How Not To Do Magic, Further Revisited

[ecosophia]

In the debate in this journal a few days back about the public working against Donald Trump, a central point of disagreement had to do with the meaning of symbols. One of my four criticisms of the working focused on the incoherent symbolism of the ritual.  In response, the designer of the ritual, Michael Hughes, insisted that the symbol I’d discussed meant what he wants it to mean, not what the last few centuries of magical tradition says it means. Those of my readers who know their way around the debates between traditional occultists and the current crop of avant-garde postmodern mages know that dispute well enough to sing all the verses in the shower, and it didn’t get any closer to resolution this time than it ever does.

Fortunately there’s a convenient way of checking such claims. Magic is justified not by faith but by works; in less gnomic language, if you want to know whether your philosophy of magic makes sense, pay attention to the results. The jury’s still out on the working against Trump—he’s still in office, and the various media meltdowns directed at him don’t seem to be doing all that much to hinder his ability to advance his agenda, but the participants can still insist that eventually the working will show some sign or other of achieving its purpose.

As it happens, though, Hughes also launched a similar public working intended to slap a curse on the NRA. Those of my readers who want to read the complete spell can find it here.  The short form is that he had people take dollar bills, daub them with red ink to represent blood, recite a verbose and angry malefic incantation over them, and mail them to the NRA.  In other words, the working sent money to the NRA, having helpfully charged the money with magical force and painted it bright red, the symbolic color of life, strength, and vitality.

The results were exactly what traditional occult philosophy would predict. In the month after Hughes launched this working, the NRA’s fundraising arm raked in a record amount of money, mostly from small donors. Nice work, folks.

There are two lessons I’d encourage my readers to draw from this. The first is that magic works; the second is that if you don’t know what you’re doing, it doesn’t necessarily work the way you want it to. The reason traditional occultists rely on tables of correspondences is that it keeps embarrassing things like this from happening.  After all, it doesn’t matter a rat’s handbag what you think a symbol means, if the powers you’re invoking have their own ideas on the subject—which, as it happens, they do.

Oh, and by the way, it’s not just occultists of my particular tradition and cultural background who recognize red as a magical symbol of life, strength, and vitality. In Taoist magic, you use red to invoke yang, the solar, vital, and expansive energy; in traditional Southern conjure, you use red things for luck, health, vitality, and sexual potency, not for cursing; in the traditions of the First Nations of the maritime Pacific Northwest, the red tamanous are the healing spirits. I could go on. Magic is not whatever you want it to be, and symbols don’t mean whatever you want them to mean—as the outcome of this working demonstrates. 

Comments

Enchanting money brings more money

[(Anonymous)]

The Arabian magic tradition have spells involving paper money. You write magic squares and Quranic verses on it with red ink (preferably made of saffron) and then consecrate it. The purpose, of course, is to draw more money.

(neetwizard)

Re: Enchanting money brings more money

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this! I know next to nothing about Arabian magic -- just the portions of it that found their way into the Latin version of the Ghayat al-Hakim, which I helped translate into English a few years back -- but that doesn't surprise me at all. There's a traditional Southern conjure spell that uses symbols inscribed on dollar bills to draw more money; given the very diverse roots of conjure, it's just possible that this is a distant descendant of the Arabian working you've described.

Re: Enchanting money brings more money

[robertmathiesen]

Islam came to North America as the religion of a good number of African slaves, probably as early as the early 1600s. If I remember correctly, there is archaeological evidence for Islamic practices from slave-quarters sites as early as the 1700s. Like many things the slaves did, it would have been done out of the sight and hearing of the English-speaking slave-masters.

So almost certainly Arabian magic had a significant impact on Southern conjure, though no one seems to have studied it yet. This may prove to be a huge topic for future scholars of the history of magic to look into.

The use of paper money in British North America goes back to before there was a United States, so one might expect its early use in Southern conjure, too.

Re: Enchanting money brings more money

[ecosophia]

Fascinating. I'm not at all surprised to hear that Islam came over here with the slaves, but I didn't happen to know that. You're right, of course, that this opens up a whole gallimaufry of additional lines of inquiry into the roots of American folk magic...

Re: Enchanting money brings more money

[smwils1]

Robert,
excuse my ignorance, but I thought most of sub-Saharan Africa was animist/polytheist before colonization?

[auntlili]

This is a fascinating discussion, even to an outsider. Red is about the most auspicious color there is in Tibetan Buddhism. In fact, if you take the Kalachakra initiation, you end up with a slim skein of red threads around your wrist. Having done this, I had random Jewish people asking me whether I practiced Kabbalah, because in that religion a red string around the wrist is thought to ward off evil. So red seems to be auspicious across many cultures. I think what this young man is practicing is actually theater. The way, way off Broadway variety. You've offered some really sensible and sound advice here and Michael, if you're reading, there's a reason elders are important in every spiritual tradition. It's because they've had actual experience over time and can stop you from making painful mistakes if you will let them.

[ecosophia]

Many thanks for this -- I didn't know that about the symbolism of red in Tibetan Buddhism. It makes perfect sense, of course. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

What sort of blowback will this have? It seems like it should get the casters more money, but it's far from clear that is the case to me, since it also seems like a curse. Of course, the curse part doesn't get to the NRA, but I don't think that means it's not a factor.

Will J

[ecosophia]

I don't think it'll get the casters more money; if you want to do a spell to get the money you spend to bring more money back to you, you need to use specific symbols that instantiate that intention. Just making the money red won't do that; rather, it makes sure that the money carries a blessing with it. (In East Asian cultures, gifts of money on auspicious occasions are traditionally put in red envelopes for exactly this reason.)

The other half of the working -- the black candle rolled in graveyard dirt and the malefic incantation -- is a different matter. (The Psalm is off to one side; it's been my repeated experience that magic using the Psalms works extremely well if you're a believing Jew or Christian, and not at all if you don't have a relationship with the god of those faiths.) The two halves of the working are sufficiently well separated in symbolism that it's basically two different workings, one to bless the NRA, the other to curse it.

Since the blessing is accidental but the curse is deliberate and (as per the instructions in the spell) done with as much emotion as possible, the curse is the one that's going to have the stronger effect; as a result, malefic energies of the sort these people are trying to throw at the NRA will manifest in their own lives. I don't imagine that's going to be pleasant for them to live through.

And this, of course, is why traditional occult schools put so much emphasis on teaching students that malefic workings are a really, really bad idea. Since every magical energy you call up passes through you on the way to the target, malefic workings are a really good way to mess up your life. Still, people who want an outlet for their rage generally won't listen to that.

[ecosophia]

I should have said, for clarity's sake: the curse will have the stronger effect on the person who does the working. Pretty clearly the blessing is having the more robust effect on the NRA.

[(Anonymous)]

It's also occurred to me, reading through this, that it won't be limited to effecting guns. "May they melt your murderous machines" at first would appear to limit it, but "machines" refers to lots of things, and given how much death is related to cars, to use one example, this may start showing up in very odd places.

It also reads a bit like a retributive justice spell, but it's not clear to me that it is. If it is though, the people casting the spell are probably in for a world of hurt, based on what I understand happens with those.

Will J

[(Anonymous)]

I hope that Mr. Hughes realized the letters might be regarded as threatening and fingerprints piulled off the envelopes.

[ecosophia]

True enough. It astonishes me that these people can insist at the top of their lungs that the current administration is fascist, and then turn around and do things that, if they really did live in a fascist state, would inevitably get them hauled away at three in the morning by uniformed thugs and shoved into a mass grave after the application of a few bullets.

Bending towards justice

[reveretaylor]

Going back over the previous post made for a very interesting hour of reading. About halfway into it, Mr. Hughes dropped the “arc of history” quote, and that’s when I knew the debate wouldn’t make any more progress. Dr. King’s quote is beautiful and speaks to some powerful truths, but these days it’s so often used as a thought-stopper, a way of saying “the cosmos itself agrees with and will ultimately support my personal sense of justice!”

It’s difficult to have a constructive debate when the people debating can’t come to an agreement on which universe they actually inhabit.

Re: Bending towards justice

[ecosophia]

Well, yes. It's the modern version of all those shouts of "God is on our side!" that made European history so brutally absurd for so many years.

It galls me, for that matter, to hear privileged middle- and upper middle-class intelligentsia drop that quote. These are people who have more wealth than 99% of our species, who live in a degree of comfort to which the vast majority of human beings can't even aspire, and who get that by quietly playing along (despite occasional outbursts of pro forma protest) with a global corporate and imperial system that funnels a hugely disproportionate share of the world's wealth to the United States and an equally disproportionate share of US wealth to the upper 20%, to which they belong. Putting social justice bumper stickers on expensive SUVs does not cut the mustard. If the arc of history does bend toward justice, Donald Trump may be exactly what they deserve.

Re: Bending towards justice

[smwils1]

Well, that comment to me signaled that he was under the spell of the myth of Progress. Not much you can say or do for that...

The Tower

[(Anonymous)]

Would you elaborate a bit on what to *really* expect from using the symbolism of The Tower in the way Mr. Hughes suggests, assuming an otherwise competent working? You have already mentioned the card's unbinding qualities, but the imagery strikes me as quite a bit more violent than that alone.

Re: The Tower

[ecosophia]

The difficulty with the Trump binding is that it's so incoherent. You've got a long incantation that evokes an assortment of feel-good abstractions to lay various bindings on Trump and an assortment of other targets, but the symbols and actions that accompany the words don't connect to binding at all -- you invert a Tarot card and burn a picture.

If you used the Tower as a focus in a competently designed working, and you inverted it, you would be invoking the symbolic meaning of the Tower inverted -- very roughly, power clumsily and destructively applied, freedom gained only at great cost. By and large, not something you want to invoke!

[smwils1]

IDK, but the most solid message I get from those suffering from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is of a descent into total madness. I respond to them the same way I would the raving lunatic on the bus--don't make eye contact, don't attract attention, etc. Not sure the magical implications of this, but it sure seems like a single shot down into self-destruction and inability to cope.

[ecosophia]

It may be a temporary thing; we'll just have to see. If not, the cognitive dissonance could turn into a real problem for those afflicted by it.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmmm...

I've seen you write before that symbols vary from tradition to tradition. It makes sense that would be the case for some, and others are more universal, but how do you tell which is which, beyond looking at a whole lot of magical systems?

[ecosophia]

You have to look at a whole lot of magical systems. More to the point, you have to start by learning one magical system thoroughly, so that you understand how symbolic systems work, and then you learn several other systems in fair detail and read extensively in a wide variety of others.

Carl Jung had some useful things to say about this. He pointed out that no one mythology had the complete set of archetypes, nor did any mythology have the archetypes in a pure and culture-free form -- you're always looking at them through the lenses of a particular culture and tradition. That doesn't mean that the archetypes don't exist as independent realities -- it just means that every approach to them is necessarily limited and partial.

[ecosophia]

If I may add an additional note, this is why it's a good idea to pick a specific tradition of magic to start out with, preferably one that has a good track record in terms of producing sane, competent initiates. If you do this, you don't need to know how every symbol in the world relates to the realm of powers you'll be working with as a magician -- you just need to know the specific symbols and correspondences your tradition uses, and for practical magic, that's all you have to know. You can leave universal theorizing for later...

White

[(Anonymous)]

Pardon me for insulting anyone's intelligence because perhaps they already know this, but certain hues of white are associated sorrow and funerals in Japanese culture. Contrast the same shades of white being used in hospitals to imply sanitation or in Western occult rituals as the color of purity.

Re: White

[ecosophia]

While certain shades of white do appear in funeral settings, white as a whole is an auspicious color in Japanese culture -- you'll note, for example, that the Japanese national flag is a red sun disk on white. White is worn at weddings as well as funerals, and "White Day," which is March 14, is the day that men give gifts to women (in Japan, women give gifts to men on Valentine's Day). You can find a helpful overview of Japanese color interpretations here -- and it's interesting to note that these bits of color symbolism match up fairly well with those in Western occultism.