Gerina Dunwich - 27 Nov

Love magick, ancient in origin, has been practiced for countless centuries on every continent by every culture in one form or another.

Love potions and love spells are two of the most popular and best-known examples of love magick, but there are many other elements as well, including charms, amulets, talismans, herbs, omens, astrology, palmistry, and the divinatory arts, just to name a few.

In the United States, love magick is a common practice among the Creoles, Hoodoos, the Voodoo Queens of Louisiana, and the Native American Indians. It is also practiced by most modern Witches in every state of the country.

Among nearly every North American Indian tribe, various forms of love magick have been practiced, notably by the Canadian Indians known as the Cree. Their reputation as love magicians is greatly respected (and often feared) by many of the surrounding Indian tribes.

In Great Britain, love magick was the most popular type of magick, and some form of it was practiced by nearly all Witches, especially on Saint Agnes Eve (see Glossary of Terms ) and Saint Valentines Day.

Saint Valentines Day, observed to acknowledge love and romance, is (like most of our modern holidays) Pagan in origin and stems from the Lupercalia, an ancient Roman fertility festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of February in honor of Lupercus, a fertility god similar to Pan and Faunus. It is said to have been established by Romulus and Remus, although other evidence suggests that it is probably older than Rome itself.

During the festival, young men chose their sexual partners by drawing the names of young women out of a bowl. (This is most likely the origin of our modern valentine custom.)

As the influence of the Christian church began to take over the Old Religion, the Pagan fertility god was replaced by their Saint Valentine. February 14 was named Saint Valentines Day, following the tradition in supplanting the old Pagan holidays.

In Europe, many plants (in particular the mandrake) have been widely used in love magick. Aphrodisiacs and love philtres made from ginseng and other exotic plants are common in the Orient, and various animal parts are popular love-potion ingredients in Africa, Haiti, Cuba, and Australia.

Love magick is simple and easy to use. Its popularity is increasing, and nearly everybody has practiced it at one time or another (either consciously or unknowingly), even if only by one of the most simple forms, say, breaking a wishbone and wishing for a lover, wearing jewelry (love charms) to make oneself attractive, or reading a horoscope column to gain information or advice about ones love life.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to provoke another to unlawful love by means of magick or witchery violated the law. It was punishable by imprisonment, torture, and sometimes even death.

Luckily, today the ridiculous laws against witchcraft and magick are no longer a threat to anyone; however, in certain places witchcraft remains misunderstood and socially unaccepted, and one has no choice but to be forced into secrecy to protect his or her craft or else run the risk of being subjected to public ridicule, discrimination, job loss, and possibly even violence.

We sincerely hope all of this will change someday and that men and women of all religious beliefs, as well as all customs, races, colors, creeds, and sexual orientations, will be able to accept each other and live together on the same planet in peace, harmony, and love.

DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE
THE WHOLE OF THE LAW.
LOVE IS THE LAW, LOVE UNDER WILL.