“Are not the charms of love of every kind,
and the enjoyment of beauty in all its forms in nature, mysteries, miracles, or magical?”
Charles Godfrey Leland,
Aradia: The Gospel of the Witches
We are surrounded by symbols everywhere we go. Some of these, such as a cross or rosary beads, are obvious. However, others may not be recognized as symbols, at least at first glance. The American spirit is an example. This can be symbolized in many ways. The Statue of Liberty, the American flag, the Declaration of Independence, Pearl Harbor, and the Grand Canyon are good examples. Corporations spend large sums of money to promote symbols of their products. Wall Street symbolizes money and power to most people.
Most symbolism is universal, but there are exceptions. The dove is a symbol of peace for many people, but is loathed and despised by the Gypsies. This is because it is the only bird that kills for pleasure, rather than necessity. Consequently, for them, the dove symbolizes cruelty.
Magical symbols are images that conceal their true meaning. People who do not know what they are see them as images and pictures, but are not aware of the real meaning, which is hidden.
Most symbols are created from a combination of lines, squares, and circles, and each of these can have secret meanings. A vertical line, for instance, can symbolize the human spirit. It can also indicate the path from Heaven to Earth. A horizontal line symbolizes matter. It can also indicate movement from west to east, or from the past to the future. A square incorporates both horizontal and vertical lines, and symbolizes the material worlds we live in. The four sides also symbolize the four elements of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. A circle symbolizes spirit, infinity, eternity, unity, Heaven, and the entire spiritual world. Someone who is unaware of this will look at a vertical line, for instance, and see only a straight line. Someone else, who knows the symbology, will obviously see much more.
The cross, created by two lines crossing each other at right angles, is possibly the oldest symbol in the world. It symbolizes prosperity and protection from evil forces. Christians associate the cross with the resurrection and eternal life.
There is a whole branch of symbology that deals with love and all its ramifications. Love is a common factor in every occult tradition, as it is believed that love is the essential unifying factor in the world. This is not only love between two people, but also the love that the creator has for everyone. This effectively unites the darkness of man with the light of God.
The powerful mystery of sex played an equally important role in ancient symbology. Not surprisingly, ancient people were fascinated with the continuity of life that they saw all around them, and created images of the male and female sex organs. At one time, people thought that these images revealed the bestial instincts of primitive people. Nowadays, they are considered to be a form of reverence towards the universal life force. The various depictions of the phallus, for instance, were intended to symbolize creative power. Consequently, there is no deliberate sexual element in many phallic shapes, such as church spires or maypoles.
Love spells and charms have been used throughout history to appease the gods and to help people find, and then keep, the right relationship. Care must be taken whenever magic is performed, as it is easy to accidentally perform black magic, rather than white. White magic can be performed to attract a partner. There is nothing wrong in doing this. However, it is black magic if you perform a ritual to persuade a specific person to fall in love with you. That might satisfy your needs, but takes no account of the needs and desires of the other person.
It is difficult to define love. Dictionaries describe it as a warm affection between two people. This may or may not include sexual passion or gratification. Unfortunately, this definition gives no indication of the many varieties of love.
Love possibly began when people realized how alone they were in the world, and started seeking emotional relationships for comfort and support. Ever since, love has covered the spectrum from enormous happiness to incredible heartbreak.
Because love is so hard to define, the ancient Greeks came up with several different words to describe various forms of love.
Epithemia describes the natural urge everyone has to touch and be touched or caressed. It relates to sensual love and the body’s desire for sexual release. It could be considered a basic animal-like urge, as there were no romantic connotations associated with it.
Philia describes an idealistic idolization of someone else. It includes courtship, but excludes physical love.
Today, Eros means erotic love. However, it meant much more than this to the ancient Greeks. Eros was related to transformation, and the desire of two people to unite as one. Although transformation can provide sexual ecstasy, it can also produce pain and suffering. Eros also relates to mystery and the lure of the unknown. Consequently, eros can be hard to maintain in a permanent relationship, as the mystery soon disappears.
Agape is the love of god for man. Christians consider this to be an entirely sexless love, but in Greek times, gods frequently enjoyed sexual relations with mere mortals. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty, is a good example. The word aphrodisiac is derived from her name. Two of her human lovers were Anchises, a Trojan shepherd, and Adonis, a youth of incredible beauty.
The Greeks may have had several words to describe love, but they didn’t invent it. No one knows how or when love between two people began. An intriguing Paleolithic bone carving found in a cave in Isturitz, in southwestern France, may be the oldest existing depiction of love. It shows a man with his hands clasped, gazing up at a naked woman.1 It is intriguing to think that this Stone Age picture may have been carved to attract love. Another contender for the oldest symbol of love is a small sculpture of a pregnant woman made from limestone. It is thought that this was an amulet carried by a hunter to remind him of his partner while he was away from home.2
Even if this carving was not a magical symbol of love, it did not take long to start. There is a four-thousand-year-old clay tablet in the University of Pennsylvania Museum that contains an incantation used by a priest to restore his client’s lost love.
In the thirteenth century B.C.E., Hui, an official at the court of Pharaoh Ramses III, stole a book of magic spells from the Pharaoh’s library, and used it to create wax figures intended to kill his master. He also made love amulets that he gave to the ladies in the palace, hoping these would encourage them to join his conspiracy. The plot failed, and Hui and his supporters were killed. This incident shows that amulets to attract love were being used at that time.
In India, the ancient Vedas contain numerous examples of love magic. The Kama Sutra includes information on how to use magic spells to attract a partner. The Ananga-Ranga was even more specific, offering to teach its readers all the magic they needed to know in order to attract, win, and enjoy a partner of the opposite sex.
Magic spells to attract or enhance love are mentioned frequently in the writings of the ancient Greeks, such as Aristotle, Plato, and Euripedes. Retired prostitutes and witches from Thessaly and Phrygia found magic love charms a good source of income.
Magic was also popular in ancient Rome, but it was a dangerous pursuit as practitioners of the art faced the death penalty if arrested. Lucius Apuleius, a Roman satirist who lived about 200 C.E., married a wealthy widow. Her relatives, concerned that their inheritance was disappearing, took him to court claiming that he had used love magic to gain his wife’s affections. His defense was that a young man did not need magic to captivate a forty-year-old woman who had been widowed for fourteen years. He won the case, and published his eloquent defense as Apologia.3
The Christian church condemned all magic, including love magic. Initially, the punishments were mild. Emperor Charlemagne (742–814) forbade any dealings with magicians or fortune-tellers. Offenders were placed in prison until they repented. However, in 829, Louis I (777–840), Charlemagne’s son, better known as Louis the Pious, introduced the death penalty for anyone involved in magic. Many people were killed as a result, but this was nothing compared to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when thousands of witches were burned at the stake every year.
The celibate clergy had a prurient interest in love magic. They believed the Devil provided the necessary power for love magic to work. Nicholas Eymeric (c.1320–1399), the grand inquisitor at Aragon, wrote in his Directorium Inquisitorium (1376) that fortune telling, love amulets, and magic potions were all sacrilegious. This meant they were suitable targets for the inquisition.
In Britain, the penalties were not as severe. King Henry VIII passed an act in 1541 that said “it shall be a Felony to practice or cause to be practiced Conjuration, Enchantment, Witchcraft, or Sorcery, to get money or to consume any person in his body, members, or goods, or to provoke any person to unlawful love.” This was repealed just six years later. A new law, in 1563, sentenced people who “provoke any person to unlawful love” to one year in prison, and time in the pillory every three months.
James I passed his famous “witch act” in 1604. This included death as the penalty for a second offense of “provoking unlawful love.” George II repealed this law in 1736, and replaced it with another that said practicing witchcraft was, in effect, fraudulent, as it did not exist.
Despite this change in the law, most people still accepted love magic, and stories about the successes and failures of love magic were invariably popular.
In 1591, Dr. John Fian, a Scottish schoolteacher, was forced to relate his experience with love magic while on trial for witchcraft. Apparently, he fell in love with a young woman in the village he lived in. When she spurned his advances, Dr. Fian asked her younger brother, one of his students, to help him. If he could obtain three pubic hairs from his sister, Dr. Fian would forgo the whippings that helped his students remember their lessons. The boy shared a bed with his older sister, and agreed to help. Unfortunately, his sister woke up when he tried to obtain the hairs, and the boy was forced to tell the family what he was doing. His mother cut three hairs from the family cow, and the boy gave these to the schoolmaster. Dr. Fian used the hairs while performing a spell to make the girl fall in love with him. The spell worked extremely well. The cow followed Dr. Fian everywhere, dancing and leaping around him while constantly mooing. The case attracted huge popular interest, and an engraving was sold that showed Dr. Fian drawing circles in sand while a cow gazed at him with love in her eyes. This humiliation was just the start of Dr. Fian’s troubles. He was convicted of witchcraft, strangled, and burned at the stake.4
Another frequently told story concerns Archbishop Poppo of Trèves who fell passionately in love with a nun in 1030. The archbishop had given the nun a piece of his cloak to be made into special stockings for him to wear at Pontifical Mass. As soon as he put the stockings on, the archbishop felt incredible desire for the young nun. He soon suspected that the stockings had something to do with his unwelcome urges, and asked all the men in the cathedral to try on the stockings. Without exception, they all experienced the same feelings of lust for the nun. When the stockings were cut open, the archbishop discovered a magic charm. The nun was expelled from the convent and Archbishop Poppo went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to make amends for his sinful thoughts.5
Naturally, there were many fictional stories involving love magic. Cupid’s arrow is a good example of this. Cupid played a prominent role in Roman literature from about the time of Catullus (c.84–54 B.C.E.). Cupid is a winged boy who shoots arrows of passion that make his targets fall helplessly in love. Cupid symbolizes sensual love. Pathos symbolizes idealistic love.
Magical symbols of love and romance express their creator’s feelings and emotions. Many people find it hard to express their feelings, and this frequently causes major problems in their relationships. People who can talk about their feelings while experiencing them are extremely fortunate. Other ways to express feelings are to keep a diary or journal, write poems, or create art or music. Negative emotions can be worked out of the system by going on a brisk walk or participating in some form of sporting or physical fitness activity.
Some symbols of love and romance are outside the scope of this book. Music is a good example. A friend of mine was falling in love when Phil Collins’s recording of “A Groovy Kind of Love” was a big hit. This song became their symbol of love. Consequently, whenever they hear the song, they immediately relive the time when they first met. “A Groovy Kind of Love” is the perfect symbol of love and romance for them.
You will already know many of the symbols in this book, as they are part of our common heritage. Most people like to start working with symbols that they are familiar with. However, you will also find it fascinating to explore some of the symbols that you do not already know. If you find it hard to determine which symbol or symbols are right for you, trust your intuition.
The purpose of this book is to provide a wide selection of magical symbols that you can use to improve the quality of your love life. I have arranged these in different categories. Consequently, you do not need to read the chapters in any set order. In fact, you should start by reading the chapters that interest you most. Chapter fourteen provides suggestions on how to use the symbols to attain your goals. In addition, each chapter includes a case study of someone who has used a symbol to enhance his or her life. I hope you will enjoy reading this book, and will also find it useful as a reference book in the future.
1. Edward S. Gifford, The Charms of Love (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1963), 2–3.
2. Denny Lee and Josh Stoneman, Symbols of Love (New York: Assouline Publishing, Inc., 2002), 8.
3. David Crystal, editor, The Cambridge Biographical Dictionary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, second edition 1994), 37.
4. Anonymous, Newes from Scotland (Edinburgh, 1591).
5. Edward S. Gifford, The Charms of Love, 41–42.