When I was single, I hated Valentine’s Day; I felt it had been created for the sole purpose of throwing my loneliness in my face with a cruel, taunting laugh. Then, some few New Moons before I met my husband, I decided I was truly ready to find a partner. Since relying on my own flawed judgment hadn’t gotten me very far, it occurred to me that perhaps a benevolent universe could do better job of match-making; and so I composed a ritual. It began with a step I think was the most powerful: creating a list of the five essential qualities I wanted in a mate. That took some doing; it’s probably the first time I had stopped to really think about what I wanted, rather than what I didn’t want (which my many failed and, occasionally, tragic romances had made abundantly clear to me).
I don’t remember exactly what I wrote. I know I wanted someone honest – a quality that had been utterly lacking in many of my previous romantic forays. To that I probably added: someone sane (ask any Leo: we tend to gravitate toward our opposite sign, Aquarius, and in doing so we often veer into the “batsh@t crazy” end of the Aquarian spectrum on our way to “brilliantly quirky”), someone hard working, someone who made me laugh, someone who really wanted to be married. I folded up my list and tucked it under a dish with a lit pink (Venus’ color) candle on it. In a small pink handkerchief, I wrapped a tiny cloth doll of a man (which I had picked up for some reason at a Renaissance fair, years before). “This is my mate,” I declared (briefly wondering whether to add “is a full-sized human person” to my list), sealed the cloth with some of the wax from the candle, and left it on the my little makeshift altar until the candle burned all the way down.
The next day I stowed the little figure and the list in a box somewhere and completely forgot about them – until about a year later, when my (honest, sane, hard working, funny, committed, full-sized human) soon-to-be husband and I were packing up my apartment for my move to San Diego to get married. We had started out as friends, and it look awhile for me to recognize him as the person with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
So, you know – successful conjuring! That said, I’m sort of an agnostic on the subject of ritual. I don’t really believe there’s anything magical about lighting a candle or reciting an incantation or even the phase of the moon. I think what manifests results in our lives is pretty simple – readiness, intention (showing a willingness to engage in the process of getting what you want), and attention (so that you recognize it when it shows up). The beauty of ritual is that it helps us clarify what we want.
Happy Valentine’s Day, then. And if you’re feeling a little lonely, use this day to shift gears from misery to clarity. Make your lists, burn your candles, sing a song, clap your hands, or do anything else that helps you focus on what (or who) you want, so that you are more likely to recognize it when it shows up – even if it’s wrapped in a package that you weren’t expecting.
© April Elliott Kent
More about my love story in my interview for APM’s podcast Too Beautiful to Live! My segment comes at around the 25 minute mark.