It is no secret that I am not a fan of Trump. Nor do I believe it is a secret that after the elec­tion many groups start­ed cast­ing spells work­ing against the pres­i­dent. Some qual­i­fied as actu­al curs­es, some freez­ing his abil­i­ty to act, and some fell in between. Even my aunt and her church going friends would get togeth­er once a month to cast spells against Trump.

There have also been cas­es of peo­ple pub­licly curs­ing rapists, who in this male dom­i­nat­ed world, man­aged to get off with­out even a slap on the wrist. That received pub­lic con­dem­na­tion from Wic­can lead­ers. State­ments on the news about how true witch­es don’t use mag­ick to harm. 

All this has caused me to think about the ethics of mag­ick. Is mag­ick just anoth­er tool in our tool­box? Is refus­ing to use it when we would be more than will­ing to use mun­dane meth­ods to solve a prob­lem arro­gant? Is it basi­cal­ly say­ing that we have this spe­cial pow­er that makes us bet­ter, so to even the play­ing field we won’t use it.

If I wit­nessed some­one about to kill anoth­er per­son and I had a gun, I would use it. Is stop­ping some­body with a mun­dane tool more eth­i­cal than stop­ping them with a mag­ick­al one? Even if the non-mag­ick­al option is lethal?

I under­stand the rea­son­ing. When Wic­ca was ris­ing as a reli­gion peo­ple still had very neg­a­tive views of witch­craft. (Hells some still do.) Mak­ing it clear that caus­ing harm, or inter­fer­ing with a per­son­’s will, was taboo helped to make it more accept­able. More palat­able to the gen­er­al public.

For me, for now, I’ve decid­ed to con­sid­er mag­ick as a tool. If I would take mun­dane action, then I am com­fort­able tak­ing a com­pa­ra­ble mag­ick­al action. 

What about you? Do you have rules about how you use mag­ick? How did you decide what they are?