This is the question I am asked most carefully, in the quietest voice, usually near the end of a call after someone has worked up to it. They describe a feeling — a pull toward someone they should not want, a dream that will not stop repeating, a sense that something outside them is steering their attention. They want to know if a spell was cast on them. Almost always, the honest answer disappoints the question. Most of what people describe has an ordinary cause. A small amount does not. This article is my attempt to tell you which is which, without doing what a great deal of this industry does to people who ask.

Why This Question Comes Up So Often

Human attention is not as self-directed as people assume. We fixate on people for reasons that have nothing to do with spiritual interference — unresolved history, proximity, loneliness, a resemblance to someone else entirely. When that fixation feels sudden or out of character, the mind reaches for an external explanation, because “something was done to me” is easier to sit with than “I am doing this to myself for reasons I don’t fully understand.”

I am not saying spiritual work never happens without consent. It does, rarely, and I will describe what it actually looks like below. I am saying that the feeling of being pulled toward someone is not, by itself, evidence of it. Most of what gets called a spell is the ordinary and uncomfortable experience of wanting something inconvenient.

What Genuine Interference Actually Looks Like

When I do find real spiritual work behind a client’s situation — and I do, on occasion — it tends to share a small number of features together, not any single one in isolation.

One sign alone is almost never enough to act on. It is the combination, and the timing, that tells me something real is there. — Baba Ali

What Almost Always Explains the Feeling Instead

Before any reading, I ask about the mundane explanations first, because ruling them out honestly is most of the job. A few show up constantly:

• Unresolved history. A person you dated briefly, or almost dated, or wanted years ago can resurface in your attention when your current life gets unstable, with no spiritual cause at all.
• Trauma bonding. Attraction to someone who is inconsistent or unavailable often intensifies precisely because they are inconsistent. That pull is real and painful and entirely psychological.
• Loneliness projecting onto proximity. The person you see most often becomes the person your mind fixates on, independent of actual compatibility.
• Someone else’s suggestion. I have had clients whose entire concern began the day a friend said “that’s weird, are you sure nobody’s working on you?” Planting the question is sometimes enough to manufacture the feeling of an answer.

If any of these fit your situation more naturally than a stranger’s ritual would, that is very likely your answer. I would rather tell a client that than take a materials cost for a reading I already suspect will find nothing.

What to Actually Do If You Suspect This

First, do not panic, and do not accept an urgent framing from anyone selling you a solution. Real spiritual interference, when it exists, does not require an emergency response measured in hours. Anyone insisting otherwise is working from urgency, not from the actual situation.

Second, get a genuine reading before any working is proposed — from me or from anyone else. A reading should come before a quote, not alongside one. My own process is laid out in full on the how it works page, and the same order should apply anywhere you go: listen, read, then — only if warranted — propose work.

Third, if a working is genuinely needed, it is almost always a cleansing rather than anything dramatic. The relevant piece here is protection and clearing, not confrontation. My colour choices for that kind of work are explained in candle colors for love magic, specifically the section on white and black together — cut, then clear.

The Pattern to Recognize and Refuse

I want to be direct about this because it is the actual harm in this space, more than any spell ever could be. The “you are cursed” pitch works by manufacturing fear first and offering relief second, priced at whatever the mark can be pushed to pay. It preys specifically on people asking the question this article answers.

My own Ethics & Safety Promise names this directly as something I will never do. If you take one thing from this article and nothing else, take this: a practitioner’s job is to calm an anxious question with an honest answer, not to grow the anxiety into a bill.

Frequently Asked Questions

A Final Word From Baba Ali

Most people who ask me this question leave the call relieved, not because I told them what they wanted to hear, but because I told them the truth plainly and did not charge them for the privilege of hearing it. If your situation is genuinely spiritual, I will tell you so and explain exactly what I see. If it is not, I will tell you that too, and you will have saved yourself money and worry either way. That is the whole job.