What have your experiences with baneful magick been like?

[Conrad Loreseeker]

Count me as another person who has only done it once. Not because of any bad consequences, which I never received, but because only once did I feel someone TRULY deserved it. It wasn't a slight against me, but towards a good friend.

My friend's neighbor used his own female dog in heat to lure my friend's dog onto his property and then shot it, killing it. Usually my friend kept his dog tied up whenever it was outside, so he didnt leave the dog running loose.

This emotionally wrecked my friend for a while, and I ended up feeling such anger well up inside me that I couldn't contain it. I hadn't planned on doing anything, but suddenly felt compelled to use that energy. I poured all of that hate into the creation of a servicer that I then named and sent after the neighbor and his family. I told it to harass them and give them bad luck until they made amends, and no killing.

They never made amends, but my friend found out the neighbor's kid bragged about his dad killing the dog on the bus, and immediately had several guys beat him up in response. Then a storm wrecked their property. Eventually they moved out, and I heard nothing else about them.

 

[Hund]

Aside from the Threefold Rule, which I know is mostly a Wiccan belief and not something everyone follows (I don't personally practice Wicca), I've been wondering if people have actually experienced any kind of "bad karma" or spiritual backlash from practicing baneful magick.

I obviously understand that every action has consequences in some way, but whenever I see this topic discussed online, it always seems to be one extreme or the other. It's either really dramatic stories about terrible things happening afterward, or people completely condemning baneful magick without much actual discussion.

I'm not really looking for anyone to tell me what I should believe. I'm just genuinely curious about other people's experiences. Have any of you ever felt like something came back to you after doing baneful work? Or have your experiences been more neutral, where it didn't seem like there was some automatic cosmic punishment attached to it?

I'd love to hear different perspectives. I'm still pretty new to all of this, and I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how practitioners actually view it beyond all the horror stories and warnings you see online.

I don’t think there’s necessarily going to be any backlash as long as you don’t create your own karma, and I’ve witnessed countless times both people who created their own karma and then suffered terrible consequences, and people who didn’t and experienced nothing at all.

But by “creating your own karma,” I mean something quite different here.

Say you want to hurt someone, so you deliberately draw in forces like hatred, resentment, or other forces that are inherently harmful to the individual or society. In that sense, you accomplished your goal—congratulations. But if you turn that into a habit and/or incorporate it into your identity, you eventually become consumed by hatred and resentment yourself, and that has consequences. You damage your surroundings and the connections you already have.

Personally, when I want to harm someone, I don’t even take an explicitly malicious approach. I use tricks. For example, I might work toward separating a couple, or toward making them view their own taboos more lightly and become more sexually uninhibited. Eventually, one of them cheats on the other and the relationship ends. I’ve achieved my goal, and even though the outcome is exactly what I wanted, I haven’t had to engage with a malicious force in the process. I just explotied human stupidity

 

[vulpesarcanus]

Aside from the Threefold Rule, which I know is mostly a Wiccan belief and not something everyone follows (I don't personally practice Wicca), I've been wondering if people have actually experienced any kind of "bad karma" or spiritual backlash from practicing baneful magick.

I obviously understand that every action has consequences in some way, but whenever I see this topic discussed online, it always seems to be one extreme or the other. It's either really dramatic stories about terrible things happening afterward, or people completely condemning baneful magick without much actual discussion.

I'm not really looking for anyone to tell me what I should believe. I'm just genuinely curious about other people's experiences. Have any of you ever felt like something came back to you after doing baneful work? Or have your experiences been more neutral, where it didn't seem like there was some automatic cosmic punishment attached to it?

I'd love to hear different perspectives. I'm still pretty new to all of this, and I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how practitioners actually view it beyond all the horror stories and warnings you see online.

Yeah, I've shot curses before. I've gotten people in legal trouble. Made them be irritable causing fights. Nothing crazy yet, well just one car accident. I'd say the biggest thing that I like to do is to cast spells to make it seem to the other person that they're not being affected. People can disarm curses especially occultists. But if they don't think they're being cursed, that makes it all the better for you.

 

[Nembra]

Aside from the Threefold Rule, which I know is mostly a Wiccan belief and not something everyone follows (I don't personally practice Wicca), I've been wondering if people have actually experienced any kind of "bad karma" or spiritual backlash from practicing baneful magick.

I obviously understand that every action has consequences in some way, but whenever I see this topic discussed online, it always seems to be one extreme or the other. It's either really dramatic stories about terrible things happening afterward, or people completely condemning baneful magick without much actual discussion.

I'm not really looking for anyone to tell me what I should believe. I'm just genuinely curious about other people's experiences. Have any of you ever felt like something came back to you after doing baneful work? Or have your experiences been more neutral, where it didn't seem like there was some automatic cosmic punishment attached to it?

I'd love to hear different perspectives. I'm still pretty new to all of this, and I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how practitioners actually view it beyond all the horror stories and warnings you see online.

There is spiritual (essentially the same thing as "moral") backlash from literally any act of malicious will. Baneful magic is no different in that regard, though I'd say it's sometimes an especially insidious way to hurt yourself. It's not ever easy or consistently possible to effectively curse someone, but one of the prerequisites is putting your spiritual self in the exact same position it would be if you straight-up murdered them with your own hands. In effect, even though you have physically done nothing to the person and mentally you don't feel like you have blood on your hands (especially that many curses are not deadly), in all other relevant regards by cursing someone you become a murderer.

 

[ahathoor]

I find it strange that every discussion of maleficium centers almost monomaniacally on whether there will be blowback. Like I get why Gardner came up with the whole Threefold thing, it was a pure PR operation (probably bound up with personal ethics), but he sure set a bad precedent with it.

The reason I don't hex people isn't that I think if I did, the copper-dick owl would come out and eat my soul; it's the same reason I don't punch, slap, stangle or knife people. Does that mean I'm weak, stupid or meek? Like half of "baneful magic" (lol) discussion online reads like "hey you don't want to murder people? you scared of the cops? well not getting caught is a skill issue, muggletard..."

Perpetrating violence is primarily an ethical question, not a technical one. If you think you are ethically in the right, and you want to perpetrate the violence, then the technical issue begins, like for example can you beat up your intended target, or will you end up like Eric Cartman against Wendy in that one episode...

But you know, the one thing that makes me want to retch is this... a lot of little LHP-y and eclectic "daughters of the witches they didn't burn" seem to have no issue casting magic to cause illness, pain, even death... without actually understanding that they intend to hurt, maim and kill human beings... or that harm tends to have a splash factor: if the boss who unjustly fired you dies in a car crash, someone else may die too in the same crash, or go to prison for causing a deadly crash...

The question isn't "will you get blowback", it's "would you do the same thing without magic if it was feasible"?

Post automatically merged: 49 minutes ago

and yes, I have cursed (not hexed or crossed) people and groups in flares of rage before. it sometimes even gave me pleasure when i saw things go south for them; but ultimately did i gain anything from it? usually no, i felt isolated and shaken for a while just the same