It’s interesting to me to see the different definitions folks use for white and black magick. It’s hard for me to define either, because I walk down the middle. Also, magick has always been as easy as breathing for me. Yes, there are parts that give me trouble, but for the most part magick on either side of the isle is simply a part of me. I have trouble describing it, because it is so integral to my being that I would have to describe my soul at the same time, something I’ve never been able to do.
Hi DakrVet - I think Magick which takes energy from outside of yourself is ‘black’. Anything which impinges on anothers ability to think, decide, or act, autonomously and independently is ‘black’. Conversely that which sends energy outside of ourselves to others is ‘white’. That said people act ‘darkly’ all bloody day long in the vanilla world, cutting people up in traffic, making sarcastic comments or taking the large slice of cake! But people say thats life…When it involves ritual then people get on a high moral horse I think. Same for white magick…Just because you do a good thing with ritual doesnt make us gandalf it just is what it is you know. I dont think Magick gives us a greater or lesser ability to be good or bad - just a different medium.
I’ve always felt that Black Magic means magic that is performed outside of an established cultural or religious system. That is, it’s indifferent to or divorced from “pop morality,” that very shallow kind of non-thinking that society foists on us at a young age. These things are “Good” and those things are taboo. Or, as I like to put it, “Some things are Certain Kinds of Things.” (For the last four words, drop your voice down gruff and squint menacingly.)
I realize other people like to think of Black as transgressive or eee-hee-hee-vil, but I just think of it as sorcery divorced from culture and religion.
White magic doesn’t exist. White magic is the refusal to understand that your actions have consequences you cannot predict or conceive - that you can’t arrange all the furniture in the room so that everything is up and nothing is down.
I’m more of a “what’s gonna get the job done” kind of person myself. But in regards to white magick versus black magick I like to bring up the idea of the law of extremes which states that when two opposing forces are brought to their limits they are completely indistinguishable from one another. The brightest light can blind you just as easily as the deepest darkness in other words. When looking at it this way you can start moving away from the notions of black and white and start looking at a greater rainbow of opportunity when embracing both sides knowing that they are on the same coin so to speak.
So, I guess we could say that the general consensus here is that society, relgion, prayer, ritual & ceremony, black magick, white magick, etc. are all parts of the Whole that we temporarily occupy, for a season, in our will & desire to become more than what we (currently) think we are … and eventually into taking Our Part in the Whole … is that about right? Z
Z