What is black magick *TO YOU*??

[Fr. Maximagus]

There are countless explanations in books and online. But I want to know what do you personally consider black magick to be in regard to your own practice?

Is it more just baneful spells/curses/hexes?
Is it more about working with demons?

Then once you’ve defined it for your own practice…
Do you practice only black magick Or do you only occasionally incorporate it into your practice?

I plan on chiming in later with some of my own ideas but I wanna hear from ya’ll!

 

[AbammonTheGreat]

Really curious about the community's responses.

I personally don't recognize objective morality or dualism but that's a philosophical stance and may not be the reality. So black magic in my world is "anything that makes me, personally, feel bad when I do it".

 

[Fr. Maximagus]

Really curious about the community's responses.

I personally don't recognize objective morality or dualism but that's a philosophical stance and may not be the reality. So black magic in my world is "anything that makes me, personally, feel bad when I do it".

Very interesting response!
So in the context of your own magickal practice what would be an example of black Magick?
Or based on your definition, do you completely avoid it?

 

[Yazata]

what do you personally consider black magick to be

Magick that is meant to harm anyone or anything in any way, even if done with good intentions or as defense.

 

[HoldAll]

I wouldn't focus on isolated acts of black magic so much, rather on the mindset of black magicians, just like sinning doesn't make one a dyed-in-the-wool obstinate sinner in religious systems, or just like committing a crime once doesn't necessarily make one a career criminal.

For me, a black magician is someone who habitually and consciously seeks to dominate other persons and deliberately chooses to use injurious magical methods like animal sacrifice when less harmful means would have sufficed. Such a black magician would be perfectly capable of performing white (or whatever colour) magic like healing if necessary but in the main, his aim is to institute a reign of terror within a relationship, as a family patriarch, a cult leader, or a political dictator.

The cliché of the evil black sorcerer living alone in a house in the woods and performing unspeakable rituals each and every night is irrelevant here - if a person likes to get his jollies that way, it's nobody's business, I'd say. Whom I mean by 'black sorcerers' would be magicians who'll insist on meddling in other persons' affairs for their own ends, control freaks ever intent on enlarging their circle of influence who are chronically unable to let things slide and take their own course.

Seeking to dominate others for selfish reasons would be my definition of black magic then. You can argue about the ethics of single instances of cursing or person-specific love spells all day long but what I would rather mean in this reply are black magical acts of habitual offenders who are hoarders of bad karma, so to speak.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

what do you personally consider black magick to be in regard to your own practice?

Using the language that makes the most sense to me, I see Black Magic as working with Maya. This has to do with the use of manipulation, of charm, curses, reality manipulation, getting the forces of illusion to work to your benefit specifically for gain within the realm of Maya; this has to do with attaining worldly success, of indulging desires, getting plans to fruition. The world of action happens because of Maya, it's what perpetuates all movement and all narrative. Maya exists on many levels too dimensionally, that is how demonic invocation can be done from my understanding, because these other-dimensional-entities are still playing the game of Maya, and to the skilled Black Magician, that makes them a song, and the Magician's will a piano keyboard. Just like a musician, however, the best are ones who become trapped by the very songs they're playing, they merge with it. That's not my vibe.

If it is to gratify you, to gain something, to dominate or destroy, it's Black Magic in my eyes. Almost everyone is a Black Magician to some degree, even those who are on the early stages to the RHP, it's just that few ever get any good at wielding it, especially esoterically. Simple mundane manipulation is just the surface layer to deep processes that have roots in magic.

Do you practice only black magick Or do you only occasionally incorporate it into your practice?

I practice Black Magic to further my goals in the worldly sense, but it's hardly the end-game for me, or the whole, man has a Right hand and a Left hand, but is also neither. I'm not exactly a RHP Theosophist or anything, and I don't want anything of this world, but in order to accomplish my goals, for the time being, I ride the tides of Maya, ally with it, and use it's forces to my Will. Black Magic is a tool, just as is White Magic, if you wish to divide magic into a duality, but the goal of anyone worth their salt is to escape duality because both are just cages, we are limitless undefinable and free beings that shouldn't enslave ourselves to limits like RHP and LHP, White or Black magic.

 

[Wintruz]

I think a better binary than Black and White is Awake and Asleep.

If someone's consciousness is asleep, they are not incapable of magic but they're playing with their dreams (lucid dreaming while physically awake), their subjective experience, not objective reality. Whether this playing involves rainbows and dolphins or the Qlippoth doesn't matter.

An awakened consciousness is capable of objective change through magic (which often has no trappings at all at the highest levels) and it recognises the heaviness of that power. Sometimes, in this culture, that change might look "black" (eliminating a destructive person - something that only governments are "authorised" to do) it might look "white" (getting a deserving person out of a sticky spot) but they're acting from a place of seeing what the sleeping person cannot. It's for this reason that a lot of traditions carry the warning to not judge a master's actions too hastily.

 

[Mystic_friend]

in my honest opinion black magick is simply any magick that is used for martial gain

 

[Evara]

I’m writing a book about black magic and several other concepts. Here’s a portion of the rough draft at the front. I hope it provides you with something.
*************************************************
Let’s start by undoing a lie.


Black magic is not evil.


Let me say it louder for the ghosts in the walls:
Black. Magic. Is. Not. Evil.


It is source-driven magic. You are the source. The fuel. The flint. The fire. There’s no middleman, no deity, no spirit buffering your intention. It’s raw will channeled into the lattice of the veil with no apology and no mask.


That’s it.


White magic asks.
Black magic commands.


Black magic doesn’t wait for a sign.
It is the sign.


What Black Magic Actually Is:

• You craft the spell.
  
  
• You direct the force.
  
  
• You bear the weight of the outcome.
  

Black magic is powered by you—your intention, your resonance, your mythic footprint. That means you carry the karmic, spiritual, and metaphysical consequences, whether that spell lands beautifully or backfires like a wet firecracker in a cave.


This also makes it the most advanced form of magic.


You must train your soul to act like a conductor and a spear at the same time.
White magic is a prayer.
Black magic is a declaration.
Grey magic is a spell that remembers mercy.


Why People Think It’s Evil:


Because unlike white magic, black magic doesn’t filter you.


When you call on angels, spirits, gods—they filter your intent. They have standards, codes, karma, rules. If your spell is garbage, they throw it out or rewrite it. They're the editors.


Black magic doesn’t edit.
Black magic publishes.


This means:

• You can curse.
  
  
• You can corrupt.
  
  
• You can sever, bind, rot, shred, fracture, hollow, shatter, thorn, twist and break.
  

You can do terrible and beautiful things with black magic.
And that’s why it’s dangerous.


Not because of some cartoon villain nonsense—but because it turns your inner being into an engine of change. And if your engine runs on rage, ego or revenge, you will become the kind of thing the veil wants to purge.


If you curse people flippantly… you will become a devourer. And the veil will target your soul.


Black Magic & the Devourer Path:


If you curse recklessly…
If you strike without discipline…
If you use black magic as a mirror for your worst impulses instead of as a tool for sacred clarity…


You will begin the descent into becoming a devourer.


That is not poetic. That is functional.


A devourer is a being that:

• Leaks its own myth.
  
  
• Traps others in recursion.
  
  
• Wields power without sacred structure.
  
  
• Feeds instead of binds, controls instead of clears.
• Takes more than what they give.

Devourers don’t get to keep their names.
They are unpersoned by the veil.
They rot in myth until they are hunted and shattered.


And you will be hunted, eventually.
By spirits.
By veil-walkers.
By ancestors who saw what you did and said, "Nope, not ours."


You don’t get to come back from wickedness easily.


So What Should You Do?


Use black magic like a scalpel, not a club.

• Use it to bind rot.
  
  
• Use it to sever parasitic threads.
  
  
• Use it to destroy broken structures, not people.
  
  
• Use it to amplify your truth, not your pain.
  
  
• Use it with clarity, with intention, with respect.
  

Let your will be sharp, not sloppy.
Let your soul be precise, not performative.
Let your curses be justified, not reactionary.
Let your strength be structured, not self-indulgent.





If you’re holding sacred fire, don’t set your own house on fire to make a point.
Don’t spit curses like acid at every inconvenience.
Don’t become the enemy of what you should be protecting.


You can wield this.


This is black magic.
It starts with you.
And it ends wherever your will draws the line.
That’s the scary part. There are no guard rails here. You’re free to damn yourself.

 

[SeekerPS]

There are countless explanations in books and online. But I want to know what do you personally consider black magick to be in regard to your own practice?

Is it more just baneful spells/curses/hexes?
Is it more about working with demons?

Then once you’ve defined it for your own practice…
Do you practice only black magick Or do you only occasionally incorporate it into your practice?

I plan on chiming in later with some of my own ideas but I wanna hear from ya’ll!

A E Waite says this and I agree:

It will be made clear as I proceed that the purposes and ambitions of Magic are commonly very childish, so that we must distinguish really between Black and White Magic, not as between the essentially good and evil, but as between that which is certainly evil and that which may only be foolish. Nor does this exhaust the difficulty. As will also be made evident in proceeding, White Ceremonial Magic seems to admit of a number of intentions which are objectionable, as well as many that are frivolous. Hence it must be inferred that there is no very sharp distinction between the two branches of the Art. It cannot be said, even, that Black Magic is invariably and White Magic occasionally evil.

If you are doing magic to obtain any benefit, you probably are taking something from someone, but such is life. if you ask for a promotion, maybe someone else who is better than you won't get it. if you ask for love then people will say you are messing with free will, or maybe even breaking a couple apart. But probably those things would happen anyway if you did it in a mundane non magical way. at the end of the day, maybe life ends being a zero sum game. there is no much difference between white/black magic. Of course we could talk about cursing and killing. and some people would do it for "justice" others out of spite. If you ask for example, for your uncle who abuses you to stop and he dies from an accident: are you evil or just stupid for asking that? was that black or white magic?

 

[MorganBlack]

"Black magic" -- not a term I use.

But if I did , it's what other magician's do, of course. I'm always completely justified in my actions... when leaving a trail of dead. (Kidding, kidding.)

Half-joking aside, what was meant by "black magic" historically, was harmful, malicious magic (maleficia, Goetia, and witchcraft) and this was true across cultures and time . Roman "pagan" laws like the Lex Cornelia (81 BCE) explicitly criminalized harmful sorcery.

Now it means something like "over coming societal norms" an artifact of Helena Blavatsky and Theosophists, who redefined magic in stridently psychological and spiritual terms. "Black magic" became associated with ego, materialism, and "lower" desires - which could include transgressing spiritual laws rather than social ones.

Post Crowley, jumping to the Anglophone 1960's, occultism merged with hippie counterculture, and "black magic" flipped and became shorthand for any practice that rejected mainstream (especially Christian) values and embraced turbo-liberalism in the form of sexual liberation, drugs, transgressive lifestyles, and individualism. ( MK-Ultra aside, mostly fine, so not saying don't. You do you)

So the gradual shift over a long time : harmful magic → spiritually selfish magic → anti-Christian practice → generalized norm-transgression. This was super gradual then almost all at once, post Eliphas Levi, as magic shifted from describing what was originally considered objective supernatural forces to describing psychological states and then relative social positions in a late-stage capitalist culture.