It’s Valentine’s Day! Valentine’s means chocolate, roses, and sappy stories. It’s a day to celebrate romantic love if you’ve found it, and long for it if you have not. It’s also a time to celebrate love of all types, and to open our hearts to a deeper connection than we have yet experienced. In honor of the day, here is a collection of recipes and traditions to inspire you as you seek to invite love into your life in whatever form you desire.
Think “magic” and “love” and the immediate association is…love potions! Love potions are a time-honored remedy for unrequited love, and feature in a number of folk and fairy tales. Anjou Kiernan, author of The Ultimate Guide To The Witch’s Wheel of the Year: Rituals, Spells & Practices For Magical Sabbats, Holidays, & Celebrations, shares a tragically romantic Celtic story in which a love potion causes no end of trouble:
The Cornish knight Tristan, who was young and hopelessly handsome, traveled to Ireland to bring the beautiful maiden princess Isolde to his uncle Mark, the king, for marriage. As Tristan and Isolde were about to begin their journey, Isolde’s mother gave her a bottle of wine that was to be drunk only by her and her new husband. Unbeknownst to Isolde, the wine was really a love potion that her mother had concocted in case Isolde thought King Mark was too old to marry.
You know where this is going: Tristan and Isolde blithely ignore Isolde’s mother’s admonition and drink the wine, instantly becoming star-crossed lovers, à la Shakespeare.
Through tricks and tragedy, the ill-fated lovers would never again meet in the mortal life: Tristan was killed by a poisoned arrow and Isolde died from heartbreak. But even in death, their love could not be extinguished. From Tristan’s grave sprouted a briar that entwined itself around Isolde’s grave and could not be removed despite several efforts by King Mark.
Kiernan includes a recipe for a love potion, noting that such potions should be used with spiritual and medicinal caution: potions should never be employed in an attempt to change the will of another person; and, as with all herbal remedies, if you don’t know how the herbs used might interact with your body and any medicine you are currently taking, professional guidance should be sought before consuming. Kiernan calls their “Briarpatch love potion” an “elixer that will ignite our own fires inside of us,” and notes that:
The hawthorn berries in this potion represent the briar that forever ensnared the two lovers. Medicinally, rose petals and hawthorn berries are thought to ease stress and soothe emotions as well as lower cholesterol and blood pressure. Saffron and damiana are proven aphrodisiacs known to increase libido.
The herbs are combined with brandy and raw honey and allowed to sit for six weeks before straining and bottling for use as needed1.
Arin Murphy-Hiscock, author of The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More, offers a variety of love potion recipes. To dream of love, stuff a small pillow with rose, jasmine and gardenia petals and stick it under your pillow or inside your pillowcase at night. The same can be done with honeysuckle and sunflower for happiness; lavender, poppy, and gardenia for peace; and chamomile, violet, and calendula for harmony. Or, use a blend of whichever of these herbs speaks to you. Food-grade rose, lavender, and jasmine can be brewed into a love tea:
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