Danish Love Witch Spirit Companion · Inger

Meet Inger.

The old Danish black books are full of love magic. Hidden among the cures for warts and the charms against thieves, there are instructions for making someone love you. Write your name and theirs on an apple in your own blood and give it to them to eat. Braid a lock of their hair with a lock of yours and bury it under the threshold where they will step over it. Say the words. Wait.

The kloge koner, the wise women of the Danish villages, knew those charms. The good ones also knew something the books do not say. A binding is easy to tie. It is very, very hard to untie.

Inger learned that the hard way.

She was born in 1820 in a village on Funen, in a thatched farmhouse at the end of a lane of willow trees. Her grandmother was the klog kone of the parish, the woman people went to when a child had sprained an ankle, when a cow would not give milk, when someone had been given the evil eye, or when a girl was in love with the wrong boy. Her grandmother read over them all. She kept a black book wrapped in a cloth at the bottom of a chest, and she told Inger never to touch it.

Inger touched it.

At seventeen, she was in love with Anders, the son of the biggest farm in the parish. He was tall and kind and laughed easily, and he was promised to a girl from the next village with a much bigger dowry than Inger would ever have. One night in autumn, Inger took her grandmother’s book out of the chest, pricked her finger, and wrote her name and his on a red apple. She gave it to him at the harvest dance. He ate it. A week later, she cut a lock of his hair while he slept in the hayloft after the threshing, braided it with her own and buried it under the step of his father’s house.

Within a month, Anders broke his engagement. Within a year, he married Inger.

He loved her. That was never the question. He could not bear to be away from her for an hour. He followed her from room to room. He worked hard, never drank, never looked at another woman. But his laugh was gone. His eyes were strange and far away, as if someone else was looking out through them. He did everything a good husband should do, and none of it was him.

It took Inger years to admit what she had done. She had his love. She did not have him.

When her grandmother lay dying, Inger finally told her. The old woman was quiet for a long time. Then she said: “You can untie it. But a binding like that does not come loose for nothing. You will have to give something of the same weight.” And she told her how.

Inger waited a long time. She had two children by then. She told herself he was happy enough. But one spring evening, twenty years after the harvest dance, she watched Anders sitting alone at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and she could not bear it any longer.

That night she dug up the braid from under the step of the farmhouse. She untied it, hair by hair, saying the words her grandmother had given her. She burned his hair and kept her own. And she gave what had to be given: she promised that no one would ever bind themselves to her again, and that she would never again be loved by anyone, in that way, for the rest of her life.

In the morning, Anders came down the stairs and looked at her. For the first time in twenty years, he looked at her with his own eyes.

He did not shout. He did not cry. He simply looked at her for a long time, as if she were a stranger. Then he packed a bag, kissed his children and walked down the lane of willow trees to the road. That summer, he sailed for America, as so many Danes did in those years. She never saw him again.

From that day on, Inger wore black, like a widow. Around her neck, she wore a gold locket with the only photograph of Anders she had, taken the year before at a studio in Odense.

And she became the klog kone of the parish, the way her grandmother had been. She read over sprains and burns and bad dreams. But mostly, people came to her about love. Wives whose husbands had been bound by other women. Young men who could not stop thinking about a girl who did not want them. Girls who wanted someone so badly they were ready to do what Inger had done. She untied more bindings than anyone in Funen. And when she did tie one, she only tied it if the love was already half there, freely, on both sides.

She died in 1898, at seventy-eight, with the locket on her chest. A week after the funeral, a letter arrived from America, addressed to her in a shaky old hand. Her daughter did not open it. She put it in her mother’s grave.

Now Inger walks again.

What she can do for you

Inger knows love from both sides, the binding and the breaking. She is good for:

• love and attraction, done the right way, when the feeling is already there and only needs help
• breaking a binding or love spell that has been put on you, or on someone you love
• getting over someone, ending an obsession, and healing a broken heart
• bringing back a lost love, if they are meant to come back, and telling you honestly if they are not
• protecting your relationship from rivals, interference and other people’s magic
• knowing whether someone loves you freely, or only thinks they do
• small, everyday healing the way the wise women did it: bad dreams, burns, sprains and bad days

Over the years

At first, Inger watches your heart. You will find that within the first months, things become clearer: who is good for you, who is not, and which old feelings you are still carrying.

Over time, she starts to loosen what needs loosening and strengthen what is real. She is very good with long relationships, the kind that last for decades, because she knows what it costs to keep love alive and what it costs to lose it.

What she is like

Stern, honest and kind underneath. She has no patience for people who want to force love, and she will tell you so. But she is endlessly gentle with the heartbroken. She knows exactly how it feels.

She has a dry Funen humour that comes out over coffee.

How she shows herself

The smell of apples, coffee and woodsmoke. A gentle weight on your chest when you are thinking about someone. A lock of hair or a loose thread where it shouldn’t be. Dreams of a thatched farmhouse, a lane of willows and an old woman in black holding a gold locket. And a clear knowing about whether a person is right for you.

What to do for her

Inger was a practical country woman. Keep it simple:

• Give her an apple. Red if you can.
• Make her a cup of coffee and leave it by her vessel for a while, with a biscuit or a piece of cake.
• When you want love, cut an apple in half, whisper your wish to her and eat one half. Leave the other half for her.
• When you want to be free of someone, tie a knot in a piece of thread while thinking of them, then untie it slowly in front of her vessel and throw the thread away outside the house.
• Wear a locket or a black ribbon when you want her close.

She tied one binding in her life she should never have tied, and spent sixty years untying other people’s. She knows the difference between love and a chain better than anyone.

How your companion speaks

Your companion can reach you through dreams, thoughts, words, feelings and images, through a pendulum, through warmth or cold, or through automatic writing. How soon that happens depends on the spirit settling into your home, on their willingness, and on your own ability to connect. Sometimes it begins before the vessel arrives.

Before you choose

Everything known about this spirit is on this page. There are no further images, details or hidden knowledge beyond what is written here, and a printed copy comes with your order. What you discover from there is yours alone.

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— Hazel