Ukudliswa: Love potion, What are they and why?

From the mind that brought you Soul-ties, Soul-ties 2, and Soul-ties: The reckoning, comes the prequel you’ve all been waiting for, Soul-ties: The first knot. Love potion, what are they and why?

if i drink a love potion that was made to make someone fall in love with me, then….would i love myself?

— inaz (@shafinazkaus) May 6, 2021

I know-I know, a self proclaimed Nyanga covering love potions? Ironic? Maybe just a little. (shout out to my editor for this one).

To understand the concept of love potions, we must first understand what love is. Could we define it as the conditional-unconditional affection we have towards something or someone? And so is the purpose of a love potion to remove the “conditional” aspect of love? What does that do to our ‘target’? Assuming my analysis is somewhat agreeable, let’s dive deeper.

Why does my definition of love have a condition? Simply put: the processes that allow someone to be enthralled require you to be “up to standard”. And what does the love potion do? By removing the ‘pass criteria’, it allows you, the user, to “win” the affection of your favoured human with little effort. Simple right?

Regardless of your chosen ‘brand of wizardry’ nothing that good could possibly be free. So What’s the catch? Costs aside, potions normally come with a very specific set of instructions, a slight divergence from which could have detrimental side effects – so this goes without saying, but proceed with caution.

LADIES & LADIES only! I want you to DM about a time that you've used black magic to woo a guy you liked.

— OLONI BABY (@Oloni) November 8, 2019

Surely it’s not all mysticism and spells right? Well, the concept of love potions is a strange one when examined closely. The fact that there exists a concoction that can tether your spirit to someone because you ate their food, undermines what it takes to build and maintain relationships does it not? Are human hearts, human souls, so starved for affection and recognition that they’ll gladly surrender to such a fate? Or is there another mental dimension at play here? A case of hypnosis that allows the user to believe in this strange power while simultaneously granting them the confidence needed to win-over their intended target with seemingly less effort.

With the above in mind, are there other versions of this “spiritual bondage”, (told you this was another soul-ties [grins at camera]) , that exist within our reality?

https://twitter.com/lindz_malindz/status/1311588583099293696

Of course! We’ve all heard talk of it when a man seems too head over heels for a girl – “udlisiwe lo”. Arguably this is just our failure to comprehend men that can publicly/privately show that much affection. Followers of my twitter account will attest to my ‘sbwl to ukudliswa‘ tweets every so often. (I have no shame 🙂 ) Perhaps a more common version of that phrase is “p*%#y whipped”. Either way, the very idea that a man could willing love someone so openly in the absence of foul play speaks a lot to our perception of women in relationships.

So what sort of potions should you be on the look out for? They could be anything ranging from powder you put in food to ‘pheromones’ that you use like body spray, you know, typical movie stuff. However humans, being the impatient creatures that we are, might feel the urge to use too much potion (for even faster results) or applying it at the wrong time(normally sooner than the directions suggest), what results from this could see your target continue to ignore you, have you attract the wrong person or worse yet, see them(target) fall in love with someone else. If you’re scratching your head at that last one, it’s “because magic”.

#UdlisiweWhen you dont even think about ukudliswa or you dont even notice ukuthi udlisiwe. pic.twitter.com/SgIqZh3Zya

— Bhele, Dlambulo, Notanda, Langalokulunga (@victor_46079) February 10, 2020