This article originally appeared on VICE Canada

It wasn’t until after she had eaten the Alfredo that her boyfriend told her that he’d put his semen in the sauce.

But it wasn’t until later, when she was cleaning that same boyfriend’s altar to a Voodoo love goddess, she found something that finally made her think twice about her man.

“One day I went to dust up there and found a ball of my own hair,” she wrote in a post on Reddit. “When I confronted him he told me it was all the hair he had found of mine in his apartment after we started seeing each other but before I moved in. As soon as I saw it something clicked in me.”

She left the guy shortly after that and explained that, by discovering the hair, she had broken the lust (or love) spell her boyfriend had put to keep her with him.

Her boyfriend was just doing what men have done for centuries—doing whatever the hell they can to get laid.

Over the years men have turned to advisors and to shitty pick-up artist books, while most turn to wingmen, and a special few turn to magick.

Now, this isn’t the type of magic outlined by pick-up artists or pulling a rabbit out of a hat so you can get into the pants of your hot neighbor. This is “magick,” real men casting spells thinking that it will, honest-to-god, get them laid.

In case you were wondering, the spelling of magick with the “k” comes from occult OG Aleister Crowley and it’s used to differentiate between stage magic and occult magick.

“Seduction is, of course, one of the main reasons people come to magick, and from the days of the PGM [Greco-Roman Egypt magic] to modernity there have been more techniques developed for that purpose than any other, except maybe for attaining prosperity,” magician and author Frater MC told VICE.

“People who come to magick do so often out of desperation, necessity or great desire. They haven’t been able to achieve their goals by any logical means so they become more and more willing to try something outside the box in hopes that it might work.”

Frater MC is co-authoring a book focused on magickal seduction right now but says his certainly wouldn’t be the first. Books, especially e-books, on the subject are littered all over Amazon and people’s personal websites.

“Whatever your gender or sexual orientation, magickal seduction is a powerful way to bring pleasure into your life,” writes Damon Brand in his book Magickal Seduction—which seems to be The Game for modern-day wizards.

“I have used seduction magick for fun nights of one-off sex with old friends and people I just met. I’ve used it to get girlfriends and, eventually, my life partner.”

There are books and websites aplenty instructing an aspiring wizard how to get into the pants of the lady, or man, of his, or her, choosing. Hell, some instructional YouTube videos have even popped up.

This type of magick is so popular—and believed in so strongly—that there are even magicians who oppose it as they believe it is tantamount to sexually assaulting a person.

So, now that we know what to look for, let’s take a look at some of these spells why don’t we?

Spoiler alert: they almost all involve masturbation.

Here’s some reading music.

For those out there for a quick lay, the most routine spells found online involve sigil (symbols that represent magickal entities) magick. Alan Chapman in his book “Advanced Magick for Beginners” outlines how best to pull off sigil magick:

Step 1: Write down a desire
Step 2: Create a sigil by omitting repeated letters, and then arranging the remainder into a arbitrary, abstract glyph
Step 3: Masturbate
Step 4: Forget about it
Step 5: Record the result in your diary

Chapman says that it is expected for the sigil to take effect in 24 hours, so more than enough time for a young warlock to get his stamina back after jerking the magic gerkin.

One of the more interesting ones involves obtaining a goat head “with the skin still attached,” pinning the name of your desired to the top of the head with a knife and chanting some spooky (latin-esque) words. Then you bury the head and paper in a graveyard making sure to “lick the soil with your LEFT FOOT where the goat is buried seven times imagining the intended leaving everything for you and coming to you.”

This one, needless to say, is a little more extreme than the rest.

As for Brand, he offers a foolproof way to get yourself that honey of your dreams but he warns it “is the most powerful incantation in the book.”

More or less, the spell works by placing a heavy stone on a sigil, see above, in the middle of another “magickal circle,” then you light the candles and start chanting in Latin while imagining the sun. After a round of chanting you should begin to start imagining your target and, of course, begin masturbating—jerking it isn’t necessary but it is recommended.

Once your “lust is strong” you call forward the spirits with Latin-esque language and, honestly, it just keeps going on like this until you climax. Brand recommends wiping your splooge on the piece of paper but “not too much, because you will be doing this for five nights.”

Weird, right?

The amount of lust spells are almost never ending as plugged in wizard and witches meet on magick forums and share spells like recipes.

The God-King, a frequent poster on Wizard Forums—one of the biggest real-life magick forums on the web—has said that he has used Frater MC’s book Abrasax to both bed women and take people out. He said he’s reigned in his wicked witchy ways and hasn’t magickally gotten in someone’s pants “since college.”

He explained to VICE what it’s like to magickally seduce someone.

“The results don’t usually appear as “magickal” unless you know what to look for. Magick tends to shroud itself in coincidence. In most cases, if your target is not present then they may text or call you seemingly out of the blue, flirting and wanting to see you. If they are present you may notice a sudden mood change…”

“They will appear to be more open with you, a reduction in inhibition if you will. In writing it sounds miraculous, but in reality it would appear as if she’s just really horny.”

The ethics of magickal pick-ups

Frater MC says he follows a strict ethical code when it comes to seducing a person through magick and many other serious magicians do the same. You can hire MC for his services and he says while he has got his client’s laid he draws the line at helping to seduce a particular people.

“For example, if you came to me with a crush on a friend who sees you only in that capacity, or a stranger who you’ve seen but not met, sure I can help with that,” he said. “But if you tell me you’ve been trying to seduce this girl next door for a year and she rebukes you every time, I’m not touching that—I’m not going to subvert her will.”

“People ask me to do that and much worse, but I reject them out of hand.”

Deep in the magick forums exists a faction of people who believe magickal seduction is akin to sexual assault and many a heated discussions are held in regards to the ethics of magickal seduction.

“If everyone brought morals into magick a good 80% of the spells being performed wouldn’t be done. Nature is both kind and cruel, well…..so should our magick,” The God King wrote in response to questions about the ethics.

The forum then descended into a flame war over whose magick could beat up who.

For those seeking a magician’s touch, Frater MC warns that in the community there exists a massive amounts of charlatans out solely to take people’s money. These magicians say that you can attain anything after simply using their books.

MC calls bullshit on this. He says magick works by creating “opportunities and circumstances in which you can succeed.” He laughed at the notion of horny wizards running around casting spells left, right and centre to get their freak on.

“Are there techniques that would allow you to do so? Sure, and when you set out on a path of magickal study that may be your goal, but of 100 who practice magick only a handful succeed.” he said. “The universe makes it an extremely long, tedious and arduous process to attain the requisite level of skill as a way of weeding out those who are unfit or unstable.

“For those who are skilled enough and have developed the necessary abilities, it’s really not worth all the effort of a ceremonial rite just to ‘score a nice piece.’”

So, if you’re trying to get laid with magick avoid the people who offer you the moon as they can’t deliver and try not blow the powers of magickal seduction out of proportion. MC said that the spells most people do make the user more attractive rather than take over the targets mind.

More or less, don’t get your hopes up.

“Seduction Magick is not going to get you in bed with Scarlett Johansson or make models come knocking on your door. Likewise, if you are a hermit in your house all the time who never goes out or who is afraid to talk to women when you do venture out, this isn’t going to make swarms of women flock to you like lord of the flies.”

“So, to any of your readers hoping to summon a demon, prick your finger, drip some blood, recite a spell and be in bed with the lingerie model next door later tonight, it’s not going to happen.”

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter