Petty Magic.

Blessings Darlings!

I'm in a lot of Pagan groups on FaceBook.  In some of them, I even use my real name!  The groups are where I get much of the inspiration for the Pagan posts on this blog.  (Stop the pearl clutching - I don't air individual's issues/private stuff - I note general trends.)

Having joined a few new-to-me groups, I'm seeing a lot of folks spending a LOT of their time on petty curses/hexes/etc.  That is - cursing/hexing folks for doing little 'wrongs' to the person doing the hex.  And doing hexes/curses rather than, ya know, putting up shields and wards and protecting themselves from all sorts of shit, large and small. 

I admit that no one has 'stole my boyfriend' since I was 16.  Wait - okay, when I was 20 a guy dropped me for another girl, but I didn't blame HER then, either.  He did it.  I didn't do any magic to get him back because even at that tender age I figured that I didn't want to keep a cheater.  At any rate - that was 40 years ago.  So I've not had to deal with those emotions and such in ages.  But ... just maybe there are reasons that your relationship didn't work for both of you.  Maybe you need to solve those things in your life before you CAN have a long-lasting relationship.  BTW, even without any magical intervention on my part - I'm pretty sure that my ex-BF married her and they divorced some years later.  So maybe he never worked on HIS part of the reasons, Fern notes smugly, looking at her 38+ years of marriage.

Yes - that line was petty.  Petty CAN BE entertaining.  Don't get me wrong, I'm ALL in favor of doing magic for 'petty' things - petty things that make your life better/easier.  Finding parking spaces is a good example, where a shot of focused energy will save at 5 - 10 minutes of your time.  Petty?  Yup - it's very far from a life-or-death situation.  Improves your life?  Yup!



IMO, most of us got into magic for petty reasons.  My first ''big" spell was a love spell, done at age 12 or 13.  I was charging rings to deliver a dose of  'fuck you' a year or two before that.  Petty can provide motivation to learn magic. 



But petty reactionary magic - 'someone did something I didn't like and I'm butthurt and need a curse so I get get them back' - isn't either learning how magic works (it's just following a recipe, which isn't bad, but it's not 'learning magic') or putting yourself in a position where others can't magically harm you.  And if you keep ending up with the same issue that you want to curse folks over - you really need to solve the issue in your life that makes you keep putting yourself IN that position. 

It's way harder to solve issues in your life, and way harder to learn to do magic other than canned spells from others, than it is to do reactionary magic when you're butthurt.  The pay off, of course, includes that you don't end up getting butthurt all the damn time.  That might not be an appealing pay off if you want to play victim all the time, or are looking to be rescued.  If you want to play those roles, that's fine - but you might consider saving it for sex play instead of as a life style choice. 



Thus Spake Fern.

The Wiccan Rede

Blessings Darlings!

It's time.  I can't put off looking at "An it harm none, do as ye will".

Let's start with this:  it's 8 words.  EIGHT  E*I*G*H*T .  Shortening it IN ANY WAY changes it completely.  It's meaning is not 'harm none' any more than it is 'Harm' or 'an it harm, do as ye will".  It has to be taken as a whole, or at the VERY least leave the clauses intact and see how the clauses interact.  You know that - you're a magic user, right?  You know that the number of the words matters.  8 is the number of magic.  And eight is the goal of the initiate, having gone through the seven stages.  Numbers matter as much as words do.

Let's move on to -  it's Wiccan.  It's not 'universal' in any way.  
Let's move on to - its "Rede".  Rede does not mean "law".  It means advice. 

Now then, let's get to the meat of the matter, and look at the first part of the saying, "An it harm none".  First, and most important, is that it only addresses acts that harm no one.  It doesn't say anything about acts that DO do any harm. Just like when we discussed that 'my worship is in the heart that rejoices' is just addressing ONE thing, ONE place that Her worship is but does not rule out other place - "An it harm none" is only addressing ONE category of results.  It's not pretending to talk about acts with other results.  And, clearly, the second part of the phrase is permissive "do as ye will".  So in the case of acts that don't harm folks - if you wanna, then it's ADVICE is that you can go right ahead if you choose to.  It is permissive.

But what about acts that DO cause harm?  Again - THE WICCAN REDE DOES NOT ADDRESS THEM AT ALL.  It has no 'blanket advice' for you about acts that harm.  You are going to have to look at the individual situation and decide what you are going to do/not do.  And you're going to have to take responsibility for the action/inaction.  You're not going to be able to blame/credit your choice to advice coming from outside of yourself.  

I supposed that I should say a few words on 'harm'.  Okay.   "While actual harm is not limited to the physical, being fucking butthurt is not harm."

Let me assure you that I did want to write a whole lot more about that.  But ain't no one wants to hear me whine about other people being butthurt.  Let's just pass them the lube and tell them to ... well, maybe SIT DOWN and shut up might be rude ...

Frondly, Fern