On a Friday night under a waxing moon, burn the red candle. Take the soft, melted wax drips and form a heart shape, adding the vervain pinch by pinch.
As you do so, repeat softly:
Wax to heart thou art transformed Two be one, and love be warmed.
Before it cools, press the stone into the wax heart and set it inside the wooden box.
Place some vervain on the incense charcoal. Close the box and touch it with your athame, saying:
Diana, beautiful Diana, Call thy daughter Aradia And send her to the bedside Of one who could be my beloved Of one who could be my lover. Let that lover come Like a swift hunting hound Running in the moonlight. Come to me, come to me, Led by the scents of love By the aid of Regina Fata Diana And of her daughter, Fata Aradia, As I will, so mote it be.
Extinguish the red candle. Leave the wax heart in the box. Tuck it away where the box will not be disturbed by others.
Annoint and atire yourself lovingly. Be open to love and loving.
The lover will come as a swift hunting hound, because Diana ever has a dog by her side.
Myth's notes:
This spell seems to have loosely borrowed ideas from Leland's Aradia. Many Wiccans have speculated the Vangelo della strege Leland received from Maddalena was intended as allegory, to reveal hidden truths about la vecchia religione to others practicing Stregheria. Doreen Valiente even wrote in An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present, 1973 (p. 12); "It [the Vangelo] is more convincing in that it is, as it stands, obviously muddled and incomplete. In fact, in my own opinion, the text of Aradia has been deliberately 'pied', because the witches, although they regarded Leland as one of themselves, indeed a veritable stregone, or powerful wizard, did not really want their secrets published in plain terms."
Whoever crafted this spell derived it from Leland's Chapter VI, "A Spell to Win Love" in which Diana and Aradia were invoked to send a particular girl to the stregone in the form of a dog. Possibly someone was trying to reconstruct the original strega spell by removing the fabulous elements recorded in Leland's material.
The molding of soft, warm wax into a heart shape was not found in Leland's text and was apparently an addition from English folk magic. In England, the practitioner of a love spell might fashion an image, either a poppet or heart shape, engrave the name of the intended upon it, and then pierce this image with a thorn from a red rose, so that the intended might be pierced with love for the practioner.
While some imagery from Leland's "A Spell to Win Love" is borrowed in the crafting of the "Spell to Attract A Desireable Lover," this spell has a Wiccan stamp. Most Wiccans will not cast a love spell to draw a specific individual to themselves. Such a spell would be construed to be manipulative and unethical. Nevertheless, some Wiccans will perform magic to draw a suitable lover towards them--that is someone else who is looking for the same type of relationship. Furthermore, the heart does not have the name of any specific individual engraved upon it. Instead, a stone, representing the influence of the moon Goddess, is pressed into the wax.