Material law, ethereal crime

[Matuskara]

Curses are understood beyond the moral duality between good or bad.

There's no doubt that a death curse or any lesser harmful effect (broken limbs, infertility, eternal back-pain) will be read as evil unless seen through lens of justice, which tend to get tangled up in personal values and cross roots with some shape of Lex Talionis (they hurt me so it's justified hurting back)

I don't think anyone here condones acts of violence in any way like cutting fingers to pay money debts and neither do I

The discussion I wanted to bring is why in our occult spaces is more widely acceptable to discuss curses and harmful intentions than most other places on the web or out of it

Going straight to the point, murdering the president of a given state is bad, wishing their death on social media could possibly be seen as crime/threat, can an alleged psychic attack serve as reason to investigate and arrest someone?

Say you announce publicly today that you will end the astral life of a ruler across the globe, and tomorrow they don't wake up, no physical phenomena link you to that person and it is for all intents untraceable, except that you posted about it

The death could even have other causes but you posted the day before that you were going to do it spiritually. Could this be considered a crime?

TLDR is discussing a lethal psychic attack targeted at a given person the same for the purposes of law as planning attempted murder?

I don't think the law covers for regular people acusing someone of psychic terrorism, but still, the scales are not tipped in equal balance when there are figures of power on one side

Just wanted to bring this up for discussion to hear what y'all think

 

[Digiquo]

There is precedent for modern institutions/governments to exercise legal repurcussions for spiritual wrongs; ie, it is illegal for the Dami Lama to reincarnate outside of Tibet according to Chinese law. But what you're asking is a little less cosmic scale and has more personal consequences (it wouldn't be the infant Dalai Lama suffering by that law, but those who claim him to be him).
I don't know if some less civilized places still adhere to any such legal practices (some old African kingdoms used to make it a death sentence to utter the king's name or touch his person or take anything that used to belong to him, even leftover food, for the risk it falls into the hands of sorcerors who might use it to harm him, or considered it to taint his divine spirit), but it would be almost unthinkable for a modern nation to entertain the notion of punishing individuals for perceived attempts to inflict harm via magical means. The law, especially in America, presumes innocence until proven guilty without a doubt. How would you suppose a lawyer prove that any one particular ritual was the undoing or cause of harm of a particular other person of not, over potentially many other rituals that may or may not have been performed in a similar time frame?
All of this would require magic to be recognized legally in a court of law as a real force of benefcince and malevolence, and that would force the scientific world to also accept it as factual, which will literally never happen.

 

[diana_i_gusarova]

Someone who can kill with sorcery does not threaten. He just kills. And, of course, he doesn't write about it on social media. Just like a professional killer using a sniper rifle doesn't write about his actions.

 

[HoldAll]

There have been several threads about the wrongs and rights of curses here, and some have even called for banning ethics discussions in the LHP section because as soon as somebody here asks about how to curse somebody here, i.e. a simple 'how-to' question, the thread will be flooded with posts like "Don't do it!", "Consider the karmic consequences!", etc. I won't report you for posting in the wrong section but I don't think LHPers give a shit about the Threefold Law.

In my mind, the ethics of cursing are a tedious subject. People will start off with a high-minded principle, then allow for various exceptions that seem reasonable to them, and as soon as they're personally affected, it's another matter entirely again and a case of "I'm not a vindictive person but he had it coming to him!" People do what they're gonna do. In the real world, we've gone from the biblical "Thou shalt not kill!" to the Geneva Convention which is basically about how to kill one another on a mass scale while still remaining fair about it, by and large - astounding when you think about it. Just wars? The legitimacy of tyrannicide? Pre-emptive self-defence? Exceptions, exceptions, exceptions.

In my mind, the qualification "… except when it's justified" invalidates any ethical ideal, and what you're left with is pure pragmatism - I'm not LHP myself but assume that's the position prevalent in this subforum and a lot more honest, in my opinion.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

There is no way such a thing could be enforced under the rule of law. The law requires proof and one of the central things about magic is that there is no proof of that kind (or disproof for that matter )

 

[Matuskara]

There have been several threads about the wrongs and rights of curses here, and some have even called for banning ethics discussions in the LHP section because as soon as somebody here asks about how to curse somebody here, i.e. a simple 'how-to' question, the thread will be flooded with posts like "Don't do it!", "Consider the karmic consequences!", etc. I won't report you for posting in the wrong section but I don't think LHPers give a shit about the Threefold Law.

In my mind, the ethics of cursing are a tedious subject. People will start off with a high-minded principle, then allow for various exceptions that seem reasonable to them, and as soon as they're personally affected, it's another matter entirely again and a case of "I'm not a vindictive person but he had it coming to him!" People do what they're gonna do. In the real world, we've gone from the biblical "Thou shalt not kill!" to the Geneva Convention which is basically about how to kill one another on a mass scale while still remaining fair about it, by and large - astounding when you think about it. Just wars? The legitimacy of tyrannicide? Pre-emptive self-defence? Exceptions, exceptions, exceptions.

In my mind, the qualification "… except when it's justified" invalidates any ethical ideal, and what you're left with is pure pragmatism - I'm not LHP myself but assume that's the position prevalent in this subforum and a lot more honest, in my opinion.

I may have lacked clarity in my posting if it reads like ethical discussion and i'm sorry for it, I think the part in the middle where Im curious about social acceptance of debating curses may look like it, but the post is more about practical consequences with country laws than karmic ones

I agree with you that LHP practioners don't care about three fold law, i started my post with "curses are beyond moral of right or wrong" to avoid this issue because one knows that death rituals would be considered "evil" and still do them anyway, no issues here

My intention was to highlight that scenario where one talks about it and gets prosecuted w physical jail by claiming they attempted psychic assassination of say, a president

I too am not concerned about justifying it with exceptions, just worrying about what I share online from my experiences <3

Tyvm for the insight and response still, this reply is just to clarify that we are in the same page and I found this section of LHP the most appropriate to discuss remote termination

 

[HoldAll]

On second thoughts, I realise now that your post was more about mundane law and less about ethics. Still, these are theoretical questions that are only ever relevant if you're writing a supernatural detective novel and don't really belong in this subforum.

One of the basic principles of Roman law was "Nullum crimen sine lege" - no punishment without law, which means there'd have to be applicable legislation first before murder or injury by magic could be considered a crime, and I don't see the UK bringing back the Witchcraft Act of 1735 in a hurry, for example. You'd have to rewrite the entire rules of evidence, redefine what counts as proof (e.g. for a causal relationship between the crime and its perpetrator), lay down what counts as magic/witchcraft and what it can do, from arson to illness to stock market manipulation, etc. Lots of entertaining ideas for creating fiction but again, the subject is moot.

Let's face it, we're operating in a lawless realm. You could call all (results-oriented) magic an unfair way to get ahead. It's the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will, however, without having the proper real-life authority or means to effect said change, which is why magic has sometimes been reframed as guerilla action or as a way of fighting social injustice. In the case of baneful erotic love magic or partner retrieval curses spells… here we are in the ethics country again, and people will do the most outrageous things, mundane or magical, if they believe they're in the right or entitled - all without committing a single crime, of course.

 

[diana_i_gusarova]

In Petrograd, after the Bolshevik Revolution, a group of occultists tried to hold a black mass in order to kill Lenin and Trotsky. Someone reported them to the authorities. The CHEKA (Soviet secret police) arrived and shot everyone on the spot. This is a real historical fact.