In my last post I was making a point about books on magic always having to have statements on ethics lest people complain. My point was that people often treat ethics of magic as completely separate than other activities AND that the ethical statements which appear in such books are often short-sighted and sophomoric.
Some people it seems have interpreted me as saying that there is no need for ethics or ethical codes. That is NOT what I said.
If you want to see how important I consider ethics (or if you want to see two of your favorite Magi get their bible thumping on) go over to Frater RO’s blog today to read us going round for round about the role of ethics in Christianity.
To be clear: I am a believer in having a strong ethical code. I just don’t think that a book of Sorcery is the place you should be looking for it.
I am NOT for the sort of “whats good for me IS good” type of ethics, but I understand those that are.
My own personal ethics keep me from taking on a LOT of spellwork for people. I do not work on custody cases. I do not do break up or reconciliation spells. I do not curse outside of protecting from dire threat of physical harm.
In fact the last person to announce to me that they cursed me (because I did a protection spell to protect their wife from their abuse), I simply wrote back and assured that I would do nothing extra or retaliatory other than what my guardian spirits do and that I would try to keep my guardian spirits from retaliating too harshly.
I am a Christian and a Buddhist. I take ethics very seriously. When I said that looking to a book on magic for your ethics was the wrong place, I meant because you should take them more seriously than the few paragraphs you might find warning you to harm none.
Now, the other thing I wanted to say is that I have states time and again that the ethical considerations of magical actions and mundane actions are the same. While this is true for many situations, it is not true for all, and it was actually Conjureman Ali’s comment that triggered this realization when he mentioned that people who approach hoodoo from a neo-pagan background sometime claim that there are a lot of sociopaths in Hoodoo.
The fact is, that based on many conversations I have had with people, there ARE more than a few sociopaths in Hoodoo*. I have been privy to conversations, even on open groups, where people are discussing work aimed at seriously harming or even injuring people over comparability small things. They would not be talking about cutting the break lines to someones car or poisoning them, but only because that would open the possibility of being caught.
Magic opens the possibility of doing damage to someone that you would otherwise get arrested for, and getting away with it because the law does not have a mechanism for dealing with magic. This does in fact make the ethical considerations somewhat different.
* This is not an indictment of Hoodoo or any other tradition. Nor am I saying that most or even many practitioners are sociopaths. I am however saying that I have been witness to more conversations, field reports, and back and forths about this than I am in other fields.
Oh come now, hoodoo doesn’t contain a larger number of crazies than any other magical tradition. The fact that any magical tradition allows one to act from the comfort of the shadows gives people quite a bit of room for abuse. In all my years of learning with conjure doctors around they country I have found most of them to be deeply spiritual people with strong ethics (there are a few exceptions).
My point is that people who come from outside traditions often fail to realize that a great deal of magic is already tied to a cultural or religious tradition. People born into a tradition of hoodoo were more often than not born as devout Christians who were raised with the Golden Rule. The point is that ethics doesn’t need to be expressly stated, but rather is a conviction that results from upbringing and your own conscience. Just because a tradition doesn’t dictate what you should do or not do does not mean it lacks ethics.
It exists everywhere true. In fact within Rootwork it is mostly people that are whites coming to it from outside the tradition that I have seen get really gung ho about the Curses. Perhaps they are feeling suddenly free being in a field where this work is even discussed. Perhaps its the colorful condition names “D.U.M.E – Death Unto My Enemies” and such that give the impression wheras its a bit more understated in other trads. Perhaps its just the frankness of it being offered as a service as bluntly as it is in some places. Whatever it is, I do find it to be more prevalent.
Than again there are others. I was recently in a botanica that specialized in Santissima Muerte and literally more than 70% of the candle stock was for cursing or some derevation thereof. So, no it is not just Hoodoo.
The point about special ethical consideration because of lack of traditional accountability stands though.
I heard it as Death On My Enemies… which means that it’s DO ME. As in, an invitation to be fucked with as they fuck with others.
Just sayin’
I am guilty of this. When I first got myself into Hoodoo I went giddy with the possibilities of pay back on people that used me for their own magickal chew toy.
I never did act on it thankfully and have calmed down since then. I still plan to get them back but all things in there time. I will say my planned pay back is strongly dialed down from my initial plans.
Love ya, man… still disagree strongly. Check it:
That’s ethics.
Morality is where we get into which actions are right and wrong on a more general scale. Beliefs and values are further up the meta-levels. Ethics is where the rubber meets the road and can come into conflict with reality. And that’s a feature, not a problem.
Let’s thump for a second: at a relatively recent point in history, eating meat on a Friday was as immoral and “sinful” as murder or adultery… yet could be resolved with what is currently referred to as a bribe. Now we see bribery as far more “wicked” and criminal than eating a hotdog on Friday, so where did that change in morality come from? What does it give us to follow either path? Basically, in this example, not much – it’s more a system of control being imposed along with creating a revenue stream. Or it’s a system of devotional behavior to emphasize spiritual discipline.
Neither is right or wrong in itself – it’s only our choices in how to see that. Again, it’s our ethics that are applied when we follow a rule or disobey it.
This doesn’t mean that there’re no consequences for our choices. If someone hasn’t learned that bit of socialization at an early age, it’s kind of hard to teach it to them as an adult. It can be done, though in my experience it’s a bit of a losing proposition with minimal benefit and maximal time & effort investment. When I’m teaching, I touch on this a bit – that your actions have consequences – and leave it at that. Could someone remarkably fuck someone up using the techniques I show them? Absolutely. I want it that way, as it’s just as powerful for helping people cut through their accumulated cruft. I leave the application up to them after demonstrating their will to change things, the knowledge of the technique, how to not talk about doing it and just do it… if they dare to be a dick, they also know that it has consequences. Just as daring to blast someone’s traumas to ash has consequences as well.
I’m comfortable with this. I’m very comfortable, as a matter of fact. That doesn’t mean that I’ve not royally fucked things up before, just that I’m at a state of contentment with it rather than any authoritarian hand wringing based on superstition and human resource management handed down from others wrapped in “mystery beyond your degree” drag.
See, the attitude you’re talking about that requires a chapter on magical ethics in your book out of some sort of responsibility for other’s questionable choices… that’s what I consider “the enemy.” It deprives others of choice under the guise of a moral high ground that is actually imposition. I’d rather just leave it as what I’ve said and encourage the reader taking responsibility for themselves. It also serves as a way of weeding out the lazier parts of the audience…
Well speaking for myself I write my ethical arguments as food for thought rather than an authoritarian command.
As for right action arising spontanously out of self-knowlege – this is very similar to the argument that I had with RO yesterday about the need for Christian ethics other than “have a relationship with God”.
You can say that every man and every woman is a star if they know their own true will, You can say that right action will develop out of self-knowlege. You can say that ethics will arise out of Gnosis. What all these things boil down to though is a whole lot of work that:
1. Most people have no interest in dedicating their lives to.
and
2. Those that do, often to do achieve it anyway.
You might as well make it a true tautology and say that as long as people achieve true ethics there will be true ethics.
No thanks. I left behind Thelemic arguments a long time ago. Most peoplle cannot even drive politely much less attain self-knowlege and abide in it enough for right action to arise.
Furthermore ethics of specific traditions, and universal ethics do not have to be the same thing. To say it is wrong to murder people, to steal from people, and to rape people is quite a bit different than keeping the Sabbath or even not committing adultery.
… yet for much of Christlemew history, it was. /shudder
And that leads to another of the presuppositions in what I said – everyone needs to have a moral system/constellation. And usually, they do – even if it’s one that’s imposed on them by parents/state/industry/church. We construct Values, wrap them in Beliefs, then act on them according to our Ethics.
Self-actualization is where we start re-writing these systems. Not everyone’s there yet. Not all sentient beings are enlightened yet. As such, it’s inappropriate to yank the training wheels off. It’s also inappropriate to not let them skin their knees or drop the bike on themselves. But ultimately, you let them do their thing and make their own mistakes and achieve their own successes and feel pride as you see that you’ve made a small but noticeable uplift in the consciousness of the planet.
While the Law may be for all, magick sure as hell isn’t. When it is, it’s pretty amazing…
True enough about ethics and Christian history, but you can say the same about just about any religion that is older than 200 years, and a about a few that are not! Thankfully these are living traditions we speak of that change with time either gracefully, or kicking and screaming.
As to the rest, I agree for the most part.
Some “ethics” are really ‘just’ taboos of the existing mainstream cultural project. Eating meat on a Friday could be considered one such taboo of a cultural project — the assimilation of Catholicism on Europe. Others derive from the social milleu of the culture, but are in fact social survival instincts. My friend Ben learned when he moved to Hawaii several years ago that the Kahunas had taboos against fishing in certain waters at certain seasons, or visiting certain fields at others. These times of year turned out to be the times when sharks were at their most active in that cove or bay; and when the poisonous centipedes on Maui were at their most active and aggressive. So some ethics is cultural taboo, some is survival strategies coded as ethical projects, and some are… Something else.
Are all those curses cultural taboos, or social survival, or something else? They’d appear to be bits of all three. Most of west Africa was comprised of what are classified as “stateless societies” where tribes and lineages manage some kinds of justice, and “secret societies” with magic overtones manage other kinds of judicial functions, and the longships manage a third set of cultural ideas about justice. In Hoodoo, it seems to me, a lot of that old world framework got disrupted, and had to be reassumed by the remaining practitioners. Curse lore becomes/became a way of expressing attitudes about injustice that couldn’t be expressed in other ways.
It’s a theory. I’m not familiar enough with Hoodoo as a practitioner to be able to speak this as truth — but I’ll present it as one possible thought among many as a comment.
Longships. Duh. Hate autocorrect. Should be king-ships. That is, elected or family-descended lifelong rulers with hereditary and customary powers. Not Vikings wandering around the world in their clinker-built rowboats with dragon prows.
“…They would not be talking about cutting the break lines to someones car or poisoning them, but only because that would open the possibility of being caught….”
Jason, I well known conjurer on the blogsphere would do this if the pay is good…he claims he doesn’t give a shit on ethics as long as the pay is good.
I don’t understand why many people involved specially with ATRs and Santa Muerte cult are so damn self righteous that they use what they know to intimidate people. I know many of them personally and I have the basis of my argument, that’s why I’m saying this.
Frater,
In many cases people come from a background where it is kill or be killed. When people manage to leave those neighborhoods or countries, that attitude does not just leave. This is especially true of people who get their mindset in one place, than move when they are still teens because their parents move. If you are raised in a place where solving problems with violence is the norm, where life is fairly cheap, certain practices arise and certain spirits are attracted.
Most people in ATR’s are quite kind people, and the sort of antagonism you speak of is not the norm. It exists, and it exists in greater numbers than you will see amongst Rosicrucians and Neo-Pagans, but largely because its not arising from a fairly well off, white background. There are REASONS for wrathful magic, and there are places where it is both a tool for survival AND part of the problem.
The thing that I never understand are people not arising from a rough environment yet choosing those practices because they feel they are powerful or somehow cool. These people are almost invariably ignorant of real poverty and real violence and are fronting.
Nail on head there, Mr.Miller. Not every person comes from a neighborhood where the police are a positive force; if you want to get shit done, you do it yourself. Or it gets done to you.
A lot of cursing in conjure is of the preemptive sort, because many of us live in areas where persons follow through with threats of violence. I’ve done my share on fellows who’ve crossed me–not for shits & giggles, but because if I didn’t, one of my own would have ended up beaten or dead. I don’t live directly in that sort of neighborhood anymore, but there isn’t a fence around them. All it takes is crossing paths in work or your personal life to drag you into association with a person coming from a place with a violent culture. Ethics are a luxury of the comparatively rich and childless; poor folk don’t always have ethical choices to make, they have survival choices.
Magic opens the possibility of doing damage to someone that you would otherwise get arrested for, and getting away with it because the law does not have a mechanism for dealing with magic. This does in fact make the ethical considerations somewhat different.
While I agree with this post and your previous one for the most part, I’m of the opinion that from a philosophical standpoint sound ethical principles should stand on their own rather than arising from on fear of consequences or reprisal. I don’t consider the sort of person who is only nice to other people because they are afraid of being sent to hell, slapped by the threefold law, or whatever their religious tradition happens to teach as punishment for indiscretions an ethical person, but rather merely a fearful one.
In that light, I think your original statement on ethics is still the most accurate. Since magick does not represent a separate class of activity, its ethical considerations should be the same as those for all other activities. It’s true that the practical considerations are different, but this is a separate issue and it cuts both ways. A curse is less likely to kill someone than a gun because probability shifts are dodgier than bullets. However, if you do succeed, the odds of prosecution are minimal.