Baneful magick: politicians, collectives, spirits – part 1

Many magicians seem to hold the view that certain targets are not suitable for baneful magick. There seems in particular to be widespread skepticism about cursing such targets as politicians and spirits. My own intuition is that indeed, one is unlikely to get results from baneful magick against targets like these. But I’m not particularly satisfied with rationales I’ve seen elsewhere as to why you “can’t” curse spirits and politicians effectively. I’ll therefore be working through a few of my thoughts on the topic in this entry. I’ll also discuss the issue of whether casting curses against collectives of people is similarly an act of folly.

baneful magick politicians collectives spirits

Introduction

Anyone who frequents social media will likely be familiar with the kind of thing this post is talking about. Some group of witches will claim on TikTok that they are going to curse Trump, or Allah, or Israel, etc. A wide range of “more serious” esoteric practitioners will at once spring up to deride such initiatives.

Certainly, my gut instinct toward that kind of thing also tends toward the negative. However, I feel such things are too often treated as “obviously” mock-worthy – i.e., either no real rationale is provided as to why you “can’t” curse politicians/collectives/spirits, or the rationales for why you “can’t” don’t quite gel with me.

According, this entry will discuss my impressions re: frequently-encountered online rationales for mocking the cursing of politicians/collectives/spirits. I’ll explain why I don’t think they succeed in explaining why you “can’t” curse these kinds of targets.

I’ll post another entry later that will advance some of my own angles re: problems with such workings. I was going to do it in this entry, but as my initial draft suggests that’s going to get too long, I’ll leave it for another day.

Social media takes against cursing politicians, collectives, and spirits

It will be evident that some of the rationales I discuss below apply more to one kind of target (e.g. politicians) than another (e.g. spirits). I’m nonetheless jumbling them together because I feel there are some interesting overlaps as well as divergences. I’ll try to clarify as I go along to avoid confusion, but a certain ambiguity also serves my purposes. Either way, I welcome questions in the comments from readers turning these matters over in their own minds.

Objection 1: These issues need political solutions, not magickal ones

Obviously this is primarily an objection against baneful magick toward politicians. It is not without relevance to the other two cases, however. I say this because I think often when one is tempted to target a collective or spirit, politics is implicit. Perhaps you disapprove of how one country is treating another country. Maybe you believe that one particular group of people – or spirits, e.g. angels – consistently plays an oppressive role that they deserve punishment for. Or perhaps you think, “that God’s followers make life bad for everyone – why not get to the root of the problem?”

Among common objections, this is probably the one I’m most sympathetic to. I’ve seen my share of sympathetic workings posted on social media that made me think, “come on, seriously, that is just ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the ‘spiritual not religious’ demographic.” Certain kinds of baneful workings then strike me as no less guilty of said charge. I find it hard here to argue with the secular view that you’d do more good voting against the person, engaging in activism to counter their policies, etc.

Alternately though, we might raise the question: why can’t you both do real-world activism and a baneful working? Especially since someone like LaVey would say that’s exactly what you should do if you expect results!

This, then, is not by itself an argument against cursing politicians, collectives and spirits. Rather, it’s an argument against doing any kind of magick unaccompanied by appropriate earthly striving.

i.e., say a person curses a politician/collective/entity while complementing this with appropriate activism. Still think it’s dumb/inappropriate/unworkable? You must then have some other reason for objecting to it…

Objection 2: You can’t broadcast your working on social media and expect it to work

I figure there are broadly-speaking two types of people who make this sort of objection:

  1. The type who also says that it’s always wrong to photograph altars, complains frequently about “grifters,” etc. Their fundamental objection seems to lie in a distaste for publicizing aspects of spirituality that “should” be kept personal.
  2. “Serious magician” sorts who believe that talking too openly and flippantly about workings dilutes their effectiveness. The rationale here is more intellectual and experiential rather than emotional and aesthetic. But it amounts to about the same. The only difference is that this kind isn’t necessarily as strict about things like photographing altars. Their point rather is that if you are actually doing a working, then that specifically is something you should keep to yourself.

I have a degree of sympathy for both types. One might even go so far as to say that I am an example of the second type myself. This is a factor in why I find the “curse wars” that perpetually haunt LHP communities to be so laughable. i.e., if you were any good at actually cursing people effectively, you wouldn’t be all over Facebook talking about it!

Here’s the thing, though: let’s now imagine a magician who curses a politician/collective/spirit – but keeps the matter completely to themselves. Still think it’s dumb/inappropriate/unworkable? You must then have some other reason for objecting to it…

Objection 3: You should fix your own negative emotions instead of spreading misery around

This is basically the classic person-who-doesn’t-understand-baneful-magick carping applied to a specific case (politicians/collectives/spirits). I say that because, as I’ve tried to get across in previous baneful magick entries (e.g. click previous sentence’s link), this is an ignorant position.

There are numerous practitioners for whom baneful magick is fixing your negative emotions. If that doesn’t work for you, fair. You should admit then, though, that you are just talking about what you do/don’t like personally. Which has no bearing on what can/can’t work for someone else.

That said, my sense is, when people talk this way, they usually aren’t really talking about whether it will work. Rather, their sentiment is more like “baneful magick is mean and icky and I don’t want it to work, waaah”. They therefore discourage whatever baneful magick they cross paths with, because heaven forbid the world have anything negative in it. Needless to say, these people are usually not Satanists. And regardless of whether they are or not, I am highly inclined to ignore them. If you’re “allergic to Darkness,” it’s best if you and I are not in the same spaces.

Returning to the topic, though: OK, so here we do have principled objection to baneful magick against politicians/collectives/spirits – i.e., even if accompanied by practical action, even if not broadcast on social media, etc. However, this is an objection to all other uses of baneful magick too. Can we find someone registering a solid complaint against baneful magick only re: cases like politicians/collectives/spirits? It seems we must continue looking…

Objection 4: You can’t interfere because Fate protects important individuals

This is probably the one I’ve seen the most long-winded waffle about re: cursing politicians/collectives/spirits. And I don’t even necessarily think that’s an issue if the take is coming from some generic “spiritual” New Ager. Sure, I don’t believe in “actually everything is fine if you just let it be, love and light!”. But if someone else does, and is opposed to baneful magick for such reasons, that’s at least a consistent worldview.

But where you don’t get a consistent worldview is when allegedly-LHP folks take this sort of line. As a Tenebrous Satanist, it seems to me that Fate is a Magian concept that abnegates free will. This is contrary to the Faustian ethos. Believe in destiny/wyrd, fine, that’s a unique opportunity realizable by a unique will, not guarantees written in the stars. But you’re on “Team Adversary” while believing that there’s some “way” set for the world that’s unalterable by rebellion? Why do any magick or any politics or work on yourself, then – i.e., why be a Satanist at all?

That said, this does not strike me as a well-considered, coherent belief among most who propound it. It instead comes across as a dodge – i.e., most who say it don’t actually have a good, thought-out reason re: why magick wouldn’t work in the situation under consideration; they just feel like it wouldn’t, and therefore parrot a social narrative about “how things are” without thinking very hard about it. Accordingly, they don’t actually apply belief in Fate elsewhere in their life – and that’s how they can still be a Satanist.

I have seen rare exceptions, as far LHP types who do make Fate a keystone of their worldview. I’m pretty sure, though, that they and I are incompatibly-different kinds of Satanist.

Concluding thoughts

So upon examining four common objections to baneful magick against politicians/collectives/spirits, our results are:

  • Objections 1 & 2 make sense, but seem disingenuously-advanced.
    Both contain criticisms of magickal technique that many magicians would be sympathetic to. However, it is not that hard for us to envision avoiding these pitfalls (e.g., lack of complementary earthly efforts; squandering of energy via too much online showboating) while still doing baneful practices. It seems then that these are not “really” reasons for not cursing politicians/collectives/spirits. They are just reasons for not doing it the way people on TikTok do it.
  • Objection 3 is just “I don’t like baneful magick.”
    To which I say, boo hoo, no one cares, go be sad about it somewhere else. i.e., this is not relevant to Satanic consideration of whether cursing a politician/collective/spirit will work or not. There’s no point in talking to people with such views if you’re of a contrary mind, as they don’t have enough common ground with you worldview-wise to have a meaningful angle on the question at hand.
  • Objection 4 might work for some Satanists.
    But I don’t see how “Fate” helps anything unless you believe in forms of cosmic order that most Satanists reject. Either that or you may just not have thought about it as hard as maybe you should.

I thus conclude, none of these are very good reasons for the claim that you “can’t” curse politicians/collectives/spirits.

And yet, at the same time, my own intuition is that baneful magick against such targets does often fail. Therefore, I’ll have to investigate some other angles on why difficulties arise with these particular sorts of targets.

I’ll be doing that in a future entry. In the meantime, if you have thoughts on this topic, please feel free to share them in the comments.

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