♡ An Ancient Spoken Love Charm ♡
To be spoken over a burning kolossoi or votive clay doll thrown into a prepared fire within a bronze dish:
“As this clay grows hard and as this wax melts in one and the same fire, so may (Daphnis / insert name here) melt in his love for me.”
[Pictured: the "Louvre Doll" an example of a clay kolossoi used in a love spell]
This example can be found in In Virgil’s Eclogue 8, where the enamored Amaryllis throws a wax puppet into the fire to force her lover Daphnis to return to her.
This magic, like most in the ancient world, works through what is known as sympathetic magic, or simila similibus: like attracts like.
We do not have many surviving examples of incantations beyond what is written in the Magical Papyri, but there are scattered sources throughout ancient plays like the example above.
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