I don’t agree.
Nobody ever does “everything for other people” without an egoistical or egocentric motivation. It can be pretty hidden, but you always do something because you expect some kind of gain. Can be love, feeling useful, or whatever.
Even “connecting to the source”, you do it because you think it is better, for YOU.
Doing things for others and doing them for yourself are connected and they can’t be separated like black and white.
Also, light and darkness don’t have anything to do with LHP and RHP in my opinion.
Light doesn’t equal good. Darkness doesn’t mean evil, or harm.
I’m all for forgiveness and love, I don’t have any desire to harm people. But I’m walking the LHP because it is about self empowerment. I like this life, I like myself and I like this world. This world is full of love. So you might think RHP people would like it, yet they try to escape from it.
Without going into too much detail (like I was gonna), anything you do is in opposition to something else. Helping out one business means competing against another. To cure a disease, you must kill the virus. To protect someone from an attacker, you have to immobilize, or possibly kill, the attacker.
Society likes to judge magick by putting into categories of magick that helps others vs magick that can hurt or manipulate them. I think its very short sighted, and hypocritical considering the issue of gun control laws. So I like to separate magick into my own categories.
Magick that works within or for the powers that maintain order (Celestial).
Magic that works in opposition to them to create change in accordance with Will (Infernal).
Magic that balances the two out (Sylvan).
Perhaps that is the way you see it, but I disagree that all actions are necessarily selfish. I can give my coat to someone in the winter and be cold myself just because I want them to be comfortable and have no other intentions or expectations. If I had selfish intentions, maybe I’ll think something like, if I gave my coat to that person, I’d have done a good deed, I can feel better about myself from being such a good person, nyanyanya, so I do agree that the act of giving can be a very indirectly selfish act, but I don’t think it’s always the case at all. Just because someone can theoretically gain something from selfless actions doesn’t necessarily make self gain their primary motivator. Making the conscious choice to prioritize others over self makes this an outward giving force rather than an inward directed taking force.
I never said anything about light and dark being good and evil, for me it’s not different from the electric/magnetic force. The analogy is just that light gives out lights and dark absorbs.
I don’t think self empowerment and self knowledge in the LHP is contradictory to the RHP because I’m doing it myself too. All I mean is that at the end path, the LHP doesn’t desire unity with the others, and there are no limits on free will violations, like in baneful magic. That’s not evil or bad, they’re just choices.
Insofar as following your true desires feels good, and you’re following your true desire to help others, yeah sure. I think that as long as we’re talking about actions and choices, prioritizing yourself over others, or others over yourself, or both equally yields very different behavior patterns though.
All magic/energy is neutral and can be used for good or evil. Your intent is what shapes it into what it eventually becomes. The effect is what people outside the process label as LHP/RHP. To me they are artificial classifications, but can be convienient lable for some people to use to help describe to others what they do. It is similar when trying to place a label on yourself if you are Wiccan/Pagan/heathen/witch …I personally do not like labels
So to the second part of the question. You can work with any spirits/gods/goddesses you feel connected to. There are some I would not mix or contact at the same time (like Oya and Yemaya because they do not get along). I have different spiritual groups I work with. Everyone I know works with spirits from any pantheon that they feel a connection to.
I personally work with Lwa, Orisha, Mpungo, The Morrigan, Loki, Thor, the Fae…among others. Most of the spirits I work with are considered “dark” a lot of the practices and religions I practice are usually labeled LHP, but I primarily teach and share my knowledge with others. I use my spirits to help people solve practical problems. I very rarely do aggressive or offensive magic. So my intent could be labeled RHP, but I practice Vodoun, Palo, Witchcraft…which usually get the LHP lable. So you tell me. Which path do I follow LHP or RHP?
Labels are just a box people try to use to explain things. For me, I’ve never been able to describe what I do with any label. You just do you and let the spirits guide you along your path. Don’t worry if your path does not quite fit in any of the existing boxes. The spirits/gods/goddesses could care less what label you choose. If they are willing to work with you, they will. If they do not they will usually ignore you or tell you to leave them alone.
White magick is self evolution and building connection with the higher self and higher power what Crowley referred to as the holy guardian angel it’s the unification with the super consciousness and black magick is magick done for material gains. It’s sort of the difference between theurgy working with spirits/higher consciousness and thaumaturgy miracle working. Isaac Bonewits definition of magick is a series of rule of thumb techniques designed to create change in the internal or external environment.
Someone mentioned that some entities don’t get along, how do you know that? I mean I would understand that Michael and Lucifer don’t get along but that’s based on the bible. If the two entities have similar strengths then I don’t see why you couldn’t leverage both. Of course you wouldn’t want to combine two that obviously work against each other.
There is plenty of books that imply that angels don’t really like humanity because of their boss’s affection whereas Lucifer felt more in tune with what humanity wanted and tried to cater to it - despite the issues that might work against that desire.
I’ve looked into a lot of what people did to try to sell their soul to gain fame & fortune but most of that seems to be myth vs reality. On that note, we give offerings of various types attempting to encourage our chosen spirit to help us - it is almost always for yourself unless you’ve been hired to do magick for someone. That makes the whole issue even more murky.
I think I’ve figured out my path, it is my own, not LHP or RHP, just my own. I choose to combine whatever elements together to reach my goal. 100% of my initial ask is for me but most of that will be passed on to others who I want to help like my family or clients via my new abilities. Unfortunately most outside of the occult will never understand all this and continue to be afraid of what they don’t understand
I think magik is a tool. I call black magik if you use it to hurt someone and white magik if you use it to heal. However don’t think in terms of good and evil, cause it’s not evilness use magik to hurt for exemple a pedophile, think more in terms of like the duality of light and darkness. We all have in us, both, and it’s not the same as evil and good. I think demons, angels, gods, they all have a dark and a light side too. But there’s a lot of type of entities, and some, from the “lower level”, are bad, what we could call evil I guess, like obsessive spirits, parasites spirits, etc. As for demons, gods and angels I believe some would be more inclined to black magik, while others would be to white magik and others would be complet in between.
There is always confusion about this. Just like angels can be very frightening and severe, so called white magick can also go into a sort of grey area, and not be all fairy dust and rainbows. And demons, or dark gods as I prefer to call them, are not always malevolent. They are capable of doing great evil or great good. So called black magick can be used to benefit, bring prosperity, really for the same purposes as white magick, with the exception of cursing, which some white magick practitioners do sometimes anyway, even though you would be led to believe otherwise. It is a question of morals and what you are willing to do, and I think the difference, at least this is my thinking, is that black magick is what it is. There is nothing mamby pamby about it, and those who practice it wisely, know how much more of a punch it packs, and use its power accordingly. Is it selfish? It can be, but if you don’t help yourself how can you help anyone else? If you don’t learn how to curse, how can you bless? Curses are serious business, and I don’t do them unless my cause is just and as a last resort. In that case, I’m full speed ahead. But I wouldn’t know how to effectively cast a money spell if I hadn’t learned how to do that first. So what I am really trying to say is that with the black magick and white, the difference is with black magick, to curse is not taboo. It’s not sugar coated, there isn’t the pretense and restriction of the other kind. It is what it says it is, so I don’t think there really is much of a difference. Magick is magick. It’s people that are different.