Is there some sort of moral or ethical standard to being a magician, witch, mystic, or spiritualist?

I’m not sure if this is something all of you have experienced, but through out my time studying and researching in the occult, I’ve often found an emphasis on a sort of moral or ethical standard. This isn’t just about the morals and ethics in how you use your magick, but in how you act as a person altogether. It’s like being a magician means you’re supposed to be of greater ethical caliber than non-magicians. Not so much in a dogmatic kind of way like with Sin or Karma, but in just being aware of your overall impact on the world around you.

I feel myself having this need to be a better person. It’s like something tells me that if I can’t rise above the shallowness and pettiness that humans are prone to, I don’t deserve to be a magician. I’ve also sort of developed an interest in moral/ethical philosophy, and later on started thinking about the dimensions of human interaction. Once I started taking an interest in the Left Hand Path, my first concern was “How is this not evil? How can this be good?” Of course, it taught me that “Good and Evil” is relative. However human nature isn’t.

My occult studies, when mixed with other things, have produced tons of ethical wisdom. I wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this sort of interest? Is there a purpose?

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you have your own responsibility to your ethics. If you believe in people dying to get what you want then that’s your ethics. However, You should also be aware of the impact your magick does. It’s not just about you. It’s not about good or bad. It’s about creations in your surroundings. If it’s bad, are you willng to accept it?Even if you create enemies to have a magick fight. If not , then don’t cast. Just like spiderman comics, 'with great power come great responsibility".

I would assume that you become a better person if you are using magick properly as it open up your spirituality to improve self and those around you.

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While still being new to the Left-Hand Path, I believe the only ethical standard is one you set yourself. I see it as inherently egoistic in that the practitioner seeks to impose their will on the world, but that does not mean it cannot be used for altruistic purpose.

I feel myself becoming a “better person” in terms of my attitude and approach to life, but I don’t feel intrinsically “better” than anyone else around me.

No.

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I would not say striving to be ethical is necessary for being a magician. For example, if you approach your use of magic the same as applying the phi)sophy from The Art of War, the awareness emphasized is not necessarily for the sake of ethics. It is important because it can determine if you succeed or fail with the goal you are trying to achieve in that particular working.

Ethical philosophies are more of a personal choice.

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However badass you may be, there are things out there bigger than you, and you can piss them off in various ways by trying to be The Big Bad just for the sake of it.

Some of them protect the vulnerable, some choose not to permit another predator to begin growing, some are connected to beings who may seem weak enough to crush with ease, but who exist because they have powerful sponsors and protectors.

The more complex and powerful the being, the more complex its motives and reasons for wanting certain things, I’ve generally found.

Most people wouldn’t go to a strange country where the laws and power-structures are not fully understood, and start beating up random old ladies, or spitting in the faces of random passersby. Same thing, including just fucking with humans for no real reason, because all humans are spiritual beings in their own right, and some are very bizarre indeed on that level.

On the other hand, be kind, be merciful, and protect the innocent, and you may find you make unexpected friends, or at least allies for part of the way. :thinking:

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Let me clear some things a bit fast…
Ethics is a branch of philosophy that questions which human actions are accepted and right and which ones are inappropriate and wrong.

Dogma means judgement, decision, command and its a fundamental principle of a philosophical or religious system.

You say actually that your point of view isn’t under a dogmatic point of view. Yet, who’s to say what’s right and wrong? Who’s to say how should you behave or how shouldn’t you behave if not at least the core assumptions of a certain dogma? And, can you be really ethical without being dogmatic?

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None at all besides those few who sit on a pedestal trying to use their morals to define you. Personally my morals are selfish in a way I will do what I want as long as it benefits me, but it’s a general idea that anything can benefit me, my own happiness or happiness of a friend or a stranger, or the opposite and I use my energy work to harm another either for myself or for another. As long as it’s by my hands. Of course I wouldn’t treat someone like an npc, their feelings are still in the scope of my care to a degree.

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PS further to my point, that’s the simplest way of explaining it, because people always see a practical explanation and think it won’t apply to them, so generating a kind of superstitious dread instead works better.

Evoking an emotion works better and more quickly and comprehensively than making each decision subject to intellectual review.

It’s like with babies, you don’t tell them not to touch poop because it may have pathogens, you tell them it’s nasty or dirty. The human disgust response is a really complex hijacking of the higer intellect and emotions based on purely mechanical need to avoid certain substances. Same with rules on sexual conduct, especially in the past when infections could kill you, and infect every child born in between, causing people to be born into suffering and die from things like congenital syphilis. Easier just to tell people it was ungodly.

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Oh yeah, similiar philosophy in war. Picking a fight with either a bigger force in general or someone with an alliance with someone else who has one is generally not a good idea if you are not prepared for it, especially directly. Not to mention warfare, like more offensive magic, can be quite expensive the longer you are engaged in it. Learning to disengage can be a hard lesson to learn. It can turn into a vicious cycle.

“There is no instance of a country benefiting from prolonged warfare.”

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An author talks about following “magickal justice” i.e. maintaining a balance. Others instruct to be either like God or the Devil in order to own each respective force, or finally to sorta create a personal law which is to be respected, while even neglecting other ones.

No. Customs and mores vary dramatically across praxes and even within them between individual practitioners. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” -A. Crowley

The more one fucks around with their moral compass the more entitled power the person thinks they deserve. Entitled power meaning they will use forms of magick to entirely rewrite their whole being.

They will only spell-cast to benefit them, and half of these benefits are in exchange for the destruction of one’s life.

I don’t feel alarmed by the fact that people must allure themselves to a righteously written epiphany on the graces of life to live by and the terror to not create — humans are far too kaleidoscopic and we’ll do what we want with what we like. People do what they want, I’m sure many have enlisted in the military just so they can have a gun and shoot people, there are many who use what they have, to get what they want — half of the world’s lives‘ wants were made by stepping on other people’s toes.

Take care :slight_smile:

Progression is SOLELY good - Regression is SOLELY bad. There is NO good in evil and no EVIL in good - here lies the only relativity between the two. Do you want to progress or regress ? Most people that choose the left hand path do so because they find that true metaphysical PROGRESSION is way too hard, funny that isn’t it. You use the idea of ‘human nature’ as any Marxist programmed person would, loosely and abstractly, as if your understanding is the only understanding or you take for granted that everyone is programmed in the same way. I ask you to clarify your statement - What do YOU mean by human nature ?

In answer to your question however - ABSOLUTELY there is…!

Regards

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If you replace “good” with beneficial and “bad” with detrimental, then perhaps. There’s a lot of epistemological mess that arises out of good and bad. It is why I do not use it.

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Agreed.

Al.

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As you progress you will!

Al.

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I do apologise, but ‘law’ in the quotation is spelt with a capital L and for a reason.

Al.

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NO mate – good is ALL that is positive – bad is ALL that is negative. so obviously good contains beneficial already. So progression is OF the good solely.

Manipulating the world around you and yourself does have a karmic pull, some feel it and back off, others don’t — depending on the impact and nature of the person does have karmic pull can feel like it weighs tons.others must realise magic is burdening sometimes