Today’s offering comes to us from Sprocket Wagner (she/her). Sprocket is a journalist devoted to bringing diverse and equitable coverage to topics of religion and spirituality. She’s an eclectic Pagan, a Witch, and an aspiring scholar of interfaith theology. Find her on Mastodon, or on her website, Interfaith Heathen.
Spells for Success by Lauren Parker is not the kind of thing I would usually purchase for myself. I’ll admit that the cover of the box gave me a bad first impression. It looks a lot like the kind of thing you’d see in the self-help section at a Barnes and Noble, and the selection of spells mentioned on the back of the box felt cliché. But the contents far surpassed these expectations.
Cover to Spells for Success by Lauren Parker [Simon Element]
Thankfully, the art on the back of the cards is a lot more lively than the packaging. The cards themselves have a lovely glossy feel in the hand, but I would have appreciated a larger font – I understand the desire for a neat and orderly look, but the extra inch of card around the outside could have been used to make the font a few points bigger. The fit of the cards in the box can be a bit tight, but you’d probably want to take them all out and flip through them anyway.
These cards are clearly meant for beginners, and these cards provide a lot of things that other beginner texts miss. These include not only tips on safety and hygiene, but also a focus on the idea that magic must be accompanied by action to function properly, and on being able to create and customize one’s own spells.
I also appreciated that each and every spell begins with drinking water. Not only does this build in attention to one’s energy levels as a principle of spell work, it also tricked me into staying hydrated as I reviewed this deck.
I was initially wary of the inclusion of a “love magic” section, but the spells are primarily self-care focused, or meant to be shared with a partner with consent. I do wish that there were more explicit mentions of consent in these spells, but most of them wouldn’t require it anyway.
This deck has an ongoing devotion to including social justice and community care into spellwork, which is a welcome change from many similar spell decks I’ve read in the past. The card on smoke cleansing uses specific language and uses household herbs that aren’t the big ones from closed practices. There’s encouragement of masking, a community spell for hope, and a community care salve with asking for consent built into its function.
One concern I did have is the lack of safety instructions in regards to some of the spells that involve essential oils being applied to the skin. There is a relaxation bath scrub in which the included oils really ought to be measured, and the community care salve spell should have an ingredients list be part of the instructions in case of allergies or sensitivities.
I did not like the inclusion of a card regarding the Law of Attraction. While I appreciate that the author points out that it only applies to actions and not thoughts, it’s a divided subject and not everyone subscribes to it. The audience that is attracted to spell cards like these the most – new practitioners who aren’t yet comfortable making their own spells – don’t know this. In the same way that I will always gripe when the Threefold Law pops up outside of explicitly Wiccan texts, I will usually gripe about the Law of Attraction. I feel similarly about the card around building a magical toolbox talking about athames and adornment, which none of the spells included make actual use of. I have nothing against any of these things, but I think when included outside of their original practices or spheres, they need to be framed as such.
That said, there were also a few spells that simply took me by surprise. I don’t see many spells including flying a kite, or many for breaking bad habits or balancing work and life. These spells really make the deck stand out from other beginner resources.
The deck can be purchased from most major booksellers, and you can find more of Parker’s work on her website. (Editor’s note: And here on TWH!)
We would like to thank Simon Element for providing a review copy of Spells for Success.
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