“‘Why is love called a Magus?’ asks Ficino in the commentary on the Symposium. ‘Because all the force of magic consists in Love. The work of magic is a certain drawing of one thing to another by natural similitude. The parts of this world, like the members of one animal, depend all on one Love, and are connected together by natural communion…From this community of relationship is born the communal Love: from which Love is born the common drawing together: and this is the true Magic.’”
-Frances Yates
The Book of Enoch begins the written record of the connection between sorcery and sex with angels. The Watchers came to the daughters of man after seeing that they were fair and became their lovers, teaching them the occult arts at the same time. For many Traditional Groups this story is of great importance, and some traditions see the passage of the Cunning Fire between The Watchers and early mankind as having been a gift that occurred during sex. It is also one of the clearest examples of a relationship which is about both sex and the teaching of magic.
‘Blasphemia’ -Eliran Kantor
There is also the long-standing tradition of faerie marriages between mortals and the denizens of faerie, and diabolically tinged sex with incubi and succubi, usually recorded during The Persecutions. Through a combination of these sources we can also draw comparisons with the spirit brides of so-called shamans in other cultures.
Marriage between mortals and faeries is a belief that goes back centuries and the stories cover a wide range of countries. Often the narrative begins with a young man observing a faerie woman bathing or coming out of a lake to comb her hair. He will then either observe that she has taken off a pair of ‘swan wings’ or a seal-skin (if she’s from the ocean). He will steal the magical faerie skin and hide it. She will thus be trapped in the human world and seems to always agree to marry him under the proviso that he never strike her, or never touches her with iron or some such similar provision. Always he makes a mistake and loses her by forgetting the prohibition and thus the stories act as cautionary tales in how to treat faerie lovers (don’t strike them, don’t touch them with iron, keep your promises.)
There are a few examples that tantalisingly suggest a deeper dedication. Alice Nokes of Essex declared in the presence of multiple witnesses that she: ‘cared for none of them, as long as Tom [her familiar] held on her side.’ There is also an eyewitness account of an English witchcraft execution where on the edge of death one of the women refused to renounce her devil, ‘who had been a loyal friend for three score years’. Anne Bodenham at eighty years of age starved of food and sleep still keep faith with her spirit companion and cursed the hangman at the last. The intensity of the commitment that these historical examples are suggestive of the love.
