops from your bottle of sunlight and hot wax on top of each nailhead until you hear the little ghosts wince at the pain. Dribble it across the hair and threaded tapestry made of your past— that’s where all basement shadows come from, isn’t it? 

Final Note:  Don’t feel bad about making your ghosts hurt. Their pain is a good thing. They’ve given you enough of it, after all, so turn about is fair play. 

Step Eleven: Take the remaining matches from your matchbox and plant them, red heads up, into the cooling wax until the permitter is covered, and you have no more matches—save one, to light the whole thing on fire. 

Final (Optional) Step: But who are you kidding? You’ll need this one too. Take one last drink of whiskey so you feel fire within as you watch it blaze without. Let it burn.  

Let the remaining circle of ash around your home be a warning to ghosts and future shadow makers—

You’ll just tie them up and set them on fire too.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Cleansing Spell

Ingredients:

Burdens of others—as many as you have

3 quarts unspeakable heartache 

1 heaping tablespoon of ugly thoughts such as

   doubts, fears, and regrets 

101 compost worms

Purified tears, enough to fill a small vial

Renewed hope—all that you can muster

2 ounces lemon oil 

1 bundle of sage 

Skin scraped from an old scar until it bleeds

Tools:

1 laundry basket you don’t mind losing

3 matches 

1 gallon mason jar

1 durable vacuum ready for the afterlife

1 spray bottle

Directions:

Step One: Neatly fold burdens from others and place in a laundry basket you don’t mind losing. Light the first match. Set burdens on fire.  

Step Two: As the laundry basket burns, combine three quarts unspeakable heartache and one tablespoon of ugly thoughts into a one gallon mason jar. Let it stew until bitterness wafts from the container, approximately a lifetime.  No wait—that’s too long. Give it a minute or two.

Step Three: Pour the 101 worms into jar and let them feast until jar is full of compost. 

Step Four: At this point, your laundry basket full of burdens should be ash. Vacuum up the remains of the things you wish people hadn’t asked you to carry. Let vacuum sit.

Note the First: In some cases, those burdens try to reform themselves and reattach to you. If that is the case, you need to release the guilt you feel when you give yourself permission to prioritize your wellness. There’s plenty of room in the vacuum for guilt too.  

Note the Second: If you don’t feel guilt then good for you. You probably weren’t raised Catholic.

Step Five: Cry. A lot. Shed enough tears to fill a small vial and then put a stopper on it. You don’t want to go overboard. Get it out of your system and move on. When you’re done and have slept it off, combine the tears purified under the unconditional love of a full moon with lemon oil and the renewed hope you gained while dreaming. Pour elixir into a spray bottle. Shake well. And shake again.

 Note the Third: You might use regular hope but renewed hope is stronger, more potent. It has survived brutal heartache and terrible blows to the soul. If you want the spell to work, use the thing that won’t die. 

Step Six: Spray that shit everywhere until all you can smell is lemons and unblemished possibility.

Step Seven: Remember the vacuum bag of burned burdens and burgeoning guilt? Throw them in the gallon jar of what is now compost and worms.  

Step Eight: Take the second match and use it to light the vacuum on fire. It has held too much for too long and is ready for the afterlife.

Step Nine: Once everything has burned to a crisp and your mason jar is full of nothing but worms and reincarnated regrets (they are better for being dirt), take the remains—to be clear: worms, dirt, ashes—out to your garden. Fold them into the heap that is your compost. Turn widdershins twenty-one times or in whatever direction you want however many times you want.

Step Ten: Watch as the worms find their home in the earth and the dust settles.

Step Eleven: Take the last match and the bundle of sage. Light that bitch on fire. Lick the flame. Absolve yourself. You are only responsible for you. Taste the flame again to remember how good it feels to let things go.  Swallow the match and commit the sage to the compost. 

Step Twelve: Walk into your home. Smell lemon oil and the small green shoots of new life. 

Step Thirteen: Close the door to any unwanted burdens that come knocking. 

Step Fourteen: Scrape the skin of old scars across the threshold to remind yourself why you did the cleansing spell in the first place. 

Step Fifteen: Repeat as necessary.

Final Note: If you have to repeat this spell more often than you brush your teeth, ask yourself why you need to suffer. Then stop. Do you really want to spend your life crying into vials to make more purification spray? I mean, do what you have to do, but you’ve done this enough times that you know how things inevitably turn out. Better not to take on the burdens in the first place. You’ll keep more laundry baskets that way. Vacuums, too. 

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!