H is for Hex

Yeah, dropped the ball last week. My work contract's been extended (again!) so you can imagine how busy that means we are. I can't say much about what I'm working on, but I will say this: there's a lot of testicles on the show. Which has nothing to do with today's post, which is for the Pagan Blog Project....  

Hexing!

There may be no bigger divide in witchcraft than the topic of hexing/cursing/whatever you call it when you magically fuck someone up. It is, after all, the stuff of fairy tales and B movies. Wiccans who adhere to the Rule of Three - and therefore countless Wicca 101 books - argue against negative magic, claiming that even if you personally don't give a shit about your intended target, you should be afraid for selfish reasons because karma apparently collects interest and has a wicked boomerang effect. My sister and I, being aficionados of terrible horror movies, sometimes like to sum up this idea by screaming a quote from The Blair Witch Project 2: "Your dick will fall off in three days!"

(Why can't I find a video clip of that scene? Sometimes the internet fails me.)

I can still remember the first time we came across a book that did not paint cursing as morally akin to raping your neighbour's dog. It was Yasmine Galenorn's Embracing the Moon, published by Llewellyn in 1998. I still have the book. It was given to me by one of my god-we-are-so-the-Craft 'coven' mates after she grew out of the phase. Galenorn was the first author I read who did not identify as Wiccan, but simply as a witch, and included in her chapter on protection and purification spells were a few that tiptoed the line between "harm none" and "fuck that guy!" Namely, there were some binding spells and a mirror spell designed to reverse energy back on a person. The book says, "do not carve a specific person's name on the candle" but of course we all agreed to ignore that instruction and let one of the girls basically hex her step-sister because of course it was deserved, why wouldn't it be? Nothing ever came of it, as far as I know. Since the spell is designed to reflect the target's energy, chances are she never did anything nasty in the first place and so didn't have to worry.

It would be a few years before we ventured into hexing territory again, and I think when we did it was a variation on the mirror spell again. I do remember being out with my mother and sister, in the middle of the night, at a crossroads in no-man's land out in Abbotsford, burying the physical tokens of the spell with a big kitchen spoon due to lack of gardening tools.

I'm sure it would be a good moral story if I could tell you about the dangers of casting curses, and then go on about how I learned my lesson and now that I'm no longer in my twenties I've matured and never see the need to stoop to such a level because I'm enlightened and awesome. I certainly wouldn't ask you to picture two women strolling through East Vancouver, looking for a relatively uninhabited intersection, carrying a bottle filled with really stanky ingredients. Which had to be broken. But bounced on the first try as one of the pair isn't all that strong. I would not ask you to picture these idiots yelling, "RUN!" when the damn thing DID break, and then them fleeing the scene like teenagers, cackling maniacally.

I have no issue with people who refuse to engage in hexing. Some people prefer to fight fair, although since magic is really about swinging the odds in your favour in any given situation it's sort of unfair by definition, but whatever! You create your own reality, and if taking the high road suits you, good on ya. But for me personally? It's another tool in the bag, and one I seem to have a bit of talent for. I don't want to lecture anybody on morals, or on karma, or any of that. That shit is YOUR business. I believe we all work out our own mess and you don't need some short mouthy broad telling you that if you do something wrong the Universe is going to fucking spank you. Personally, I've never seen evidence of the whole rule of three thing, and I've not yet come across an argument against hexing that didn't seem to depend on the idea "we should be better than that." That's my take on the situation.

Now, that's not to say I think you should summon demons every time your neighbour steals your parking space. (Although that sounds hilarious...) There are people who go too far with the whole thing, and casting spells at people who are guilty of minor offenses against you implies more that you're mentally unbalanced than that you're some great magician. But this is life, and people will fuck with you. Punching them in the face is not often a good option, and that's where magic comes in. It's the esoteric sucker-punch to the balls!

'Hexing' typically refers to several different sorts of spells, and whether or not they're called a curse seems to vary depending on the moral compass of the person discussing them. Bindings, energy reversal, and love spells are all spells I have at one time or another seen listed as 'negative' magics. I define hexing pretty broadly, in that it's a spell designed to affect the target in a way they would not be likely to volunteer for. It will hurt them in some way.

Hexes vary in severity. While pure bitch rage is a great motivator, experience has taught me you should simmer down a bit before you cast a curse so that you can logically assess the situation and see if your action is appropriate or simply the desires of a drama queen. A divination system is crucial when you plan to engage in magical shin-kicking - it can alert you to your own blind spots, and warn you if you're way off base.

Even in cursing, there is such a thing as overkill. As with the rest of magic, the best results come if you can step back and form a battle plan. Specifics matter. To use an overly geeky example... on MST3K, Mike blew up Brain Guy's planet because he asked the nanites "to take care of a little problem." Not the result he was aiming for. So you sit down with your tarot cards or whatever you use, run an overview on the situation, and then plan accordingly. Do you want someone to leave a place? Hotfoot powder, perhaps. Are they spreading gossip? You could bind them, or get out the beef tongue! Which is the better route to the desired end result?

Hexing is a part of magic that is challenging simply because if you do fuck it up? You're going to notice. While I don't believe in the rule of three, I do think magical energy can have a backlash if something goes haywire. Besides that, if you over-curse someone you'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to feel bad about it if they, say, got into a car accident and broke their spine when all you wanted was for them to stop stealing your lunch from the office fridge. In an odd way, hexing is excellent for fine-tuning magic because the stakes are higher. (This is not me advocating you start cursing people just to improve your skills, however.)

The last thing I want to say on hexing is about the old, "you put the whammy on someone and you make sure they KNOW they've been hoodooed" concept. Yes, it is possible to scare the crap out of people. That's not news, although I think the chances are 50/50 that people will just laugh if you point at them and tell them you're cursing them. (Unless you're John Constantine.) The idea that all curses are simply created by the mind of the person who knows they've been cursed also leads to the odd claim that if you simply don't believe in the curse, you'll be safe. Personally, I don't go around telling people "I've put a spell on you.... and your little dog, too!" So I can't really claim to have tested the validity of that defense, although it seems pretty bullshit to me at a glance - like closing your eyes and going "I'm not listening!" as somebody approaches you with a baseball bat. But, still. Never tested it. Maybe disbelief has funky anti-magic properties, which is why science and magic rarely get along. I do know that if you don't tell the target, you can watch the results from a safe distance. So in the interest of better results, I stick to the secret method.

In conclusion, hexing is one of those dark arts that while sneered at has a long and colourful history, and is still very much employed today whether people cop to it or not. ...and your dick will fall off in THREE DAYS.