Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge/Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge.iso/OCCULT/BLACKMAG.TXT

Text File | 1988-07-15 | 29KB | 497 lines

THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC:
Getting Specific about Magical Ethics


     Sometimes a cliche just wears out. It loses meaning or, worse, begins to
say things we never meant. I think it's time to retire the phrase "black
magic."

     Saying "black" when we mean "evil" is nasty nonsense. In the first place,
it reinforces the racist stereotypes that corrupt our society. And that's not
all. Whenever we say "black" instead of "bad," we repeat again the big lie that
darkness is wrong. It isn't, as people who profess to love Nature should know.

     Darkness can mean the inside of the womb, and the seed germinating within
the Earth, and the chaos that gives rise to all truly new beginnings. In our
myths, the one who goes down to the underworld returns with the treasure. Even
death, to the Wiccan understanding, is well-earned rest and comfort, and a
preparation for new birth. Using "black" to mean "bad" is a blasphemy against
the Crone.

     But even if we no longer speak of magic as "black" or "white," we still
need to think and speak about the ethics of magic. Although black is not evil,
some actions are evil. It simply is not true that anything a person is strong
enough or skilled enough to do is OK, nor should doing what we will ever be the
whole of the law for us. We need a clear and specific vocabulary that enables
us to choose wisely what we will do.

     We need to replace the word "black," not simply to drop it. Some Pagans
have tried using "negative" as their substitute, but that turned out to be
confusing. For some people, "negative" means any spell to diminish or banish
anything. Some things - tumors, depression, bigotry - are harmful. There's
nothing wrong with a working to get rid of bad stuff. "Left-handed" is another
common term for wrongful practice, very traditional, but just as ignorant,
superstitious and potentially harmful as the phrase "black magic" itself. So in
Proteus we tried using the word "unethical."  That's a lot better - free of
extraneous and false implications - but still too vague.

     Gradually, I began to wonder whether using any one word, "black" or
"unethical" or whatever, might just be too general and too subjective. Perhaps
all I really tell a student that way is "Judy doesn't like that."

     I won't settle for blind obedience. If ethical principles are going to
survive the twin tests of time and temptation, people need to understand just
what to avoid, and why. Even more important, they need a basis for figuring out
what to do instead. Especially when it comes to projective magic.

     Projective magic means active workings, the kind in which we project our
will out into the world to make some kind of change.  This is what most people
think of when they use the word magic at all. Quite clearly, magic that may
affect other people is magic that can harm. This is the basis of the proverb "a
Witch who can't hex can't heal." Either you can raise and direct power, or you
can't. Your strength and skill can be used for blessing or for bane. The choice
- and the karma - are yours.

     Just as some people feel that strength and skill are their own
justification, others feel that any projective magic is always wrong - that it
is a distraction from our one true goal of union with the Divine or a willful
avoidance of the judgements of Karma. I think these attitudes are equally
inconsistent with basic Wiccan philosophy.

     We are taught that we will find the Lady within ourselves or not at all,
that the Mother of All has been with us from the beginning. We can't now
establish a union that was always there. All we can do, all we need to do, is
become aware. Knowing what it feels like to heal and empower, again and again
till you can't dismiss it as coincidence, is one of the most powerful methods
for awakening that awareness. It makes no sense to say that the direct
experience and exercise of our indwelling divinity distracts from the Great
Work.

     Indeed, it is this intimate connection between our magic and our
self-realization that our ethics protect. Wrongful use of magic will choke the
channel. No short term gain could ever compensate for that.

     The karmic argument against practical workings seems to me to arise from a
paranoid and defeatist world view. Even if we assume that the hardships in this
life were put there by the Gods for a reason, how can we be so sure that the
reason was punishment? Perhaps instead of penance to be endured, our
difficulties are challenges to be met. Coping and dealing with our problems,
learning magical and mundane skills, changing ourselves and our world for the
better - in short, growing up - is that not what the Gods of joy and freedom
want from us?

     One of the most radically different things about a polytheistic belief
system is that each one of us has the right, and the need, to choose which
God/desses will be the focus of our worship. We make these choices knowing
that whatever energies we invoke most often in ritual will shape our own
further growth. Spiritual practices are a means of self-programming. So we are
responsible for what we worship in a way that people who take their One God as
a given are not.

     Think about this: what kind of Power actively wants us to submit and
suffer, and objects when we develop skills to improve our own lives? Not a
Being I'd want to invite around too often!

     So it will not work for us to rule out projective magic completely; nor
should we. Total prohibitions are as thoughtless as total permissiveness or
blind obedience. Ethical and spiritual adults ought to be able to make
distinctions and well-reasoned choices. I offer here a start toward analysing
what kinds of magic are not ethical for us.


     Baneful magic is magic done for the explicit purpose of causing harm to
another person. Usually the reason for it is revenge, and the rationalization
is justice. People who defend the practice of baneful magic often ask "but
wouldn't you join in cursing another Hitler?"

     For adults there is no rule without exceptions. If you think you would
never torture somebody, consider this scenario: in just half an hour the bomb
will go off, killing everybody in the city, and this terrorist knows where it
is hidden....

     It's a bad mistake to base your ethics on wildly unlikely cases, since
none of us honestly knows how we would react in that kind of extreme.
Reasonable ethical statements are statements about the behaviors we expect of
ourselves under normally predictable circumstances.

     We all get really angry on occasion, and sometimes with good cause. Then
revenge can seem like no more than simple justice. The anger is a normal,
healthy human reaction, and should not be repressed. But there's no more need
to act it out in magic than in physical violence. Instead of going for revenge
- and invoking the karmic consequences of baneful magic - identify what you
really need. For example, if your anger comes from a feeling that you have
been attacked or violated, what you need is protection and safe space. Work
for the positive goal, it's both more effective and safer.

     The  consequences of baneful magic are simply the logical, natural and
inevitable psychological effects. Even in that rare and extreme situation when
you may decide you really do have to use magic to give Hitler a heart attack,
it means you are choosing by the same choice to accept the act's karma. Magical
attack hurts the attacker first.

     The only way I know how to do magic is by use of my imagination, by
visualizing or otherwise actively imagining the end I want, and then projecting
that goal with the energy of emotional/physiological arousal. All the
techniques I know either help me to imagine more specifically or to project
more strongly. So the only way I can send out harm is by first experiencing
that harm within my own imagination. Instant and absolute karma - the natural,
logical and inevitable outcomes of our own choices.

     I would think, also, that somebody dumb enough to do such workings often