Can Magick Hurt People?


Yes. And we, as teachers, need to keep that in mind.

I’ve believed you can cause harm with magick for quite some time. But it’s only recently that I’ve seen how to do it, using only techniques I’ve already learned and verified.

Remember when I did the healing work for Lisa’s hives? To do it, I influenced her neurotransmitters and immune-signalling chemicals, to break the feedback cycles. (At least, that’s the intent — let’s assume it worked for this post.) Well, what happens if you use that same magick to put those chemicals out of balance? I have no idea, but it can’t be good. And I didn’t see that harmful technique until months later, meaning there are probably others I haven’t seen at all yet.

There’s no way to teach meaningful healing techniques without also teaching how to hurt people in an essentially-undetectable way. (The harm is obvious, but can’t be traced back to you.) This is one of the main reasons for my recent interest in enlightenment*, and techniques for a practitioner to trigger personal growth.

*By “enlightenment,” I simply mean “Acting from a mature place, and not harming someone for petty reasons.” I understand that Buddhists and other practitioners have a more technical meaning, so let’s use a capitalized Enlightenment for that technical meaning.

My answer for myself is consciousness integration, which I’ll write about more coming up. But it’s advanced magick, requiring you to activate new thought paths in your mind. By the time you can do that, you can already hurt people. Maybe I can program consciousness integration into some ethereal software, so you don’t have to do the full technique yourself? Still, I’d like something the practitioner actually understands, instead of just a command they use.

Any ideas for teaching the personal-growth type of enlightenment? How about doing it in 3 months or less? And how do other teachers handle this healing-teaches-harming dilemma? Thanks for your input.

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7 Responses to “Can Magick Hurt People?”

  1. Ona says:

    Interesting question. I’m not sure there’s an answer, but a few thoughts. If your tendency is to lash out at others when you are angry or afraid, you are going to do that with or without magick. If you aren’t interested in self-development, spiritual development, wisdom and so on, then you are unlikely to be interested in magick as it pertains to those things, but rather only in magick as a potential tool for manipulating and controlling your world.

    The thing is, that kind of manipulation never solves the underlying problem: your own anxieties, fears, low self-esteem, or whatever. If you use magick to work on *those* things, the desire to harm others drops away. It’s sad when people live in a fortress of fear. With wisdom, one can see that most things that “threaten” us are really not important. Disengaging from the “game” of one-up-manship with other people is very liberating. In other words, heal yourself, too, by doing active practices to address your own weaknesses.

    That said, of course there are times when real danger threatens. Protective work is always helpful and doesn’t need to include harming anyone to be effective.


  2. f3n1x_hvn732 says:

    In fact it is an ancient problem. The ancients resolved it not training others until they were sure it was safe to train them. But now in the information eon, can’t do it. You could program a “code” in your software like a security seal that cancel the operation when it does harm (or lethal harm). When the person is advanced enough to reprogram it, the chances are that he is already enlighten.

    • I agree with everything until the last sentence. Which relates to what Ona is talking about: If the person is just after power, they’ll probably never explore the enlightenment side of magick.

      I like the idea of programming safeguards, though. It wouldn’t cover everything, since a lot of direct magick is learning to cause change without using ethereal software, but it’s better than nothing.

  3. Kol Drake says:

    Personal integrity / self discipline is a major part of the Introduction into Hermetics by Franz Bardon. Working on physical, mental and emotional balance before messing with the ‘fun stuff’. Guess this means no more inducing girls to squirminess during church services?

  4. michael says:

    I agree that you can’t teach one without teaching the other. How does one learn how to survive a fight? The same skills that are taught to defend one’s self are the same exact skills that can be used to attack someone.

    The same technique you taught me for my neck should also be able to induce discomfort in someone else.

  5. Gizmottooo says:

    Unfortunately there are mages and witches who capitalize on the fear and anger of others. I do know that within certain cultures, especially the Hispanic community, resorting to magick to seek revenge or to wallow in one’s pride is a huge issue and is rather sad to say the least. As a kid my first encounter with magick concerned my mother and her sister who decided to pull some dark voodoo stuff on my mom. Fortunately the local church new a witch doctor of sorts who was able to reverse what it was that had happened. It is a shame when there are people who are willing to sell death essence for material gain.

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