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 – specifically, regarding why I think baneful magick on such targets tends not to work. I’ll also discuss the issue of whether casting curses against collectives of people is similarly an act of folly.
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 (new link since we’re post-election), 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.
What this entry therefore offers is seven reasons why I think baneful magick against such targets tends to fail. I thereby arrive at the same conclusions as others: such endeavors are not a good use of a magician’s energy. I am, however, more convinced by my rationales than those I’ve seen elsewhere – and I hope readers will be as well.
As with my entry on Dogmagianism, I’m going to insert astrological symbols into what follows. They reflect a salience I see between each issue, and themes associated with the planet in question. For reasons of length, I won’t unpack the details. I’ll instead leave it as something implicit that interested esotericists may ponder. Those who don’t care are free to assume they are not missing anything essential.
My takes against cursing politicians, collectives, and spirits
As before, 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.
Issue 1: Herd-mentality-driven projection
Novice magicians learn to distinguish things that come from outside one’s mind from things that come from inside it. I’m not convinced, however, that many who would curse politicians/collectives/spirits are good at this. Instead, it seems they uncritically absorb whatever negative social scripts are circulating, constructing a boogie-man from these. They make this figure/group a scapegoat for all their problems, many personal in nature and only tangentially related. The effect is especially intensified if the individual subscribes to a Dogmagian worldview – something I don’t think some esotericists are as immune to as they might imagine.
What happens when this individual attempts baneful magick? At best, they succeed in putting on an cathartic psychodrama for themselves. But such a performance in truth aims mainly at shoring up one’s identity as a member of a group. This has a tendency to corrupt intent. An effective intent would be something like “bring misfortune upon so-and-so!” The magician may say that, but on a fundamental level, they do not mean it. What they instead mean is, “I am a member of the group of people who dislikes so-and-so, and doggone it, the universe had better notice!”
It is possible for any baneful working to go astray along such lines. e.g. “curse X!” is really “hey universe, notice that I’m among the people who disapprove of X!” The effect is sure to be harder to resist, though, with targets that there are strong public sentiments against. Accordingly, I’d argue the more you live in an echo chamber that puts 24/7 effort into bitching about “enemies,” the more likely you are to fall prey to this kind of projective delusion.
Issue 2: Ineffective direction of energy
Technique and discipline are key ingredients of successful magick. One aspect of this is that some plausible path-of-least-resistance must exist by which your will can manifest.
Consider, in connection, why it is not wise to use magick to target collectives past a certain point. A spell can be likened to a computer program in complexity. Say there is only one target, and you know that target’s life pattern well. A simple program could then be elegantly tailored to a specific set of results. But say, alternately, that there are multiple targets – an open-ended number of them whose total you are not even sure of, in fact – and they are all leading whatever random variety of lives they are leading. Tackling that is going to require some clunky and verbose code. Do you have more pathways by which something could be made to happen? Sure, but you also have a vastly wider scope for the vain dispersal of energy and other “bugs”.
My instinct as a magician is thus that targeting an enemy coven of magicians differs from targeting a whole nation. I’m not saying you can never target collectives effectively. But the more diffuse your knowledge of the specific individuals in that collective, the less efficacy I’d expect. Like, if you were a Satanist mercenary in Ukraine (I’m not saying that’s a thing, folks, I’m just giving a random example) and you want to curse some specific Russian unit that you have detailed knowledge of, in connection with a military operation that you are also undertaking in practical terms, cool. But some dope in the comfortable West targeting “Russia” in general seems magickally obtuse. Also ethically obtuse if you can’t be bothered to at least distinguish soldiers from civilians, IMO, but I digress…
Issue 3: Personal distance
Effective magick requires a nexion between you and your target. An interconnection through which energy flows. This is why baneful magick is readily worked against exes, traitorous friends, and others with whom one has a history.
But ask, then, what personal connection exists between you and the politician/collective/spirits you wish to curse? Two illustrative scenarios:
- “A [slur word] broke into my house, typical [slur word], I’mma curse ‘em all!”
I uphold any magician’s right to use baneful magick if they are the victim of a criminal attack. However, it should be obvious to all non-idiots that you should target the criminal for being a criminal. The effective nexion is between you and the criminal. (I think here of a time someone smashed my car window and I kept the rock…) There is no effective nexion between you and other members of the criminal’s demographic who just have some random thing like skin color or culture in common with the criminal. - “Their policies are harming millions, including potentially me!”
If you were living in a small tribe, and the chief was fucking you over for arbitrary personal reasons, that’s a politician you could definitely target effectively. In the modern West, though, you probably only know the analogous leader via the TV. They probably have no idea who you are. And there are probably multiple levels of bureaucracy cooperating to make said policy happen.
Yes, this implies that in many cases, any magick directed toward politicians/collectives/spirits is unlikely to work well. Baneful magick happens, however, to be included.
Issue 4: Collective psychic shielding
For politicians/collectives/spirits, cultivating sufficient charisma to build an extensive network of allies is the foundation of power. One thereby establishes an effective, substantial presence in the world – a kingdom whose causal manifestations generate acausal equivalents.
What I thus picture is a pooling of the psychic defenses I believe all beings – even “mundane” humans – unconsciously possess. It makes sense to me that this effect would be present wherever the equivalent of Durkheim’s collective effervescence is present. The group’s investment in a focal point – whether its leader, its god(s), or the collective itself – empowers that point. Are there people going around saying “I would die for my [leader/group/god]”? Or proclaiming “an attack on one is an attack on all?” If so, one is faced, at minimum, with a dampening field that readily disperses the energetic attacks of mere individuals. Highly-committed collectives, however, may generate something more akin to a protective egregore. Certain legends about the Golem are perhaps relevant to consider here.
This sort of phenomena is, in my opinion, what is actually going on when folks claim “fate” is protecting someone. Note, however, the difference. My model says only that the politician/collective/spirit is protected by its followers in the current circumstances. If support declines, they become more vulnerable (setting aside the presence of other factors discussed here). The individual therefore has a degree of agency: if direct attacks won’t work, one can still scheme to whittle away support over time, etc.
Vs. the “fate” model implies that some external force has just “decided” that things are as they are. From which it follows that you have no agency in the matter. And why would any self-respecting LHP practitioner accede to such a disempowering mentality?
Issue 5: Vigilance against “the evil eye”
Any public figure – whether politician, collective, or spirit – will attract some opposition. I’d even go so far as to say that I don’t think you can last long on the public stage if you’re not willing to see yourself as in the midst of a perpetual war – even if it is, at times, more a cold war than a hot one. Or put another way: if a multitude of evil eyes are staring at you constantly, you’d better up your defenses.
What I’m thus asserting is that even if a politician isn’t a magician, probably their psychic defenses are above average. (To say nothing of those who perhaps are magicians…) Even with the greenest incumbent, sheer willingness to be in the public eye, make speeches, etc. counts for something in such matters. Vs. a jaded veteran whose career viability is dependent on not letting it bother them that certain people hate them? If they weren’t immune to “the evil eye,” they’d have resigned or otherwise self-destructed by now, yes? So why think that your baneful ritual magick will work on them when baneful folk magick evidently hasn’t?
Some may rebut, “oh but look how insecure that guy really is with his easily-bruised ego,” etc. I reply: granted, but is he still succeeding at being a mover-and-shaker despite that? If so, there’s your hint that he’s not going to be an easy target for psychic attack!
There’s a specific combination of superstition, insecurity and self-deceit that I think does make for a vulnerable target. e.g. the person who tells themselves they don’t believe in curses, hence doesn’t protect themselves, but really, they do. Most politicians don’t strike me as this type, though. And even if they are, well, see the rest of this post…
Issue 6: The Paradox of Non-Action
That LHP adepts are often people who have separated themselves decisively from mundane politics is not a coincidence. It is illuminating here to consider the Jupiter stage of the self-immolation rite of Hagur. At said point in the meditation, the practitioner realizes they are sufficient in themselves, without need for validating external trappings. Self-honesty, self-reliance and self-mastery go hand-in-hand for such individuals.
I believe that a paradox arises in connection with this: Those sufficiently advanced in magick be theoretically able to affect major earthly affairs are not motivated to do so. Whereas those who most stridently demand such changes are often the least capable of accomplishing them by acausal means.
I think one must here confront a truth about magick that some would prefer to deny. That being, that there is an inherent tension between the conditions of its effective practice, and political engagement. An adept is of such a mindset that no matter how the world devolves and degenerates, they are still “okay.” The radical lack of attachment evident in this stance is why they’re so effective at magick: “lust for results” is absent. Conversely, the bigger change you want in the world, the harder said goal is to approach without lust for results. Is it any wonder, then, that the magician who casts a curse and then wakes up every day after to check the news to see “did so-and-so get assassinated yet?” will be continually disappointed?
I will not be surprised if some in the audience dislike the Taoist flavor of what I’m saying here. I nonetheless think this is just how things are. Certain goals are of such an inherently earthly nature that they only make sense from a causal perspective, vs. viewed entirely from the acausal, action is simply not necessary.
Issue 7: Acausal challenges
Tenebrous Satanism believes that all spirits are once-causal beings who were translated or exalted into an acausal form. That everything above thus applies no less to spirits than to embodied beings should come as no surprise. Any spirit popular enough to be called a “god” surely has sufficient vigilance, followers, reputation, etc. for all of the above factors to come into play.
There is, however, a further reason why baneful workings against spirits tend not to work. This being, they are not subject to the limitations that we enfleshed beings are. Many baneful workings essentially entail narrowing the target’s probabilities and steering them toward the most unfavorable outcome. A spirit has vastly broader options to dodge such an attack than an embodied being would. It is also better equipped to parry and even counterattack. I hate to overextend the role-playing metaphor, but it also has vastly better statistics, more attacks per round than you do, and a certain regenerative capability.
For such reasons, I don’t find it believable to suppose that the average spirit is vulnerable to the average magician.
A tangent about vampirizing spirits
“Bullshit!” declares a certain kind of LHP practitioner, “gods are nothing to me – I vampirize them all the time!” So how fares my line of thinking against such a rebuttal?
To be frank, the more fearlessly people like this put their point across, the more I doubt they have ever actually encountered anything outside of themselves. It seems to me that when they “call up” a god to “vampirize” it, all they are really doing is gathering energies with the flavor of that god and consuming those. I think this because I never hear such practitioners – or for that matter, others who claim to deal with “the same” gods – reporting that said god has ceased to exist due to being consumed, or is looking worse for wear, etc.
Some such people are thus undertaking a purely causal-psychological process, which benefits them but involves no acausal forces. Others may be working with acausal forces, but in the manner of children playing with a “Mommy” doll while the real mother watches indulgently from a little ways off. In neither case am I claiming that “nothing is happening” or that “I know better because I’m a ‘real’ theist.” Again though, if these people were actually doing what they bombastically claim they are doing, the vampirized god should get used up at some point, yes? Yet that never seems to actually happen!
So to then reinforce my point: since you can’t apparently drain a spirit to death, why presume other baneful approaches would have any greater impact?
Are spirits invincible?
One might wonder, based on what I just said, whether I think gods – i.e., sufficiently-powerful spirits – are completely invulnerable.
My answer is no.
I believe one can harm acausal beings by attacking certain causal anchors essential to agendas they’re pursuing among human beings – and through those anchors, the beings themselves. This, however, requires a multi-pronged attack against a spirit’s followers and the ideology it-and-them jointly promote. You’d need to coordinate causal and acausal assaults on multiple levels over a very long period of time. Some would argue this is the sort of thing that O9A’s star game trains magicians to do.
This is too big a topic to address in an already-long entry. But if you want a glimpse at the kind of thing I mean, you should check out “Drill” by my fellow sorcerer, Scott R. Jones. Read my review and you’ll surely see the relevance not just to this, but to many facets of baneful magick!
Closing thoughts
In brief, reasons why I think baneful magick doesn’t work against politicians/collectives/spirits include:
- The magician isn’t self-aware enough to work such magick effectively (Issue 1).
- Magick readily disperses amid too-broad possibilities of manifestation (Issue 2).
- No compelling personal tie between the magician and the target (Issue 3).
- Target is well-protected both by their followers (Issue 4) and in-and-of themselves (Issue 5).
- Lack of power – and if one had it, one wouldn’t see the need to use it (Issue 6).
- You need to level-grind, win allies and play a bunch of tangentially-relevant mini-games before you’re ready to fight the last boss (Issue 7). 😉
So what do you think: agree, disagree, things about baneful magick’s limitations that I left out? Let me know in the comments.