Hi, my loves and welcome to WiccaNow. I’ve been posting about some of my favourite spells recently, including this anti-anxiety spell, a home protection ritual and a spell to help you sleep. I also just posted a honey jar spell for love, and while writing it I realised a common question which often comes up is “how long does it take a love spells to work?”. Great question! I’d like to answer it today.
While the question is “how long does it take a love spell to work”, this post can be applied to the general question of “how long does it take a spell to work” as well.
Table of Contents
What is a Spell?
First, let’s cover exactly what it is that a spell is. Because that isn’t always clear right? How does magic actually work? How does expressing a wish, then sending it off into the ether have any effect at all?
A magical spell is the focusing of vital energies, accompanied by words, actions, magical tools and ingredients. These energies are meant to affect emotional, physical and spiritual aspects of the world around us. By focusing so strongly on what we want, we hope to create a laser beam of intent which will change the way energies are moving in our reality, thus effectively granting our wishes. What we’re doing, is willing our dreams into reality.
Spells are important in many cultures. Sure, they often appear in different forms, but the idea is the same. Even people who don’t realise that they are casting spells, cast spells. Have you ever left something for the tooth fairy? You put an object under your pillow, wish to a fairy for something in return and lo and behold, normally something appears. Now sure, this is your parents putting money under your pillow, but if you didn’t believe in the tooth fairy money certainly wouldn’t manifest would it? Your parents would stop giving it to you because you no longer believed in the magick of the tooth fairy.
To read more about what spells are, check out our spell 101, this post on what candle magic is and also this post on manifesting.
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How Long Does it Take a Love Spell to Work?
This question really depends on what kind of spell you’re casting and what religion you are working from. There are various traditions, and Wiccans tend to draw inspiration from many different places. Some spells might take a couple of days to manifest, while others may be the product of weeks or months of work. The honey jar spell is a good example of this. They are normally made with the intention that they will work over months, maybe even years.
Traditionally, many pagans believe that if you haven’t seen a result from your spell in one lunar cycle (28 days), then you might have to go back and repeat the spell. Hoodoo has a number of longer spells, some even include burning a candle for a whole 7 days before the spell even begins to work. With these sort of spells, a time frame is normally specified in which you should be seeing results.
When casting spells, remember that different spells take different amounts of time to work. Love spells specifically, can sometimes take a while and you may have to repeat them more than once. Magic and spells are never a “one-stop-shop” for fixing something in your life. You may want to manifest love in your life, and you may cast a love spell, but sometimes that spell will have a different outcome than you originally thought.
Your spell might have worked, but if you are expecting a black and white result such as “s/he loves me or s/he doesn’t”, then you might be disappointed. Always remember that magic is a manifestation of energy and not a manipulation of someone else. You can encourage someone to love you, but trying to use magic to force them to love you will not result in a relationship that you are happy with. Nobody can be forced into doing something they don’t want, and if they could be, you would be violating the Threefold Law by coercing them into it.
Is My Love Spell Working?
How do you know if your love spell is working? While this may seem like a basic question, the reality is a little more complex. Knowing if your spell is working can sometimes be difficult. When can you say the spell was a success or not? Especially with love spells, the area of success is very grey. You may cast a spell expecting an outpouring of love to come your way, and in reality, you might only sway the feelings of the object of your affections a little. In my book, that would still count as a success, however.
Because love spells normally involve other people, it’s tricky to know how their feelings may or may not have changed, which makes it difficult to gauge success. For example, your love spell might have worked and the other person might have stronger feelings for you, but this doesn’t mean that they act on these feelings. So you don’t know that the spell was a success until they tell you, which may be much later or even never.
Because of this uncertainty in regards to whether a spell is working or not, we suggest just getting on with your everyday life and not worrying too much! The more you doubt the power of the spell, the less likely it is to work. Try and stay as positive as possible and look for small signs that might show your spell is working.
4 Signs that Your Love Spell is Working
What sort of signs might point to the success of your spell?
- Did you feel an immediate sense of calm after you cast your spell? Did you feel like you had a small surge of power move through you, leaving you feeling like you’d conquered a mountain?
- Is the person you cast the spell for paying more attention to you? This doesn’t have to be physical attention. Are they txting or calling you more? Do they pay more attention when you’re talking to them? Do you catch them looking at you differently?
- Are other people talking to you about the person you cast the spell for more? Do you get mentioned together in conversation in a positive way? This may indicate that your person is talking positively about you and your friends are noticing a mutual connection.
- Do you feel positive about yourself and happy with your current situation? If you’re happy, the person that cast the spell will notice! Happy people attract other people. Everyone wants to be around someone who is sure of themselves and obviously feels good.
How Long Does it Take a Love Spell to Work Bonus Tip
You could try keeping a journal about your daily life. Check it occasionally to see whether you notice any pronounced differences in your love life. I don’t mean to say you should obsessively journal and write down every time the person you cast the spell for contacts you and what they said and how they said it. This form of over-thinking is damaging to your mental health and won’t help you achieve happiness, which is the end goal of any love spell right?
I’m a huge over-thinker. I know how tricky it can be to let go of something and how it can eat away at you and make you question your whole understanding of a situation. If this is what keeping a journal makes you feel, don’t keep one! I’m all about encouraging personal happiness and fulfilment, so I wouldn’t recommend doing anything that you find damaging to your mental health.
What Do I Do if My Spell Isn’t Working?
Do you feel like you have waited too long for your spell to work without seeing a result? Now is the time to reflect on the spell. Why do you think it didn’t work? Are you sure it didn’t produce some sort of success? Like I said earlier, success doesn’t actually always look like what we think it will look like. Maybe the spell brought you closer to the person you cast the spell for and you just didn’t realise? Maybe the spell brought you happiness in another form but you fixated on the result you thought you would achieve and missed a different result.
If you feel like you didn’t get the result you wanted, my first advice is to try again! Sometimes spells, particularly love spells, need to be cast a few times in order for them to achieve the desired effect.
If you believe the spell had absolutely no effect at all, it might be time to evaluate the spell that you used and how you used it. Did you set your intentions strongly on what it is that you wanted? Was the wording of your chant vague or specific? Did you use candles and if so did you blow them out rather than snuffing them? Did you REALLY believe that the spell would be a success or was the doubt creeping into the back of your mind?
There are unfortunately so many components to a spell, that it can be hard to narrow down where things went wrong. I am a firm believer in using spells for inspiration, rather than a step by step guide. My belief is that if it feels good to me, then I’ll do it that way. Other people, ceremonial witches, for example, believe that if the spell isn’t followed to the letter then it won’t work.
If you feel you aren’t getting results from any of your spellwork, evaluate what your expectation is. It’s easy to get caught in a net of what we think it is that we wanted, and by being caught in that net we miss the fact that things did change in a way we weren’t expecting.
Life moves in mysterious ways, I’m constantly amazed at how things in my own life manifest. Let me tell you, it’s not normally in the way that I imagined or expected! I completed an abundance drawing spell with Amythest the other day and we saw immediate results. The next time we did the same spell we had, in our opinion at the time, a far less favourable result.
Because we had so much success the first time, we expected the same result the second time, and when our expectation wasn’t met, we thought we had failed. What we realised later is that while we didn’t achieve what we had originally hoped for, we had success a couple of days later in something unrelated which turned out to bring an abundance of good energy into our lives. Success came, just in a different form to what we were expecting.
When looking at why you think your spell didn’t work, it’s always good to remember that magic doesn’t have the ability to change a physical object. We can change the way energy flows and can influence things by believing in our own powers of manifestation.
What you can’t expect is that a spell can completely change someone else. Only they have the power to do that. You can’t expect a spell to change the movement of time. You can’t expect a spell to physically move someone or something. If those are your goals when casting the spell, you probably won’t succeed.
So my loves, I hope you feel positive towards your spellcasting! Things will work, you just have to believe in them and stay positive! Move forward at a sustainable pace, avoid rash decisions and remember that magical work is all about intent and focus! If you are feeling antsy, try a meditation! They work wonders for your mental health and also help with your spellwork.
Until next time, my magical love-seekers,
Blessed Be,
Amaria xoxo
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