Do you know that most of my clients want love more than money? That was surprising to me too when I started working with clients many years ago. I put a great deal of energy into prosperity and abundance magick and yet everyone who seemed to contact me was only looking for one thing: love!

Love is tricky though because it involves the free will of another person. I’m here to tell you as your favorite Suburban House-Witch, free will is the sticky wicket for those of us in the magick biz. There are spells that seem to manipulate it, even spells that claim to counter it (file those under the heading of Dark Arts, please); yet the common working knowledge of magick is: as above, so below. In other words, since free will is a Law of Nature, it is thus, one the witch must contend with.

I’ve probably cast a couple of thousand love spells in my lifetime. Not for myself, but for other people. I have to date NEVER cast a love spell for myself. Aha! That must mean something! It does, my dear, it means that although I believe implicitly that love magick can help you to get what you want and desire, I have personally opted to let the Goddess and the Universe at large make my love decisions for me.

Here’s my situation: I know who my soulmate is. He is not available to be with me at the current time and may never actually be available to me (do not worry, he is not married, just far away geographically and works in a completely unrelated field to my own); however I am married to a man I have been with for 16 years.

My husband and I have a completely civil and enjoyable relationship finally after many years of difficulties. He is a remarkable individual, highly intelligent, a great sense of humor and rock n roll good looks (he looks like Rod Stewart’s twin brother). He is nearly 20 years my senior but because he is a musician, this has never been an issue. He seems much younger than he is and I seem much older. Obviously I love him, there is no question about that, but our relationship has moved beyond marital conditions. I believe honestly that each of us would truly like to see the other experience happiness, no matter if it meant we could no longer be together.

Love like this is different certainly from when we first got together. Now when I think about my husband I don’t think about what he can do to make me happy, I think about what I can do to make HIM happy and if that means that he is happy with someone else then I absolutely want that for him.

Please don’t think I am daft for encouraging my husband to find someone else to love - I certainly am not advocating that! A marriage, no matter what stage that marriage is in, should NEVER include infidelity. The kind of love of I am speaking of is empirical. We’ve done it, seen it, been it over the past 16 years and in that time I have come to know that I will never be happy being loved by my husband.

Don’t get me wrong - it is not because he doesn’t make me happy - of course he does! And I like being loved, too. However, I know that happiness is not to be found by someone loving and desiring me. It is a pleasurable but impermanent state.

My truest joy comes in loving others. Loving my husband in the way that I do, loving my family, loving my clients, loving my friends, my enemies (in a broad sense, I do not have any enemies I am aware of ), animals, nature and of course Buddha and the Goddess. Singling out one person (even my blessed unconnected with soulmate) seems to be pretty limiting, given this incredible capacity that we as humans have for giving and expressing love.

However since I am still human and still working on that whole “desire” thing, I will continue to work toward my soulmate, no matter what the state of my universal love.

Maybe there is a spell in all of this - a “Universal Love” spell. Or perhaps there is a spell that I have not found that will help bring my soulmate closer to me.

Meanwhile, I am dedicating March to something that has little to do with love - yet it is something we all need everyday: MONEY! Finally my work on prosperity and abundance gets its day in the sun (or rather the moon, in my case!)

It usually takes me about two days to fully recover after a casting. This past Full Moon was more difficult than most as I had many time-consuming rituals including two that involved another witch who helped me get in and out of a trance for the “Love Retrieval” rituals.

I learned this technique from a Native American Shaman, called “Soul Retrieval” (a practice that is even more complex than what I do.).

“Soul Retrieval is the recovery of parts of the person that they left or lost somewhere, or that were stolen or borrowed by somebody else. The objective is to make the person more whole and more present. The idea of Soul Retrieval originates in ancient shamanic practices. Native Americans would do it in drumming ceremonies where the shaman would travel off into the past or into alternate realities and find the part of the person that was missing and invite it to come back.”

This is essentially what I do when I do the “Love Retrieval” though I am not looking for missing pieces of the castees soul, but of their love and that of their partner’s love. It is one of the more complex rituals I take part in. I have been doing them now on nearly every moon, and it is quite exhausting.

Since my practice has grown (my witch practice) in the past two years I have cast more spells and rituals in a month than many witches (unless they are also working witches) cast in their entire lives! This past moon I cast 35 spells and rituals. The previous moon I had cast 26.

There are definitely more popular times than others, for instance it does slow down a bit in late summer, but the rest of the year stays fairly consistent. I would have it no other way.

When I think about what I do for a living, I do so with my full heart. I am honored to be able to help people with witchcraft, to talk with them about their lives and the ways they can transform.

In college I studied psychology and philosophy. As a Buddhist I have spent the past six years in intensive study of Tibetan and Zen Buddhism. All of these elements come into my craft and into how I work with my castees (clients).

It isn’t always easy though, for many times a castee wants something that is not good for them. They are victims of what we call “desire and craving” in Buddhism.

The Four Noble Truths:
1. Diagnosis: The condition of all existence is suffering.
2. Cause: Suffering is caused by selfishness, desire and craving
3. Prognosis: Selfishness, desire and craving can be overcome… and then, suffering ends on earth and the cycle of the curse of reincarnation is gone.
4. Treatment: The Eightfold Path:

The Eightfold Path:
1-3- Wisdom (panna):
- Right View
- Right Thought
- Right Speech
4-5- Morality (sila):
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
6-8- Meditation (samadhi):
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfulness
- Right Contemplation

We are ALL essentially slaves to our “desires and cravings”, which unfortunately can lead to considerable suffering and unhappiness. As a witch I try to help my castees by focusing their wills and intentions on what is best for them (whether they know or do not know what this is.).

One of the most powerful assertions in all the witchcraft I have ever done comes through science in the form of Quantum Physics. Through the marriage of science and craft I have been using “Reality Shifting” to immediately change my own (and others) present circumstances to more focused realities.

This “shifting” can help anyone and can allow for more positive paths to be traversed. There is also a greater component to the “reality shifting” that prepares us for new realities such as the astral and to face our own alternate reality of death when that time comes.

I was happy to see castees choosing this ritual. It involves a deep commitment to CHANGE and a proactive interest in one’s own life. It will absolutely take you somewhere you have never been before. And that possibility is where magick lives.

Love never goes out of style (Thank Goddess!) and I did more than a few love spells to coincide with Valentine’s Day on this past Full Moon. The extra boost of energy from the loving atmosphere was a terrific boon to my work and those who were having love magick worked on this moon were very fortunate.

For myself, I had a great deal of love for my distant soulmate and for those close-by too. Especially my dear immediate (and extended) family. I had castees who sent Valentine’s Day greetings too which was absolutely charming and lovely.

I am so fortunate to do this work!

Well, my dears, that is what I am - kind of like Samantha from Bewitched meets Dharma from Dharma & Greg.

Let me tell you more about me:

I am not at all what you think a witch would be like. I never wear black and rarely wear any pentacles, except occasionally on witch holidays. I do not have dyed red or black hair or black fingernail polish or any facial or body piercings (except for my ears). I don’t use my face or hair as a canvas to express my artistic edge. Although I don’t dislike “Goth” things, I myself am not “Goth” nor do I listen to heavy, depressing industrial music or live my life according to Ann Rice novels (pre-born again Christian).

I am as much a hippie, as a witch, but when I say hippie I mostly mean, very earthy, crunchy, Health Food store-ish, not drug-using, free-love giving or non-shaving under my arms or my legs.

I am feminist through and through. I belong to NOW. I am an environmentalist. I support Earth and Animal conservation groups through donations. I am an activist who supports many Buddhists causes like International Campaign for Tibet, Tibet House and the Tibetan Nuns Project. I don’t discuss my political affiliations but I am sure you can discern what they are.

I’m educated, went to college (The University of Akron and Yale University) and got married right out of school. I have been married for fifteen years this year, though my husband and I live apart (he cares for his aging parents in Maine). I do not have children, rather, pets - and have over the years had three cats and two dogs. My dog Cisco passed on a while ago and now my dog Blue lives with my husband in Maine. My only surviving cat is my oldest pet, Mick (named for Mick Jagger), who will be 17 this year. Although I love the human race fervently, I love animals even more. I offer healing services and spells for free to anyone who has an ailing pet.

I am a writer and have written books (in an unrelated field to witchcraft) and have spent many years (over a decade) publishing websites. I still have my best site online - grrlgamer.com, a gaming website for women and girls that I started in 1996. I have a terrific background in the gaming industry where I was a journalist and eventually the first female Editor of a gaming magazine in 1999. I’ve won several awards for my websites and some nice recognition in the press. I will always play games ( I prefer online RPG’s like EverQuest II and Worlds of Warcraft) even when they have to call me GrannyGamer!

I have been a witch since I was fifteen years old. It was difficult over the years to fully commit to living the lifestyle. I actually had to become Buddhist first before I could live my life unapologetically as a witch.

I live in the suburbs in a pretty little pastel peach house in a beautifully tropic neighborhood in Fort Myers, Florida. My Mom lives with me and my brother who is a ship’s Captain, comes home every few weeks. We have a very close family and although this is not our family business, we are all involved in the craft of the wise in different facets. I have witchcraft on both sides of the family, Stregheria (Italian Witchcraft) on one side and Celtic on the other. The Italians do not ever discuss it, though they were not surprised that I came back to my roots. No one in the family was surprised that I chose this path. I was heading for it my entire life.

Although I am a Third Degree Wiccan High Priestess I do not consider myself Wiccan, in that I practice only Buddhism as a religion. If you were to get technical about what I am (besides a Suburban House-Witch), you would be correct to call me a Buddhist Witch. Because I am eclectic I use many different mysteries and deities in my spellwork. I practice Voodoo and Hoodoo nearly as often as I practice White Magick. I do not cast Black Magick spells but I know many of them and will not hesitate to help someone if they are determined to go this route. As a Buddhist I do not believe in good and evil, just different perceptions of a neutral reality. We add the “good” or “evil” perception ourselves.

If you are interested in what form of Buddhism I practice it is called New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) under the teacher Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. It is Tibetan Buddhism, though I have studied both schools of Zen Buddhism (Rinzai and Soto) as well as Theravaden Buddhism. My interest in Buddhism began in my early twenties and I have been studying seriously for 6 years.

If you’d like to know more about this particular Suburban House-Witch, post your comments and I will answer your questions next time around.

Blessed be,
Amita

A year ago I had one of the most supernatural experiences of my life. I actually discovered precisely who my soulmate was currently here on Earth. I had cast a specific spell and asked the fates to give me the sign I needed in my dream that very night. Very clearly and specifically the universe supplied me with all of the information I needed to find my soulmate including his name, his location and exactly what he looked like at precisely that moment. Or rather, what he would look like five days later when I finally found a recent photo of him and he matched the man in my dream.

However getting to my soulmate was not going to be easy. It seldom ever is, even once you know who they are. We were seperated by more than distance unfortunately. There were things I already knew about my soulmate which would complicate the possibility of a relationship between us. Not the least of which is that I am married!

That’s what can happen when you cast a spell of this nature, that you find out exactly what you need to know but then discover that you are powerless to move forward regarding the information. What could I do? leave my husband for a man I have never even met? Could I contact my soulmate and tell him that I had cast a spell and discovered that he alone in the world was the man I had searched for my entire life without him thinking I was utterly out of my mind?

I was bereft with this information and felt a new kind of despair in the knowing. He was out there and I knew who and where he was but I would have more than several impossiblities to get to him. And then no guarantees that he would even be able to see what I saw so clearly. Perhaps he wouldn’t recognize me or maybe he would continue to look in the wrong places as I had done for years.

This obviously came under the heading of “Be careful what you wish for…”.

It’s been a year since I learned who my soulmate is. Not much has changed on getting closer to him and yet - everything has changed. By using several other spells I have experienced a massive “reality shift” that I know will put me in position to eventually meet my soulmate. That of course doesn’t mean that he will know who I am upon meeting me but at least I will have the opportuntiy to meet him and know that something truly mystical happened to me in my time on Earth in this particular life.

And that is pretty cool.