Va-Va-Voodoo: Find Love, Make Love & Keep Love [Paperback]

Kathleen Charlotte (Author), Ross Heaven (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2007

You've tried blind dates, online mates, tête-à-têtes, and waiting for fate. Maybe it's time to add a little Voodoo power to your quest for red-hot romance or lasting love.

With its emphasis on love and freedom, the passionate spiritual practice of Voodoo has much to offer those seeking romance. In Va-Va-Voodoo, author Kathleen Charlotte provides a unique and potent blend of Voodoo magic (or wanga) and relationship expertise.  

You'll meet a few of Voodoo's most helpful spirits in matters of love and happiness-Erzulie, Ogoun, La Sirène, Baron, and Legba-and learn how to work with their energy to attract a lover, find "the one," keep a relationship steamy, or recover from heartbreak. Along with down-to-earth relationship tips on communication, self-esteem, intimacy, sex, break-ups, and forgiveness, Va-Va-Voodoo includes a colorful array of tried-and-true Voodoo magical wisdom and spells, including:

• Honey pot magic  • Love rituals  • Herbal aphrodisiacs
•  Voodoo dreaming baths  •  Pakets and mojos  •  Love dolls
•  Hoodoo love oils  • Footprint magic  • Crossroads magic   

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Initiated in the healing arts of Voodoo, Kathleen Charlotte (United Kingdom) is a therapist, healer, and relationship counselor who combines psychology and Voodoo magic to help clients. She is also a co-founder of The Four Gates Foundation, an organization devoted to the teaching and promotion of spiritual wisdom and freedom psychology.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Real Voodoo

Introduction
The universe is full of magical things,
patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
-Eden Phillpotts

Voodoo? What Do You Do?
Some people pick up a book on love and magic and are embarrassed about it, as
if they should feel ashamed for wanting love or the magical secrets that will tell
them how to get it. The world makes us feel guilty, after all, if we haven't already
got the dream house, dream mate, and dream kids-especially if (heaven
forbid!) we're leaving our twenties behind! You've read Cosmopolitan and
watched Sex and the City, so you know you're not the only singleton on the
planet-but, then, everyone else doesn't have your granny asking them a thousand
times a day when they're going to be settling down and giving her a rugrat
to drool over. I think a lot of women have been shamed into very undreamy
relationships and “going nowhere” love affairs as the result of pressures like
these-which is probably why so many marriages fail. But try telling granny
that.

Forget the shaming! You want and deserve a real love-with a real lover,
not one who's just there for approval. Well, good! You've come to the right place
because this book is all about fun, love, romance, and-to be perfectly upfront
about this-sex, too. It's about enjoying yourself in the bedroom (or wherever
else you happen to be) and enjoying your life-without guilt, without shame,
and without holding back.

But why the Voodoo?

Because Voodoo has been producing results for people for hundreds of
years-in everything from finding a boyfriend to keeping lovers on the straight
and narrow. More than 200 million people worldwide now practice Voodoo
and have used it to find love, make love, and keep love-the Voodoo way. It's
also a lot sexier than just about any other magical practice I can think of-a
Mark Darcy sort of magic: mean, moody, magnificent; brooding, mysterious,
and slightly “dark and dangerous.” But, despite what you may have heard, there's
nothing “black” about it-and it's a lot of fun, too.

Now love, they say, is a many-splendored thing. It's not surprising, then,
that in surveys, when people are asked what they most want from life or what
would make them most happy, love comes in at number one, time after time.
What they also say, though, is that the path of true love rarely runs smoothly.
And that's where I come in. I am a practitioner of Voodoo as it's taught in Haiti
(where it's more commonly spelled Vodou, by the way)-a real Voodoo initiate.
But I'm also a psychologist and relationship counselor, so in this book you get
the best of both worlds: genuine Voodoo spells and genuine relationship advice,
both of which have been proven to work. It's a happy marriage that should
lead to . . . well, hopefully, a happy marriage, if all goes according to plan!
I've been practicing magic since childhood. I think we all do, don't we-
blowing dandelions and wishing for lovers, trying to find the love lines on our
palms, all those things that fascinate us when we're young and we know that
magic works-before life beats that knowledge out of us.

I suppose I was a bit of a teenage witch-a phase that lasted well into my
late twenties! Then, in 1998, I went to Haiti with a friend. What I found was an
island where everyone was practicing magic, and-disappointingly as well as
excitingly-their results all seemed better than mine! I wanted to know what
they knew, so I went back a little later and found a priestess (called a mambo)
who would teach me magic that worked.

She said she'd be happy to-but only if I initiated with her and became a
priestess myself, because in Haiti you can't teach Voodoo secrets to just anyone.
I was definitely up for that (I've always been an adventurous spirit!) and said I'd
be happy to oblige. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for!

The process of initiation takes a week and is pretty tough. It involves a symbolic
death and rebirth, which includes “having your head cut off ” with a machete
at your throat, dancing yourself into a frenzy, plunging your hand into
fire, and five days spent in a dark room where you are visited by the spirits.
(Don't worry: you won't have to do any of that in this book!) But even so that's
just the beginning, because an initiation is a start and the real training begins
after that; it can last a lifetime.

I took my initiation at the turn of the century, and now here I am, making
magic to bring back lovers, to keep them on the straight and narrow, to ensure
proposals of marriage, and for just about every other aspect of love and romance
you can think of.

Back in the West, though, I'm also a therapist and counselor, working with
singles and couples who have relationship problems of one kind or another, so
I also see love from the other side: how to make it work when you've found the
person you want but your affair or your marriage has run into difficulties.
Voodoo and therapy go surprisingly well together. One produces an effect
in the universe (e.g., drawing a lover to you) and the other teaches people how
to live with that effect (e.g., how to make the relationship work now that you
and your lover have met).

Using a combination of these skills-Voodoo magic, relationship counseling,
psychology, and plain old common sense-I've helped hundreds of people
to find love, keep love, understand love, and, sometimes, let go of love when
the relationship's run its course and they need to move on with their lives. In
the chapters that follow, I'll teach you some of these skills and show you how to
get what you want from love.

Before we do that, though, let me tell you a bit about Voodoo, because even
though you're holding this book (so I'm guessing you have an interest in the
subject), you probably don't know much about it. Or, at least, most people
don't.

In fact, Voodoo likes to keep itself pretty much to itself as well, so it hasn't
done much for its own public relations in that respect. So let's clear up the misconceptions
first.
What Is Voodoo Anyway?
I sometimes give talks on Voodoo, and when I do, the five things most people
really want to know about it are:
(1) Do you stick pins in dolls?
(2) Are zombies real?
(3) Do you kill animals (or is there a vegetarian option)?
(4) Voodoo's evil, right? and . . .
(5) Who's the cat in the hat that I've seen in the James Bond movie?
So let's start with these questions first. And the answers are: no, yes, yes and
no, no and yes, and Baron. And now, in a little more detail . . .

Do You Stick Pins in Dolls?
Everyone's heard of the Voodoo doll, right? It's probably the one thing everybody
knows for sure about Voodoo-they stick pins in dolls. Well, actually,
they don't. Weirdly enough, dolls aren't used in Haiti, which is where Voodoo
comes from.

There is hardly a place in the world where dolls haven't been used at one
time or another-including America, India, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Australia,
Africa, England, Wales, and Scotland, to name just a few, but in Haiti, no.
In North America, Peru, and Malaysia, dolls are still used to make enemies
sick and weaken love (and other) rivals. In America, for example, sorcerers
make them out of wax and melt them over a fire, a little at a time, for a week,
then throw the remains on the fire at the end of it. At that point, it is said that
the rival will be dead as the result of a mysterious fever that leaves her soaked
in sweat and her temperature soaring. Unpleasant stuff!

Dolls like this (sometimes called mannequins or poppets) are a way of sending
energy toward the person it represents. Bad energy (“negative vibes”) is
symbolized by sticking pins in the doll (in all those little places where you
want them to hurt). But the next surprise is that this technique can also be used
for good.

Dolls are sometimes used in healing, for example-by massaging the place
on the doll where you want to ease someone's pain (or cause some other, ahem,
effect in your lover), or to send someone love, by hugging the doll and sending
kind thoughts and energy toward them. If you can't be with the one you love,
love the doll you're with, in other words (advice that men understand and often
practice on business trips).

In American Voodoo (especially in New Orleans), there is a bit of a tradition
of using poppets like these, but you're still more likely to find them in a
tourist store than an authentic Voodoo ceremony.

So, to summarize: in Haiti, they don't use dolls. In America, they do-but,
then, so do a lot of other people. And sometimes they're being nice when they
do it. Funny, isn't it, that the things we take for granted rarely match up to the
truth (in Voodoo as in many of life's other little lessons).

Are Zombies Real?
They are, but we won't have much call for them in this book (I'm assuming
you're after a lover, not a sex slave), so I'm not going to dwell on them; I'll just
tell you a bit about them.

The word zombie comes from an African word, nzambi, which means “spirit
of a dead person” and someone whose soul has been lost, so they're living but
not really alive (a bit like women who crochet or enter their children for spelling
bee...

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Llewellyn Publications (January 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738709948
• ISBN-13: 978-0738709949
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,450,265 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars HOODOO fun, June 20, 2007

By 

Ms. Katherine Glover "kathsrealm" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Va-Va-Voodoo: Find Love, Make Love & Keep Love (Paperback)

I wasn't expecting much when I picked up this title. The author is a close friend of Ross Heaven who wrote the abortion that is 'Vodou Shaman' and the cover screams tacky.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a range of magical techniques that would be useful to women (and men!) in a variety of love situations.
The contents of this book actually falls distinctly into the hoodoo category in my opinion.
It is hoodoo but with the use of the Lwa - in a very non-trad way. When I say use I mean USE which some practitioners who have spent years building up relationships with their spirits and living vodou may find offensive. I just wish she wouldn't keep asserting that it is 'real voodoo', there is no reglemen here. It might pass in New Orleans but it certainly wouldn't it Haiti.

Contrary to the authors constant assertion that she is giving away huge 'voodoo' secrets, which she most certainly is not, pretty much everything here can be found in print elsewhere - mistakes included.
The idea that the names of plants contain hints as to what they are used for being a big secret..? I'm sorry but you'd have to have been born last week not to have worked that one out.

So to sum up; if you're looking for a book that will tell you anything about 'voodoo' then look elsewhere. If you're looking for a fun look at love magic then this would be a good place to start.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy Bake Voodoo, November 21, 2010

By 

L. pierce "Miss Kittress" (NYC,NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Va-Va-Voodoo: Find Love, Make Love & Keep Love (Paperback)

The person who gave this book a one star is silly. Just because you expected this to be a cheesey pie Wicca book and it wasn't doesn't make it a bad book. This book does give a primer into Voodoo. Voodoo (and Hoodoo) is a very basic religion. That being said blood is just a part of it. The book lead me to a better path that made sense to me. A religion that doesn't worry about right and wrong so much as happiness vs. unhappiness. A religion where a love spell isn't a bad thing.