Barbelith Underground > Temple

In his book Chaotopia, Dave Lee lists the 4 main areas where sorcery (magick to affect the external world) will be worked – money, sex and healing are the first three, the fourth magick for personal power, which in practice is most likely to be expressed as combat. Cursing is one of the more dodgy areas of magick, the type of thing most likely to put the wind up non-magicians. so I thought it might be useful to have a thread about it.

In part this was sparked off by an observation of several thread on the board where people talk about there conflicts with others. I was wondering if when we get involved in conflicts with others, we largely act from very intense emotions – pride, fear or anger being the obvious ones. I was wondering if when we do this we tend to reduce other people’s complexity. Rather than see them as a whole person subject to the same variety of thoughts, feelings and confusions as ourselves, we simplify them, and begin to view them solely as an agent generating this fear/pride/anger/whatever. As simply an obstruction – and as such, fair game to be removed with a curse or any other magickal technique. Obviously there will be situations where this dynamic doesn’t apply, where someone may well be imposing their will on you in an unjust and arbitrary manner, where some kind of magickal intervention might be fitting – but how do you tell the difference? What makes you sure? What circumstances would it take before YOU were to do this? Might it not be better for enchantments to re-orientate our own point of view? (I’ve got a technique in mind here which I may post below). And finally, if you were going to do this, what techniques would you use – good old fashioned dolls or pins or newfangled cybermorphic astral entities?

I might add that I’ve never done any aggressive magick in my life, and don’t intend to. It’s possible I might, but I kind of think about it in the same way I’d think about punching someone in the face – possible, but not very likely.

Part my motivation for starting this thread also is to fish for juicy and interesting anecdotes, so if you’ve got any stories you’d like to share, feel free.

Another interesting point this brings up is the ethics of directing magick at other people – what do people feel about this? ‘Specially if they don’t know? Is it right to do something powerful positive for a friend – doesn’t this run the risk of all kinds of unanticipated consequences? What do people reckon?

Also, I’d like to point out that my comments above are in no way directed at anyone personally or intended to cause insult to people who have been raising these sort of questions on the board - I don’t know you or your situations, and I don’t think I’m in a position to judge.

Any thoughts?

Magical combat