The most important ingredient in any spell is the person casting it.
Love magic is probably one of the most debated topics in modern witchcraft.
Ask ten practitioners if love spells are ethical, and you’ll get eleven different answers. Some people believe they’re never appropriate. Others see them as no different than any other form of manifestation. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle: it depends.
Personally, I think it’s a question every practitioner needs to answer for themselves, but that it’s a conversation we should continue having as a community.
Love Magic Isn’t One Thing
One issue with the current conversation about love magic is that often, every spell involving relationships gets tossed into the same category, even when they’re not all trying to accomplish the same thing.
A sweetening spell, for example, is traditionally meant to soften communication, encourage kindness, or improve the overall tone of a relationship. You might use one with a romantic partner, but also with a difficult coworker, a family member, or before an important conversation. You can also use them more broadly, to attract positive interpersonal relationships to your life.
A love spell, on the other hand, is usually directed towards romantic attraction or emotional connection. Even then, there are different ways to approach them and different kinds to choose from. There’s domination or obsession spells, which are usually the main intended target for ethics concerns, but there’s also workings to support forgiveness and healing in an existing relationship, bring opportunity for connection to two people who already have feelings for each other, or bless a pairing with luck and abundance. While those workings are focused on relationships, they don’t have the same overt disregard for autonomy that binding and domination workings do.
When deciding if a working is in line with your personal ethics, the first step is often understanding what you’re really trying to accomplish.
Start With the Goal
Before beginning any ritual, start by asking yourself one of the most important questions.
What am I actually trying to change?
Are you hoping for clearer communication? Someone to notice or act on feelings that already exist? Are you trying to repair trust after an argument? Or trying to create feelings that weren’t there to begin with?
The clearer you are with yourself, the more honestly you can evaluate whether your working aligns with your own values.
Ethics Aren’t One-Size-Fits-All
I don’t love when conversations around magical ethics leave no room for nuance. “This is always wrong” and “Nothing is ever wrong” both strip the individual of the opportunity to use their discernment.
Every practitioner eventually develops their own ethical framework. Some avoid any magic that directly influences another person entirely. Others draw the line somewhere else. Different traditions approach these questions differently.
At the end of the day, it isn’t important that everyone agrees. It’s important that you’ve thought about what your own boundaries are and why. Ultimately, you’re the one who has to answer for them.
Magic Doesn’t Replace Communication
While ritual can support your efforts, it shouldn’t replace them. If your actions don’t support what you’re trying to accomplish with magic, you’re not going to get very far.
If your relationship needs an honest conversation, a candle won’t save you from having it.
If trust has been broken, a spell isn’t a substitute for accountability. If someone has told you they aren’t interested, no amount of magical effort changes the importance of respecting that answer. You can learn your lessons now or later, but if I’ve learned anything it’s that the longer you fight your growth the more it stings.
One of the reasons I love sweetening work is that it often pairs so well with real-world action. It encourages us to soften our approach while still showing up for the conversations that matter. It can also be general enough that it leaves the door open to possibilities we haven’t even considered for ourselves yet.
Have you ever wanted something so badly, only to find out it wasn’t any good and something so much better was right around the corner? Sweetening can focus on bringing the best outcome, even if it’s one we haven’t thought of yet.
Don’t Be Toxic
Magic has a way of amplifying whatever we bring into it.
If we’re approaching a situation with patience, honesty, and genuine care, our practice tends to reflect that. If we’re acting out of obsession, resentment, fear, or a need to control every outcome, our magic can start reflecting that, too.
After establishing what you’d like to accomplish with a working, ask yourself why.
Maybe you’re trying to encourage better communication to bring peace to yourself or another person.
Maybe you’re trying to force an outcome because you’re uncomfortable in your own company.
Once you’re clear on what you’re trying to accomplish and what your motivation is, it’s up to you to decide if proceeding is in line with your personal ethics. Be honest with yourself, ask the hard questions, and don’t answer the way you think you’re supposed to if it doesn’t truly reflect how you feel.
You don’t need another person to give you permission or tell you right and wrong. You just need to be able to be at peace with yourself.
The only other advice I’ll give on this topic is to be aware that acting out of fear, whether it’s of losing a relationship, being by yourself, or change in general, has a funny way of forcing you to live through the exact situation you’re afraid of enough times for it to lose its grip on you.
Take a deep breath, and make choices you feel good about.
A Few Questions Worth Sitting With
- What outcome am I really hoping for?
- Am I trying to support a relationship, or control one?
- How do I feel about that?
- Am I taking the appropriate action in the mundane world to achieve my desired outcome?
- Does this working align with my own ethical framework?
- Am I limiting myself according to someone else’s ethics instead of developing my own?
- If I looked back on this situation a year from now, would I feel proud of the choice I made?
