Apologies for necroing a thread; I didn't want to lose the valuable insights already posted by creating my own thread.
I appreciate what many people have already pointed out. Many have said black/white is a poor splitting, and that magic is magic. I largely agree. After all, a witch is just a priest the community doesn't like. But I still feel like there's some value to the term. The Ikhwan al-Safa and Agrippa, and hundreds of other masters, made a distinction between regular magic and sorcery/sihr/black magic. I'd like to go through a list of common answers and then provide my own.
Is a black magician marked by selfish intent? In a sense, but I think that only makes sense when you're contrasting it to white magic. What I'm curious about is what makes black magic different than magic magic? I can also see the black magician as a community figure. In my culture, they're the handyman you go to for unsanctioned miracles, which can run the gamut from curses to blessings (even if the former is more popular). A propensity for death or demons doesn't feel like it either. A Solomonic magician can consort with demons, and that's all through the power of a Christian god. Many cultures wrap up their conception of death with religion and don't see it as anything nefarious. A necromancer and an ancestor venerator largely work off the same principles, no?
There are notions of black magic being the practical brother of magic, which I like as well. Chaos Magic always felt more black magic aligned to me, because it’s a little bit more honest about the capabilities of magic. There are no gods to cosign your actions as virtuous; you gotta sleep in the bed you've made. Nor do you have a spirit court breathing down your neck and holding you to taboos, like an animist never trodding a garden. I like what Evara said about white magic working with 'a filter,' for black magicians are by definition transgressors. They're hated by the community because they are proof of power, wisdom, and pleasure existing outside the narrow cultural boundaries.
Perhaps this is our calling as black magicians, to be masters of the occult forces, as in hidden power. To come into communities--with grace, with goodwill, for the other half of a black witch's practicality is her tempting prowess--and outside of the box to help others transgress the limitations holding them back. It behooves us to learn everything--not just to increase our own power--but to show others the path to power. Perhaps the only reason black magicians are associated with death and hexes are because those are the powers the average person might overlook.
Though it doesn't help anyone to come into a space and say all you think is real is fake, come worship demons. Who's tempted by that? A black magician can see the astral mage struggle with a love spell during Venus' fall and say, hey, Saturn is aspected well right now, here are some ideas to sweeten his powers and transmute it into a way helpful for love. We're not here to make people abandon their religion if they don't want to, but to help them broaden their horizon, test the limit of their limits. Praying the Psalms over a candle sounds like a Christian mystic's rite, but it became witchcraft when a witch took the praying rosary from a girl's hand and told her a different prayer to get back her wayward lover. I think it makes sense our image of the black magician involves working with demons and dead matter (or in the case of the Ikhwan and Agrippa, use personal psychic forces and craft potions), those are largely neutral forces who won’t care how you point them, as contrasted by a constrained angel of mercy who might resist if you tell them go out there and kill.
If a magician's motto is "I will," would a black magician's be, "despite everything, I will"?
