March 21, 1999: Witchcraft - Ramona Bell interviews Dr. Evelyn Paglini
The two women explore image candle magic and the principles of imitative and sympathetic magic, explaining how practitioners use colored candles, personal items, and essential oils to influence attraction, love, and healing. Paglini distinguishes between the stages of magical work, warning listeners about the consequences of rushing love spells before confirming compatibility with a potential partner.
Art Bell's wife Ramona draws on her own knowledge of the craft as the conversation turns to practical herbalism and preparedness. Paglini recommends growing medicinal herbs and learning their properties, predicting that herbal knowledge will become a valuable bartering commodity in coming times of upheaval. The episode closes with guidance on magical dos and donts for beginners.
Key Moments
Three-layer cleansing and home protection ritual: Paglini walks through her standard procedure for someone who feels they are being magically attacked: smudge the entire home with sage, then lay sea salt, sulfur, and black salt at every threshold and around the bed while declaring out loud that no evil or negativity may cross the barrier. She frames this as three escalating levels of defense.
Herb gardens as Y2K survival prep: Paglini and Ramona pivot from magical gardening to practical survivalism, arguing that with Y2K approaching listeners should learn herbology the way their great-grandmothers did. They name specific herbs - dong quai, kava kava, ginger, lobelia, fennel - and predict that knowledge of medicinal plants will become a primary barter currency in the coming devastation.
How candle magic actually works on a man: Paglini explains imitative and sympathetic magic through a worked example: to attract a specific man, get a red male image candle, ideally a photograph, and any hair or clothing fibers you can collect from him; then concentrate the mind 'like a laser beam' to stimulate his attraction. She warns not to escalate from red (passion) to pink (love) until you are sure he is the right person.
Hollywood, politics, and hired witchcraft: Paglini claims that a startling number of people in entertainment, politics, big finance, and high-stakes gambling routinely hire practitioners to gain advantage or to curse rivals. She says she is regularly called in to remove curses placed on producers, directors, and Oscar winners and to put up shields of protection. She closes with her personal creed: not the Wiccan 'harm none,' but 'give me justification and so be it.'