Love Spells

 Witch Love Spells: History, Practice, and Ethical Considerations

What Are Witch Love Spells?

Witch love spells are magical rituals or incantations performed with the intention of influencing romantic feelings, attracting a specific person, strengthening an existing relationship, or kindling general love and desire. In modern witchcraft and folk-magic traditions, they typically involve some combination of the following elements:

•  Symbolic tools: candles (especially red or pink), herbs (rose petals, lavender, damiana, vervain), crystals (rose quartz, emerald), personal items (hair, clothing, photographs), written petitions, oils, or poppets (cloth dolls representing the target).

•  Timing: performed on Fridays (Venus day), during a waxing or full moon (to increase love), or on specific pagan holidays such as Beltane or St. Valentine’s Day.

•  Invocation: calling upon deities of love (Aphrodite, Venus, Freya, Oshun, Erzulie Freda, etc.), spirits, angels, or simply the practitioner’s own focused will.

•  Verbal components: rhymes, chants, or affirmations spoken aloud or written and burned/buried.

Love spells exist on a spectrum:

•  General love-drawing spells – meant to attract “the right person” without naming anyone specific.

•  Sweetening spells – to make an existing partner more affectionate (e.g., the famous “honey jar” spell).

•  Compulsion or binding spells – intended to force a particular person to fall in love against their natural inclination (historically called “goetic” or “black” love magic).

Historical Overview

Love magic is one of the oldest and most universal forms of folk practice.

Ancient World

•  Mesopotamia (c. 2000 BCE): Clay tablets record incantations to make a man or woman burn with desire, often addressed to Ishtar.

•  Ancient Egypt: The “Love Spell of Victorious Horus” (Papyrus Chester Beatty, c. 1200 BCE) uses effigies and wax figures.

•  Greece and Rome: The Greek Magical Papyri (2nd century BCE–5th century CE) contain dozens of erotic attraction spells (agōgē) and binding spells (katadesmoi), often inscribed on lead tablets and buried with the dead or thrown into wells. Roman writers such as Ovid and Apuleius describe love philtres and witches who could “draw a man from the ends of the earth.”

Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Christian authorities condemned love magic as demonic. The 13th-century Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) explicitly lists inducing love or lust through witchcraft as proof of pact with the Devil. Despite the danger, village cunning folk and clergy themselves were frequently consulted for love charms (e.g., using menstrual blood in food, tying knots in cords, or reciting corrupted psalms).

African Diaspora and Hoodoo/Conjure

In the American South, enslaved Africans and their descendants developed a rich tradition of rootwork that included powerful love workings: “nation sacks,” mojo bags containing lodestone and a lover’s hair, or the famous “Follow Me Boy” oil used by sex workers to keep clients returning.

19th–20th Century Occult Revival

Figures such as Paschal Beverly Randolph (sexual magic), the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and later Aleister Crowley integrated erotic magic into high ceremonial practice. Modern Wicca, founded by Gerald Gardner in the 1940s–50s, generally discouraged coercive love spells but popularized gentler attraction magic.

Contemporary Practice

Today, love spells are widely shared on TikTok (“WitchTok”), Etsy, and pagan forums. Many modern witches explicitly reject spells that target a specific unwilling person, favoring instead self-love rituals or spells “for the good of all and harming none” (the Wiccan Rede).

Ethical Considerations

The ethics of love spells are the most debated topic in modern witchcraft and occult communities. Three broad positions exist:

The Consent-Absolutist Position
Any spell that attempts to override another person’s free will is inherently unethical and tantamount to magical rape. This view is dominant in most Wiccan, eclectic pagan, and New Age circles since the 1980s. Practitioners argue that even “mild” influence (e.g., making someone notice you more) violates autonomy and will rebound karmically (“threefold law” or simple cause-and-effect).

The Traditionalist/Pragmatic Position
Found in older folk magic, Hoodoo, and some ceremonial traditions. Love magic has always been performed for hire; village witches and rootworkers rarely refused a client who wanted a specific person. Ethics are contextual: if the target has already shown interest, or if the client has been wronged, stronger measures may be justified. The practitioner’s responsibility is to warn the client of possible backlash, not to police desire itself.

The  Radical-Will Position
Associated with chaos magick and some Left-Hand-Path practitioners. All magic is manipulation of reality; drawing an arbitrary line at love is inconsistent. If you accept that advertising, fashion, and flirting are attempts to influence attraction, the difference between a spell and a seduction technique is merely one of method.

Common Practical Arguments Against Coercive Love Spells

Even many non-absolutists caution against them for purely pragmatic reasons:

•  They frequently backfire, creating obsession, stalking, or violent jealousy in the target.

•  They bind the caster as much as the target (“you become what you obsess over”).

•  They rarely produce genuine, lasting love; the relationship often collapses when the spell’s energy dissipates.

Self-Love as the Modern Alternative

Most contemporary teachers now recommend redirecting the desire for a particular person into spells for confidence, magnetism, and openness to healthy love. The logic: “Work on becoming the kind of person your ideal partner would fall in love with, rather than trying to force a specific person to change.”

So, should you do love spells?

That is for you to decide on a case by case basis and with the relevant ethical and psychological considerations taken into account . As with all witchcraft, no magick is totally free and every action causes ripples through lives and therefore this is all part of the equation of balance and consequence.

True love is a wonderful thing that cannot be made to happen but you can of course help things along, say with a shy partner. If they truly love you then they will always love you Magick or no. If they are with you because of spells then you may spend more time thinking if they really love you than you would be happily in love with someone who truly wants to be with you.

Witch love spells are an ancient and cross-cultural phenomenon that range from gentle attraction charms to aggressive binding work. While their techniques and ingredients have evolved, the core tension remains unchanged: the collision between human desire and the principle of consent. Modern witchcraft has largely moved toward an ethic that prioritizes autonomy and self-work over coercion, but older and more pragmatic traditions continue to exist. Whether one views love spells as harmless fantasy, legitimate folk practice, or unethical manipulation ultimately depends on one’s metaphysical worldview and personal moral framework. What is undisputed is that, for better or worse, the urge to use magic to secure love is as old as humanity itself.