Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by catherine yronwode
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The Intranquil Spirit entered hoodoo through Mexico, along the Tex-Mex border. I did not hear of it in California or Chicago conjure shops in the 1960s, where the only hoodoo oil of this type was Restless Oil. By the early 1970s i could find Intranquil Spirit vigil candles and Intranquility dressing or anointing oil in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, and by the mid or late 1970s, these supplies had reached Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. They are now fully accepted among African American practitioners and the use of Intranquility oil and the Intranquil Spirit prayer as part of a love spell for forcing a lover to return is gradually displacing the older hoodoo Restless Oil because it is so powerful an image and because it comes with a ready-made oration.
I think it is likely that the Intranquil Spirit spell arose through a blending together of indigenous Mexican and colonial European Catholic magical beliefs to create a new concept, one that happened to meld into hoodoo rootwork in a satisfying way.
For starters, along the Rio Grande River, on both sides of the border, there is a strong local indigenous belief in La Llarona, the Crying Woman, a spirit who mourns for her lost babies in the night and then kills infants. She is said to have her roots in an earlier Native spirit -- and folklorists also tend to point out her similarity to the culturally unrelated ancient Jewish child-snatcher demon Lilitu or Lilith, who was correlated with owls that screech in the night, and who was thought to have been responsible for what we now call Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
To some people, the Intranquil Spirit is a dead soul, somewhat like the classic "unsettled ghost" of Europe (especially England and Ireland) -- the spirit of a person whose death was tinged with either remorse or violence and who cannot rest, but comes back to haunt the living. In England and Ireland, such ghosts are said to be rooted to the building or grounds where they died and one never approaches them for assistance -- but in Mexico they are more free-ranging, and can be called upon for magical help in love affairs.
Meanwhile, in Catholicism, there is an image called Anima Sola, the Lonely Soul, who is burning in the fires of purgatory and has no peace. However, the Anima Sola is connected to the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in which form she visits Purgatory every Saturday to release the souls of all those who died while wearing a blessed scapular -- so although this image is sometimes used in spellwork to condemn enemies to harsh justice for their sins, the Anima Sola is not often used in love spells for Intranquility.
Far closer to the Intranquil Spirit is Mictlantecuhtli, an Aztec goddess named who, in syncretic Mexican folk-Catholicism and brujeria usage, has become the spiritual entity whose aid is sought by wives when making a Novena to Santisima Muerte (Holy Death) for a husband's fidelity.
Although it seems logical to visualize the Intranquil Spirit as a being somehwat like the Anima Sola, or Santisima Muerte, it is a curious fact that on commercial spiritual supplies of Intranquility, the label image is almost invariably God sitting in judgement -- particularly a 19th century chromolithograph called La Omnipresencia de Dios, The Omnipresence of God.
Intranquility glass encased candles and Intranquility Oil are always labelled with a variation of the Mexican chromo print of the Watchful God. For some reason, when i first saw this image of Jehovah applied to a candle used in magic spells to coerce a lover to return, i started singing a then-popular song called "I'll Be Watching You" by Sting. I imagined God watching the unfaithful lover so intently that he or she would be forced to return. I doubt this was the intention of the label designers, but it is passingly strange to pray to the Intranquil Spirit while gazing on a picture of God the Father -- and doubly odd at that, since one of His Ten Commandments specifies that no graven images should be made of his likeness!
The use of spirits of the dead for aid in love matters was already entrenched in African American hoodoo when the Intranquil Spirit appeared in the USA. Old African-based hoodoo spells employ graveyard dirt as a link to the spirits of the dead, and thus we find down-home conjurations like the so-called "Graveyard Love" spell, where graveyard dirt from someone who loved you is sprinkled on your beloved to force him or her to love you, and the "Love Me or Die" Jack Ball to Goofer a Man , which utilizes graveyard dirt combined with Love Me or a similar sachet powder to coerce love from a reluctant partner under pain of death.
These four elements of belief and practice -- Native Mexican, European, Catholic, and African American -- have combined very well: The usual form of the Intranquility spell is Catholic in that it involves a crucifix and a candle; it is European in that it involves a "set-piece" enchantment or prayer rather than a free-form statement of one's desires; it is Mexican in that it is built upon the ideas of La Llorona and La Santisima Muerte as well as the Mexican chromo image of Jehovah; and its adoption by African Americans speaks to the African custom of appealing to the spirits of the dead for aid in magical and spiritual matters of all sorts, including reuniting lost lovers.
The Prayer of Intranquility is used -- especially in Latin American folk-magic -- to make a former lover unable to rest until he or she returns. Consider, though, when you do this, that if the person does come back, the two of you will not have the same kind of happy, innocent, loving relationship you did at the beginning. This is a prayer or spell that forces your ex-lover to act according to your will, which is not kindly on your part.
That having been said, here is a typical Latin American Intranquility Prayer:
You will need
Dress the pink candle with the anointing oils and light it. Hold the lighted candle in one hand and a crucifix in the other hand as you recite the following:
The Intranquil Spirit spell is a petition asking the Intranquil Spirit to haunt and torment one's unfaithful or absent lover until he or she returns. Compare it with the Novena to Santisima Muerte and you will see a great deal of similarity in terms of language use and desired results.O, Intranquil Spirit, you that in Hell are wandering and will never reach Heaven, hear me, o, hear me. I want you to grasp the five senses of [name of lover] and do not let [him/her] rest in peace, neither seated nor standing, waking nor sleeping, that [he/she] should think only of seeing me, smelling me, hearing me, tasting me, and touching me, that [he/she] should find [himself/herself] as desperate as the waters of the seas and as torn as the wind in the storm until [he/she] returns to me, that [he/she] should run and run until [he/she] humbly falls at my feet because nobody will help [him/her], and that neither a divorced [woman/man] nor a married [woman/man], a [widow/widower], nor a virgin [woman/man], shall ever love [him/her], but only me and me alone. [Name of lover], i conjure you before the cross and God Almighty, that you are to run after me as the living run after the cross and the dead run after the light. Amen.
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