One idea that I personally hold sacred is the idea that our souls constantly work within us to find balance. This balance is in our actions, our thoughts and our spiritual needs. We as magicians owe it to ourselves to consistently better ourselves through whatever magical ethics we hold dear. I am also a firm believer that no code of ethics fits everyone and that part of one's life work as a magician is to find out what our personal code entails and to follow THAT rigidly, not the preconceived codes of others, such as the Threefold Law used by Wiccans. If that fits within your code of ethics, then by all means use it. However, for myself at least, due to my past, I find it does not fit into my belief system.

First, more on that theory of duality. The Yin and yang symbol to me best describes each of our souls. We should be a balance of light and dark, masculine and feminine. However, many of the prevalent schools of thought do not hold with this at all. They emphasize the light aspect only, either trying to whitewash, dumb down or make light of the dark. The more you ignore the dark, or the less publicly palatable side of yourself, in my opinion, the more it leaks out around the corners to make itself known.

Examples of that are found constantly in popular culture. The Evangelist Christian minister who constantly preaches peace and love while spending the money he gains on his own fancy cars and house. The police officer with the perfect record and absolute respect at his job who beats his girlfriend. The vegetarian or vegan who adheres strictly to their dietary demands, but secretly has a fetish for leather. The respected politician who stridently declares his opposition to homosexuality and is then caught in bed with a 16 year old boy. The two star Air Force general who goes to gay clubs on weekends to deal drugs and consume them.

To me, these are people who have tried to totally emphasize their “light” or publicly acceptable job and utterly ignore their primal side. I'm not saying by any means that we should all go out and take out our less acceptable urges in their entirety, but if we ignore them they will not go away. They will act much like a cut that has dirt in it and is ignored. Eventually they will fill with infected fluid and either burst (metaphorically what happens when the above individuals are caught at whatever their secret vice may be) or grow so infected that the infection reaches our brains.

Each of us needs to find an outlet for our primal urges, rather than hiding and denying them. To try to deny them is like trying to separate yourself from your shadow. It's ineffective and a futile effort. Instead we need to find acceptable ways to indulge our dark side as well as our light, or in some people the other way around. Just as the above examples exist, so too are their examples of people who are more dark than light, but still need to express their light side. Otherwise it too will find a way to sneak around the edges and make itself known, probably at awkward times.

First off, we have the assertion that all magicians follow the Wiccan Rede and the Threefold Law. That's obviously incorrect if you happen to be a member of any of the Santeria, Palo, Vodoun or related faiths. Several versions of Paganism do not follow these rules either. That's why it's called the WICCAN rede, not the MAGICIAN'S rede! The Threefold law is also followed by some Pagans, and to my knowledge, most Wiccans as a general rule. Wiccans are not the only magicians out there, and not all magical and religious systems share Wiccan beliefs and values, nor are these Wiccan beliefs and values innately superior to those of other traditions and faiths. Nor should any writer attempt (and there is a huge tendency to do so among a good percentage of writers) to graft these ethics onto all magics or force them down the throat and up the ass of every reader who wanders by. Not all of us want the beliefs of others proctologically and orally inserted every time we read a book about a set of beliefs that may differ from our own! This just reminds me of a consistent assertion by Scott Cunningham that Wiccans do not prosthetalyze or force their beliefs on others. However at least a percentage of Wiccan author tend to do just that, by writing books about magic and addressing only their own systems and the ethics they personally hold dear.

It seems to me that a lot of modern magicians are privileged individuals. They have enough money, enough food, shelter, water, clothing, cars and plenty to spend on herbs, wands, stones and spell components. I too am in that situation, and I thank the Gods for it daily, for I have had in the past to do without food, without clean or new clothing, without shelter and without water from a tap. Living from hand to mouth changes your perspectives a bit. It makes you realize how much we all take for granted. Its fine, well and good to have ethics like “no manipulative magic” when you can afford to do without it.

However, not all of us have always had that luxury. Not all of us live in a happy, perfect world where the law is just, the system works for us rather than against us, and we have enough money or food for everyone to walk around with shiny smiles on their faces. In reality, we have corrupt, inattentive and sadistic civil servants, and honest ones are perceived by many to be the exception rather than the rule. I've been homeless and had to beg at shelters for food and showers or steal or hunt my food and clothing (hooray for dumpster diving). During those times, I have no shame in admitting that I used magic to turn watchful eyes away from me, heal people that those in a perfect world might call criminals, or find shelter for prices I could afford rather than what some people might charge me. I acted as ethically as I could, but hand-wringing over what celestial or Divine judges might frown upon means a lot less when you haven't eaten in a day, it's below 20 degrees out and you are sleeping in a lean-to in the snow. Similarly, if you work in a nightclub where people will kill you over illegal drugs, or will kill your patrons with tainted illegal drugs, I consider a "Don't remember my face if I bust you and destroy your cocaine" spell to not be such a huge Karmic burden. To me, allowing someone to peddle cyanide laced Ketamine without interfering, even if such interference may bring harm to the drug dealer is the lesser of two evils.

Consider Vodoun and Santeria, that evolved among slaves in Haiti and surrounding areas. They had no legal recourse as slaves, considered property instead of people. They evolved a magical system where the responsibility for your actions was your own, and you decided what you would and would not do magically. Animal sacrifice and what we would call harmful magic is acceptable under certain circumstances, as is manipulative magic. This developed alongside a court system that chose the rich over the poor, near where the remnants of the Maya were being enslaved to work on rubber plantations. How does any self righteous writer that the people in these situations do not have the right to fight back for their dignity, their honor, their family and their freedom with one of the few avenues left to them, magic and religion?

Saying that people in poverty or need should simply use white light and prayers sounds an awful lot to me like the Christian concept of turning the other cheek. I refuse to do that, having been a victim of abuse, and having been a security guard in a place where doing that would have landed me in the hospital.

I'm not saying I approve of or would be willing to do death spells or harmful or manipulative magics regularly, but not everyone lives in perfect circumstances. Life is full of difficult choices, and it's rarely absolute good versus absolute evil. Usually it's closer to choosing the lesser of two evils, or the action that does the greatest good for the greatest number. I learned this training as an EMT when I was told that even if we had a patient who might be saved by CPR in a mass casualty incident, we have to let that person die in order to save perhaps two or ten other, more salvageable people. I'm not saying magic is like that, but it's also not black or white, yes or no, good or evil. To say that it is is to devalue the experiences of those who don't live in a fair world where everything is hunky-dory and all those around us are fair and ethical.

To me it's insulting to insinuate that a person who is intelligent enough to comprehend a book on magic is not intelligent enough to recognize what magic should be used when, or to be able to create, comprehend and abide by their own personal code of ethics, rather than having others' beliefs about what should and should not be done taught to them as the only way of doing things. Opinions and personal beliefs on what you think is right and wrong has little to no place in a teaching situation, save as one of many examples that the student may consider and learn from to create their own belief system.

Despite what Wiccan authors such as the late Scott Cunningham, Amber K, Cassandra Eason and D.J Conway personally believe about manipulative magic being unethical, theirs is only an opinion and one side of an argument,and the origin of the word “Witchcraft” referred more to harmful magic than to beneficial magic. This is still the case in several Native American Tribes, where “Witchcraft” is specifically designated as the term for magic that is baneful or harmful to others, while Shamanism tends to refer more to beneficial and socially acceptable magic. Whether Wiccans like it or not, and whether they have “reclaimed” the term of Witchcraft for their own use or not, it has very negative historical associations. In my opinion, the term “Wicca” refers to magic and spiritual beliefs based on this system, while “Witchcraft” more appropriately may be designated any type of practically oriented magic designed to get real results in the real world, whatever ethical code is used by the caster.

Let's look at charging money for magic next. Personally, on one hand I agree that charging just to do a blessing or healing is a bad idea. That energy comes from the Divine in all it's forms, and pretending you have the right to ask for money to use it's resources is a good way to get those resources annoyed with you if such sources have that prohibition as a consistent rule. However, this is NOT the case in Santeria and Vodoun. In Santeria for example, achieving the rank of priest (Asiento, Making the Saint) costs thousands of dollars in supplies and can take a decade of study and a lifetime of religious prohibitions afterwards. Santeros are very specialized and highly trained priests and magicians with a great deal of knowledge to access. Thusly, they treat their calling and life dedication the same way that a doctor for example might, by charging for the immense amount of training, time and resources their skills demand. Since I have two friends with this rank, I have seen the amount of sacrifice they put into their calling, and consider the charging of money for their efforts to only be fair.

I suppose I fall in between a Hoodoo or Santeria practitioner (who by the way won't have any clients if their magic does not produce results, as word gets around in those communities at the speed of light) and the Scott Cunningham view. Much of my magic is based around crafting magical objects that function for long periods of time. Crafting these items takes a GREAT deal of time and sometimes money, as well as skill and patience. If I am making a ritual wand, for example, I will put at least five hours of work into it. If I charge a base rate for my time of ten dollars an hour, plus money for materials, the final cost of a custom made wand to my customer will probably be around $75 to $100. There is no way in hell I'm going to do that for free for a stranger or customer out of fear that the spirits might wag their fingers at me for charging for my time. I like to think the spirits aren't dumb or impractical. Besides this, of the money I make in a year off my magical crafts, I put at least 20% of that towards supplies for items I donate to charities for auction, or that I sell and donate the proceeds of. To me this aids in maintaining the balance I spoke of earlier. I also make herbal remedies for anyone who asks, and very rarely even ask for my clients to pay me for the (sometimes expensive) herbs I put in them.


I'm only briefly going to touch on the assertion in the updated that doing magic for money does not work. If so, there would be no practical way for a Santeria priest, or a professional shaman or shamanistic practitioner who trades magic and blessings for food or other items in tribal cultures to survive, much less prosper as they often do, as everyone would realize that they were getting scammed by the magician pretty quickly. Curanderos in modern Maya society will get no business if they do not have a special type of crystal sphere that they get when they dedicate themselves to their Path, and it is said that the spirits have abandoned them if their magic, skills and healings do not produce effects. Poor communities like those of the Quiche and the Maya cannot carry the dead weight of a healer who cannot heal, and will simply stop coming to them for help.

Not all people are stupid. If you do even a little bit of reading, you will figure out pretty quickly that magic is really unlikely to make a movie star fall madly in love with you and seek you out among all their fans to shower you with adoration. It can happen, but the probability level is pretty damn remote.


It really bothers me how much of Wiccan ethics are based on the mindset of someone who lives in a happy world with enough money, food and shelter for everyone. Not all of us have always been that lucky, and I agree with Kenan Filan, who wrote that at least some of the magic in Vodoun was written for and aimed at people who had no other way to defend themselves, their families and their children than doing what we might call harmful or manipulative magic. If you have no other way to defend yourself and your family against a corrupt and unfair government or society than to use magic to work against oppressors, you do it. You don't sit there wringing your hands about Karma, especially when the deities (or Loa) not only allow for such action, but some specifically support it. Likewise, a deity who seems to our eyes to be evil may also defend against evil, and a deity of disease may defend against and heal disease. To me, magic is a tool for survival, and like any tool can be used for multiple purposes depending on one's circumstances.

One can easily say that electricity is a positive force in our lives. It runs our technology, lights and heats our houses, cooks our food and can even restart the heart of a heart attack victim. However, lightning can kill or damage property, outlets can shock us, and the same current that can restart a heart can also destroy it and kill us. How we act in accordance with our personal code and how we treat others determines how they view us. How we use magic also determines how others see us.

In “The Grandmother of Time”, Zsuanna Budapest mentions a case where a serial rapist was preying on her community. Her community of Dianic Wiccans came together to formally cast a curse on the rapist, that his own actions might betray him. Two weeks later, the rapist left evidence at the scene that eventually led to his conviction. This to me is an appropriate use of magic, where the benefits of a piece of darker magic outweighed the supposed karmic backlash. There is a saying that “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good to stand by and do nothing”. I think this is accurate in magic as well. One of the duties of a surgeon is to cut out cancers or infected tissue to keep it from polluting healthy tissue. The surgeon in question does not sit and moralize about the rights of the cancer or how it might feel pain or be offended. He or she does their job and accepts the responsibility for their actions.

I think magicians could stand to learn a lesson from these surgeons. How can we truly call ourselves ethical if we stand by and do not act when we encounter harmful forces, such as pollution (on the abstract end) or local thieves and predators (on the personal end)? If we call ourselves “good” then it is our duty to fight within the law for ethics and fairness, and magically to protect others, but only with their permission. If you are a magical worker who uses the Wiccan ethics system, remember that casting a protection or blessing on someone without their knowledge or permission is just as morally wrong (according to what I understand of that ethical code) as having a person of another faith pray for you to “see the light” and convert to their faith, or trying to force someone to fall in love with you. If you are going to abide by that code of ethics, in my opinion, you should truly abide by it.

Whatever your personal code of ethics, it should only include laws you believe in utterly. It should also leave room for you to express your “light” side if you are dark path, and your “Dark” side if you are light path. This is important for the concept of balance. If you have such a code of ethics, I believe it should be flexible in some ways and utterly rigid in others, and should evolve with you as you grow.

In several books, you find the idea of the “Four Laws of Magic”. They are usually stated as follows. The first law is “TO KNOW”. I interpret this as to constantly seek knowledge, to expand your personal wisdom base with experience and to view life as a learning experience. The second law is “TO DARE”. I see this as meaning that you must act upon what you learn, so as to be a magician instead of an armchair theorist and philosopher. The third law is “TO WILL”. I interpret this as developing your skills at willing and internal strength, and recognizing that one person's will can indeed change reality. The fourth law is “TO BE SILENT”. I have heard this interpreted in two ways. The most common is not to blab to everyone you meet about what that nifty spell you just cast was for. Magic works better if others do not consciously know what you are doing (outside your magical group if you have one, and even then it should not be discussed with outsiders) so they cannot consciously or subconsciously work against it with disbelief or by disagreeing with you. The other interpretation is that the law refers to the need to look within through the silence of meditation and the contemplation of the self in solitude. I add a fifth law, which I read in only one resource in all my studies. That final, fifth law is “TO EVOLVE”. We, in my opinion, as magicians have the responsibility to seek to better ourselves constantly and to face our own faults and try to overcome them or work to keep them from weakening us in our daily mundane or magical life.