The Simplest Seduction Technique I Know

Seduction is easy.  Really it is. 

It is far less complicated that we make it out to be.

Last night, I used one of my age-old tricks that has always inspired my seductive soul.  It cost me nothing, took one minute, and completely changed the destiny of my evening.

The secret? I lit every candle in my home.

I know. It sounds too simple to be destiny changing, but read on.

My budoir

Candlelight evokes an ancient, eternal sensual knowing within us. When I enter a room lit entirely by candles my blood pressure drops and my breathing becomes deeper.  Candlelight invites the spirit of the unseen.  That mystical glow that we cannot predict casts its spell over us. It creates an energy, a warmth that no appliance can re-create.  It reminds us that right there in thin air, magic does exist.

This past Sunday night I was feeling some anxiety. Sunday nights have always caused anxiety for me. Even when I wasn’t working and had nothing to do the next day, I would still feel that familiar “ok, fun’s over kids” anxiety on Sunday evenings. I had planned to watch a movie, but something about using technology to pass the time just did not feel satisfying enough. 

I know that when I feel anxiety, creating beauty in my environment and pleasure in my body is always the answer.  So, I turned out every single lamp in my home, and one by one, lit my way through each room along every candle.  Once all the candles were lit, I instantly felt myself relax.  This inspired me to turn on sweet, sensuous music (Annette Hanshaw Pandora to be exact).  Without even needing to ask, my husband began to draw me a bath.  Each room in my home had suddenly gone from being filled with noise and sharp energetic edges to being slow like honey, and sacred as an ancient temple. 

After my bath, I was going to watch the movie, but the slow, warm light of the candles was seducing me to do something more intuitive, something creative. So I laid on my bed with my journal and began writing.  After about 45 minutes, I had written the entire outline for my new book.   This is something I have wanted to write for months, resisting it every step of the way. But because of the ritual of of candlelight, my anxieties were calmed. The words that for so long had felt stuck like still water in a dried up creek began to flow like a river over a bed of stones.

Without these precious candles watching over me as I wrote these words that have been living inside me my whole life, this evening would have turned out much differently. 

You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to do this.  I like a variety of tapers, pillars, glass poured candles, votives and tea lights.  Candleholders can be as simple as a juice glass, or as elaborate as a sconce.  I have certain candle brands that I love, but the most affordable and easiest way to supply your home with candlelight is to go to the grocery or dollar store and stock up.  At the grocery store you will find prayer candles, some have religious labels, some do not.  Below I have posted some photographs of how I cast a spell with candlelight in my home.

It occurred to me while writing this that my very first job ever was being a cashier at a candle store in my hometown.  Thank you Betty Lou, owner of The Village Candle, for giving my 16-year old seductress a great place to start. 

PS – To receive a full education and immersion in Seductive Ritual, check out my retreat, Seduction Is A Way Of Life, May 3-5^th.  Your inner world and the world at large will not be the same after I unleash these secrets to you.  Join us in reclaiming seduction as our birthright.  

A Lavender candle warms my dressing table, casting it's beauty onto my altar wall of necklaces, 
postcards and images that are special to me.  

In my hallway, a mirror waiting to be hung projects the light of these three grocery store beauties.  Having candles in transitional places like a hallway means there is no interruption to the sensual experience.

This little pink lotus on my altar brings life to an otherwise static spot. 

These candles bring sparkle and shine to this photograph
of my glamourous hat-wearing, suit-donning, clutch-purse holding Grandma. 

Those candles also bring beauty to the bathtub.  Look at the warm light reflecting on the water. 

Nothing quite captures romance like a beaded taper candle sconce above the dining table,
and a sweet votive holding the balance on the other side of the room (visible in the mirror).

PS – To receive a full education and immersion in Seductive Ritual, check out my retreat, Seduction Is A Way Of Life, May 3-5^th.  Your inner world and the world at large will not be the same after I unleash these secrets to you.  Join us in reclaiming seduction as our birthright.  

Little Altars Everywhere

The first time I created an altar in my home, I remember treating it similarly to how I imagine one might treat nuclear material. I scrubbed the table I was using to the bone because I read somewhere that dust holds negative energy. I went to the health food store and saw all the different colored candles, each representing a different chakra. I was so afraid of excluding a chakra, I bought every color they had.  The same went for the incense. (thank you consumerism!) I started a “vision board” of all the things I wanted to transform in my life and placed it above the altar.  I would kneel in front of the altar when I got home from work every day (for about a week), burning the candles and trying to meditate, the whole time I was wondering if this was, indeed, the best feng-shui corner in the house to place the altar and whether or not it was clean enough.

JEEZ! It makes my palms sweat just thinking about that experiment.

I look back on that time with great compassion for myself.  What I realize now is that  I did not create that altar out of an overflow of devotion.  I created it because I wanted to find a way to heal things in my life that needed healing, but without having to do the scary stuff.  Like healing my ovarian cyst without surgery.  Or making all the people I hated at work less obnoxious without having to speak up.  And while we’re at it, adding more sex to my relationship without having to get out of my pajama pants.  And p.s., fixing my raging eating disorder.  No wonder the poor altar had performance anxiety!  

I have since learned that in the words of Annie Lennox, “Money Can’t Buy It.” You can ship salt from the Himalayas, fine incense from Tibet, the blood of a desert snake in Santa Fe and all the rest, but none of these things begin to compare with the power of collecting objects that mean something to you. 

My goal in my home is to make it one big giant altar.  I have little altars everywhere.  To me, an altar is any arrangement of beauty that honors the sacred.  It is something that reminds me that magic is real, that there is so much more to life that what we see with the naked eye.  What works best for me is to create altars of gratitude and honoring.  In contrast, I find that when I make an altar dedicated to a transformation I want to experience with images cut out of magazines and such, it makes me so fixed on the outcome that I start to obsess over it, excluding room for the transformation to actually happen. 

Here are some examples of altars I have created in my home and what they mean to me.  I would love to see yours too! You can post them here on the School of Charm and Cheek Facebook page. Or, if this post inspires you to see an altar where you did not see one before, as you will see in the photo at my Mother in-law’s house below, please share that too.

Altar On!

Kitty Cavalier

PS - Veronica Varlow is someone who taught me ALOT about finding the sacred and magic in the little things.  She is teaching a class at the School of Charm and Cheek March 23rd which is almost sold out.  I highly recommend this class if you would like to find beauty and magic in corners of your life that you would not have previously thought to look.

This is my bedroom dressing table.  Framing the mirror are necklaces , many of which were gifts, some which
were handmade by a dear friend.  On the dressing table are my favorite oils and lotions, handmade by my Mother. 

This Guest Altar belongs to my student Coco Chacnhil. It is an altar to Sacred Seduction that she created after taking my workshop.  It contains rose petals, chocolate, elegantly dressed fruit with goat cheese, the lyrics to a French song we learned in class, and a whole bunch of other personal items that mean something very special to her. 

This little bowl sits on my nightstand, and contains glass beads from  a vintage necklace, a stone from the driveway of my Dad's horse stable in South Carolina, and a nut that fell from a tree while vacationing with my husband in France.  I sprinkled a little glitter on it for additional sparkle. 

This altar is the first altar I ever made to honor Sacred seduction.  It has a green buddha lit up from below with white light, representing enlightenment with a little more pizazz than what we are accustomed to.  The word rejection is turned on it's head and covered with hearts to represent the belief that rejection is always a form of protection.  There are sweet watercolors to represent tenderness and vulnerability, sparkles and fur to represent making the old new again.  The marble carving reminds me of the Taj Mahal and honors the original archetypes of seduction. In the center, is an opera singer who is draped in red silk; a picture of pure passion in my eyes. 

I bought this when I was in Peru, and it graces a shelf in my bathroom, honoring true, long lasting love.

This is an altar, isn't it?? ;)

A gratitude altar for a successful Seduction class with my favorite Rumi poem "dance when you are broken open",  roses and a red candle from the classroom, and a variety of sacred objects surrounding the candle. 

This is a stone from the fire pit after my first fire ceremony at the Qoya Costa Rica retreat,  a piece of yarn from another ritual done in Costa Rica, a thank you charm that was a gift from a friend, and pink glitter to make everything shine.


This is in the home of my Mother in-law.  At first glance it is just an assembly of photos, but when looked at more closely it is an altar to family and love.  There are two photos of my nieces/her grandchildren, with a photo of her parents in the middle, and an album from our wedding under that, all placed on the piano where my husband learned to play his famous song "Ho-Down" as a kid.  So much sacredness on this altar!

  

My Secret, Secret, Secret Weapon

Veronica In Action

One of the questions I often get asked is about my spiritual practice.  People notice I have a strong relationship with spirit and want to know the actual practices I use to nurture and engage in that relationship.  Until age 18 I was forced, (and I mean forced!) to go to Catholic mass at least once per week.  Until age 13, I loved it.  After age 13, all hell broke loose.

No matter how much I stomped my feet, cried, pleaded to not have to go to Church, my parents held fast to their values.  At the time, I thought this was poppycock. Ridiculous.  Tyrannical.  Going to Church felt was straight-up obligation to me.  I found no inspiration there.  As a teenager who was dying to live as close to the edge as my social circle would allow, I just felt a continual layering on of guilt and that only reinforced my will to rebel. 

Today - Spirit, The Universe, God, Goddess, what-have-you; informs every breath I take and every move I make.  In retrospect I am grateful for my devotional upbringing.  Even when it moved beyond the point that I could relate to it, because this strengthened my resolve to find what did work, rather than just resent what didn't. It took a lot of research to find what worked for me to get close to where I felt the sweet embrace of the divine. One of the most unexpected places has been witchcraft.

I remember seeing the movie The Craft as a teenager.  My Mom was so terrified that she secretly sat in the back of the movie theatre so that she could see what I was being exposed to.  After all, that term, witchcraft, instantly conjures the imagery of the demonic, devil worship, black magic and the like.  I never went down that path, though I did sprinkle a fair amount of fennel seeds over my telephone in the hopes that my high school crush would someday call me and profess his love.  (something I read in the Supermarket Sorceress)

But what is witchcraft really? There are a great many ways to describe it: knowing the future, controlling the future. Having the ability to enchant, allure, captivate, hypnotize, enthrall, entrancing and spellbind. 

What is interesting is that in this day and age, I can think of very few women who would not like to be considered enchanting, alluring, captivating and hypnotizing.  Possession of these qualities strike me as something unique to feminine power, which not so long ago was considered an unforgivable crime. 300 years ago during the Salem witch trials, being called hypnotic could quickly get you lynched, or worse, slowly crushed under a giant boulder, torturing you in the hopes of attaining a confession of witchcraft.    Aye-ye-aye.  

Thank goodness we have pioneers like Veronica Varlow and her Grandmothers.  Veronica has been one of the greatest inspirations in my life.  My muse, my teacher, my friend, she not only has an entrancing quality that casts its spell over you body and soul the moment you encounter her, she is also one of the most generous and wonderful teachers I have ever met.  Kitty Cavalier would not exist without Veronica.

One of the most powerful classes she teaches is called "Light My Fire: Candle Magic with Veronica Varlow".  I took this class a few years ago, and I swear to you, everything I have created in my life has been the result of using this sacred art to attract what I want.  I have the most knock-down, crazy-amazing, blow your mind marriage in the universe, thanks to a candle spell.  I am making 3 times more than the highest salary I have ever made in my life, and my abundance continues to expand.  Candle magic again.  I have a career where my sole purpose is to have as much fun as possible in my life and then share it with the world to empower others.  Yup.  Candles again.

To try to describe why this class is so life altering would be like trying to describe what if feels like to swim in the ocean.  It is a power you just have to experience yourself. 

This Friday, November 16th, a dream of mine is coming true.  Veronica is bringing her candle magic class to The School of Charm and Cheek.  JUST FOR US. Ladies, believe me when I say, you would be crazy not to jump on this opportunity.  We have no plans to re-create this in the future.  Veronica travels the world and it is extremely rare that she is available to teach at all. 

So come on, join us. Be the best kind of crazy there is - no matter what plans you have to cancel, no matter how you have to drag your tired ass downtown - follow your desire to join us.  Your life will transform, I guarantee it.