Love Poppets

Each witch has her own particular secret recipes for procuring love-everlasting. As a result, there is a baffling variety of recipes for Love Magick in the witchcraft books. The following directions for procuring love-everlasting through the use of poppets constitute my own fairly eclectic method. I give it here with the gravest hopes that the reader will not abuse it for frivolous infatuations.

Draw a pattern for a small manikin on a piece of paper, meditating all the while on the beloved person whose love you desire. (The pattern should be exactly thirteen inches high, and if it can be drawn on a piece of paper the love object has touched or written on, so much the better!)

Take two pieces of old bedsheet and, using the paper poppet as a pattern, cut out the back and the front of your manikin. (In the case of one-night stands that you wish to make into permanent alliances, it is good to use the actual sheet on which the love object has lain—needless to say, without washing! If the lovemaking has taken place on the floor, do not cut up the rug—it is too thick to make a good poppet anyway—but try to find some other object used by the lover, a cloth napkin perhaps, or linen hand towel.)

When the manikin has been neatly cut, sew the two halves together (leaving the head open for stuffing) and turn inside out.

Now, stuff the manikin with a variety of herbs sacred to Venus. A combination of dried rosebuds, blackberry leaf, dittany (or fraxinella) is good; but elderberry, motherwort, and vervain should also be tried. (Experiment with various combinations of Venus-governed herbs until you find the best mixture for your own needs.) When the poppet is fully stuffed, sew up the head so the “brains” of your beloved don’t fall out. (All these actions must be done while thinking of the beloved and chanting his/her name.)

Next, make a similar poppet representing yourself—using cloth you have touched or used. One-night-stand bedsheet is also good here (but only if the beloved and you alone have used it—in making love poppets, as in every other human endeavor, common sense is required).

Stuff your own poppet with a variety of Venus-governed herbs in the same proportions and sew up the “head.”

Now you are ready to personalize the poppets. Some books recommend drawing appropriate sexual organs upon them. I find this gross and unsubtle. (It is not sex only we are after here—but love.) Far better to inscribe the poppet representing the love object with his/her astrological sign and date of birth. Then do the same for your own.

Next, embellish the poppet with some object representing him/her. If the beloved is a writer, sew a tiny pencil to one hand. If a lawyer, a small briefcase. If a painter, a tiny brush, and so on.

If the love object has a way with words and has said something memorable in the course of your relations, you may write the significant phrase carefully upon the back of the poppet. (Phrases like “My wife doesn’t understand me” or “My husband would never do that” should be avoided. They are too common to “personalize” the poppet significantly, and may even confuse the deities as to whom the poppet is supposed to represent.)

Now we are ready to bind the poppets in love-everlasting. This requires a length of red ribbon which you have previously consecrated to Venus. It must be cut in some multiple of the number seven—that is, it may be 14, 21, 28, or 35 inches long, depending on how many times you wish to bind the poppets. (If the number of inches in the ribbon can correspond with the age of the beloved, the ritual will be even more effective.)

The following ritual can be performed by a whole coven or by a lone supplicant. Usually the supplicant is the lover, but it may also be an interested friend or a professional witch. (However, I will not go into that possibility, since a professional witch will most likely have her own Love Magick.)

The poppets are placed upon a surface, preferably on an altar of the sort described in “The Witch’s Equipment.” If no such altar is available, a desk or table will suffice. What is essential is that the supplicant lift each poppet and name it according to the person it must represent, while invoking the aid of the gods. Next, holding one poppet in each hand, they must be brought slowly together while the supplicant thinks of them embracing and remaining intertwined forever. The poppets are brought face to face, belly to belly, are pressed together and immediately bound with the red ribbon. (No one must giggle here. The whole ritual must be done with the utmost solemnity.)

At this point, some grimoires demand that a sword be laid over the poppets, but I am suspicious of this method, feeling that those joined by the sword will eventually come to blows.

Next, wrap the poppets in a napkin, handkerchief, or piece of used bedsheet (see above). A sock or stocking recently worn by the beloved—and not washed since—also works well (since the connection between the soles of the feet and powerful emotions is well known). Then hide the poppets in some safe place. (If left in a cedar chest or linen closet, they will also serve to perfume the clothes or sheets.)

Perform the poppet ritual on a Friday—the day sacred to Venus (venerdi in Italian) and also to Freya, the Norse goddess of love (Friday is her day)—and repeat the entire binding ritual on two subsequent Fridays. If by then the lover has not come around, perhaps you have forgotten him/her anyway. If still you pine away, repeat the ritual every Friday thereafter until love-everlasting is yours.

(This ritual for procuring permanent and lasting love is currently undergoing the most stringent tests at an independent testing laboratory. Readers are cordially invited to report their success with this ritual. Results will be published in subsequent editions of this book.)

Love Magick

Oh for a candle I could light

to draw you closer …

Oh for a poppet

made like you,

with your own lovely body

sewn again of cloth,

with your own pale

unseeing eyes,

with your own cock sweetly curving,

remade in wax or clay.…

Oh for an herb

to place upon my tongue

to bring your tongue

to mine …

Oh for a potion

I could drink

or slip to you

at some stale

dinner party.…

Oh for your nail parings …

Oh for your hairs …

stirred in a brew,

baked in a millet cake …

I would make a stew,

a soup, a witch’s mix

to bring your lovely thighs

on mine.

I would boil bats if not babies

& toads if not theologians

to make you care.…

I would enter your blood

like malaria, enter your eyes

like laser beams, enter your palms

like the holy spirit

causing stigmata

to a sex-starved saint!

Oh love,

I would spell you

evol

if mere anagrams

would bring you

near.…

But I spell you love

& still

you do not

hear.