I’ve noticed a recent surge in interest over the past year or so in the Intranquility Spirit spell that is meant to return a lover. This is a spell that comes into hoodoo from the Mexican folk-magic tradition, and it’s really much more of a severe curse than a love spell as it calls up a Hell-bound soul to torment the target until they return. Yes, you read me right, this work centers on evoking a eternally damned soul and sending them after the person you allegedly love. You think that most people would shy away from calling up something as unclean, aggressive, and downright evil over a lovers spat – but you’d be wrong. Far too many people seem unabashedly eager to jump right into this one the moment they find themselves with a broken heart.
Now, I completely understand the very real agony of being heartbroken. I’ve been there many times myself, and it is a horrifically painful state of being that I hope I never have to experience again in this lifetime (or any lifetime, really). I have absolutely wished that the man who jilted me would feel the same pain that I did. However, when a ritual begins with “O, Intranquil Spirit, you that in Hell are wandering and will never reach Heaven, hear me”, it’s enough to give me serious pause to consider what exactly I’m about to be messing with. Spirits that are willing to gleefully torture humans without compunction are not generally known for being the easiest beings to be in partnership with (even for experienced spiritual practitioners), so calling one up without even knowing the basics of how to deal with heavy work is extremely risky.
It always makes me shake my head when I hear that someone called up the Intranquil Spirit and is now feeling very strange and unpleasant energy within their own home, &/or is now obsessing over their ex with a rather frightening intensity. A quick question or two will soon show that they did not even take simple precautions such as cleansing and protecting themselves before, during, or after working with this spirit. Too often the person actually expresses surprise that the spell really was meant to call up a real spirit – they thought it was like playing pretend, or just using hellish imagery to get an energetic point across.
The Intranquil Spirit is not a metaphor. It’s not even a specific spirit. You are, more or less, just opening a door into the seedier back alley areas of the spirit-world blindly, and calling to whomever fits the profile of a spirit that is “in Hell…and will never reach Heaven”, and who wants the job of attaching itself to the target and spiritually assaulting them until a specific goal is achieved. You are, in reality, ordering a spiritual obsession, and in some cases this can even escalate into spats of possession if your target happens to be especially susceptible or pre-disposed to mental imbalance.
Victims of the Intranquil Spirit are harried day and night by a spiritual entity that does everything in its power to make them suffer – sleeplessness, depression, extremely irritability, surges of rage, panic attacks, severe headaches, onset of lingering illnesses, obsessive thoughts and impulses, an inability to eat, and violent outbursts are just some of the reported effects of this spirit. Any one of these can disrupt and eventually destroy the life of a well-balanced individual, and keep in mind that when maladies are spiritual in nature, medical treatments rarely are of any real aid. Now, consider inflicting someone who already may be struggling with emotional balance, and you can see that it is a recipe for disaster. Finally, take into consideration that you’ve tasked the Intranquil Spirit with linking this torment to thoughts of you. Ideally, the intent is for them to feel that they cannot have peace until they see or talk to the ex again, or in some cases get back together with the ex. However, causing someone to become mentally and emotionally unhinged and then directing them to your doorstep is a sketchy proposition, if you ask me.
There may also be other dangers to utilizing the Intranquil Spirit that have been lost with its rapidly growing popularity and importation into English-speaking countries that lack the full cultural background and lore related to the spirit. In the Encyclopedia of Spirits by Judika Illes, she mentions a folk-belief that if the Intranquil Spirit is successful in getting one’s lover to return, that this causes an exchange of fortune – where as reward for its work, the Intranquil Spirit is freed from its eternal torment, and the soul of the caster is then damned to become an Intranquil Spirit in its stead!
Interestingly, while that bit of lore may not be quite literal (though who can really say), it does highlight a common, but seemingly little known side-effect of working with the Intranquil Spirit – that the caster ends up being the one captured by the torments of the Intranquil Spirit, rather than their wandering lover. The forlorn and heart-broken party, who is already unbalanced from the emotional trauma of being left, is an extremely easy target for the Intranquil Spirit. Heck, the lion’s share of the work is already done! It only needs to pour salt into an already gaping wound. Finding that someone has become quite obsessive, irritable, anxious, and in all-ways unhealthy after having called upon the Intranquil Spirit is not all that surprising or rare an occurrence. Professional rootworkers adept at spirit work sometimes find themselves struggling to control the actions of this class of entity, so you can imagine what harm may befall a novice who buys some oil and candles from a botanica down the street.
In the Intranquil Spirit spell, the spirit is meant to leave the target alone once they contact the sender. As you can probably imagine trust-worthy dealings are not a strong-suit of the denizens of hell. Getting the Intranquil Spirit off of a target can be much more difficult than one may anticipate. It can be clever and switch tactics just enough to stay attached to the victim longer than originally intended, with the obsessive and unbalanced tendencies now being aimed at the newly rejoined partner, rather than in general. Insane jealousy and controlling behaviors may manifest that simply were never present in that person before. You can see how this could easily happen if a practitioner did not take measures to cleanse and protect their returned lover, which should be done as a reasonable precaution and re-establishment of spiritual cleanliness and balance after having been through an ordeal such as being afflicted by the Intranquil Spirit, whether or not the spirit is still around. But sometimes even that is not enough, and a professional must be brought in to do the heavy-lifting needed to release a particularly strong and tenacious spirit.
Which brings us to the aftermath. After having been successfully spiritually tortured and aggressively coerced into returning, you are in no way guaranteed a happy and successful relationship. In fact, though it may seem obvious, Cat Yronwode clearly states on her info page about the Intranquil Spirit (http://www.luckymojo.com/intranquility.html) 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”. Whatever issues drove you apart in the first place will still be present. If your partner simply fell out of love with you, returning under duress will not change that. Harsh resentments can quickly build up and break you up again. The Intranquility Spirit spell does nothing to actually mend the relationship or give it a better shot at working the second time around – in fact it often makes things more difficult, because one party has willfully tortured the other, and those scars (even when they are only subconsciously realized) are deep and slow to heal. Hard, practical work akin to what goes on in couples counseling on the mundane level will be needed, and of course a whole lot of healing will need to happen on both sides. Conjure can help support this, but your relationship’s foundation will have been severely compromised.
Now, there are plenty of professionals out there who will employ the Intranquil Spirit if it is shown to be justified in the eyes of God through divination. I can certainly imagine some scenarios – very few, mind you - where it may very well be appropriate. However, if you’ve been reading this blog and know my personal stance on aggressive coercion and on many targeted love cases, you can probably guess that I will not work with the Intranquil Spirit. If you have to resort to sending damned spirits after someone to get them to “love” you, you are much better off working to heal from the break and then draw a suitable partner into your life that will treat you right and love you like you deserve. Also, if you truly love someone, I can’t imagine a situation where I would willingly set an attack dog (and a poorly trained one at that) such as the Intranquil Spirit upon someone I cared about. But, to each his own.
Truthfully, I think most people who reach for the Intranquil Spirit have no idea the severity of what they are doing and what kinds of influences and risks they are opening themselves up to. If they did, I believe most would think twice. Even if you still were in the mindset of wanting to cause a ex-lover some pain so that they’d return, using the hoodoo condition formula Restless would have a similar effect, but without the unpredictable element of a hellish spirit enacting its twisted assault upon the person or collaterally upon yourself. Certainly, if you are inexperienced at spirit-work and evocation, you should steer clear of attempting to perform the Intranquil Spirit Spell yourself, and at least seek the advice and services of a professional rootworker or spiritual practitioner who is competent and skilled at handling this particular entity. That may have a secondary benefit of providing you with some effective alternative options for addressing your situation, which may indeed carry less risk and a higher rate of success.
