When we get dumped, it’s tempting to plead to a higher power: please can they come back? Many pray to the heavens, even if they’ve never been to church before. Others visit a tarot reader, hoping to see a happy couple reunited in the cards. In a last desperate throw of the dice, some turn to love spells.
Either they request a witch’s services or they do it themselves with dolls, talismans, potions, and rituals. The internet is rife with dubious adverts offering to use black magic to get your ex back, many floating around on Yell, Gumtree and Nextdoor.
But love spells are polarising in witchcraft circles. According to Lidia Pradas, 28, author of The Complete Grimoire (2020), a beginner’s guide to spells, they “may backfire” if directed towards a specific person, and anchor you in a painful past if it’s an ex. They can “create an artificial bond that brings no real happiness”, says Pradas. “Love should be free, and if feelings aren’t genuine, then is it really love?”
Love magic is as old as love itself. Tablets in the Greco-Roman world were inscribed with spells and adorned with a lock of hair of the crush, then surreptitiously slipped inside their house. King Solomon of Israel wrote a book of love spell instructions 3,000 years ago. Medieval black magic grimoires, which draw on Solomon, detail not only demonic pacts but also how to enchant others.
It has been a motif in the arts throughout history, such as the vindictive Oberon in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream cursing Titania to fall for Bottom: “Fetch me that flower … / The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid / Will make or man or woman madly dote / Upon the next live creature that it sees.”
Rachel Patterson, author of 27 books on witchcraft, is no stranger to jilted women who are clutching at straws to get them back. “I receive so many emails from folk telling me someone has stolen their husband using witchcraft and they want a spell to get their ex back.”
“The answer is a mundane one: there’s no magic involved, just humans being humans,” Patterson says. “Life sucks sometimes, there’s usually no occult reason. The ‘other woman’ probably isn’t a witch.” She explains that these curses are only successful due to the placebo effect – if they let the person know they’ve been cursed and they “feed the energy themselves.”
If you Google “cord-cutting ritual witch London,” however, the results are generally more established spirituality shops that often refuse to cast love spells. Cord-cutting symbolically cuts the spiritual cord tethering you to someone.
The practicalities of cord-cutting vary. It often involves cutting a piece of string with scissors or a flame. Alternatively, as a symbolic funeral, you could write your ex’s name on a piece of paper and bury it. Or, you could bind your feet together, symbolising what is blocking you from moving forwards, meditate on letting the string absorb the toxic energy, then cut yourself free. It can even take the form of an exorcism, banishing the demons your ex has left lingering.
But it’s frightening – what if it actually works, and the precious invisible string we cling to is severed?
“Not everyone needs a drastic cord-cutting,” Pradas continues, and mentions that the rituals seen on social media look more like a fire hazard than a spell. She recommends a gentler release ritual for many cases. “Letting go doesn’t have to be cutting ties, but rebuilding yourself and reclaiming your energy.
“I performed one over a toxic and draining friendship. It helped in the long run; it’s not something to take lightly – it requires mental clarity and careful planning.”
Inbaal Honigman, a TV psychic and witch, rarely receives requests for cord-cutting spells. “By the time you know that person isn’t right for you, you can rely on everyday tools to heal.” She is inundated with love spell requests, however. “It’s always ‘can you bring someone back?’, and I have to go into an educational talk about free will and self-love.”
Even if you don’t necessarily believe the magic is “real”, it’s a symbolic act that helps you muster the strength to go no contact – you feel motivated to reap the benefits by putting the phone down. To truly feel untethered from your ex, it’s important to abide by it consciously, or the effects won’t last a day.
As for love spells, a more self-loving form of love magic is to manifest the kind of connection you want in your life moving forward, then leave it in the universe’s court. The universe is older and wiser than your ache for someone who belongs in the past – out with the old, in with the new.