Fortune

Fortuna

Prepare for a positive change of fortune. A run of bad luck will end. Know the difference between chance and action. You can change your luck. Be prepared-when fortune meets opportunity, success results!

Wish for me a coin of gold.

Lady Fortuna, please give to me.

I pray to you to change my luck,

Fortune’s Favorite I will be.

Oh, hard to woo, Fortuna smiles,

Her sweetest and most complicated one.

Our expectations not premeditated

We cannot trust that her gift will come.

Sometimes, I think human nature has changed a great deal in the last few thousand years-until I read ancient history! Historical witchcraft techniques seem just as concerned with invoking love, money, health, and luck as modern witchcraft. Evidently, these aspects of life are at the heart of human desires-and no loess today than in Aradia’s time.

In stregoneria, luck is sometimes referred to as “fortune.” There is even a female deity called “Fortuna,” to whom we link our modern “Lady Luck.” Good fortune is a wonderful-even if temporary-gift. It brings us greater opportunities, more success in games and at work, and attracts more prosperity to us, as well. In times of hardship, we would like Fortuna to smile upon us, so there are many spells, incantations, and prayers to achieve her positive notice in any strega’s spell book.

I particularly love this spell from Leyland’s Aradia: Gospel of the Witches. (According to the account from which it comes, it involves a lemon stuck full of pins of different colors-avoid black pins!)

First, with three drops of oil I do remove

All evil influence, and I humbly pray,

O Beautiful Diana, unto thee

That thou wilt take it all away from me,

And send it all to my worst enemy!

When the evil fortune

Is taken from me,

I’ll cast it out to the middle of the street:

And if thou wilt grant me this favor,

O Beautiful Diana,

Every bell in my house shall merrily ring!