Original Magic: The Rituals and Initiations of the Persian Magi - Michael M. Hughes 2018

On Binding and Hexing
Offensive and Defensive Magic

I have a very simple equation when it comes to whether or not I will use binding or hexing magic: Would I use all other available nonmagical means to stop the harmful person or activity? For example, would I use a lawsuit to stop a development threatening my drinking water? Would I call the police to get a restraining order against someone stalking my child, and would I physically attack the sicko if I saw him trying to approach her at a playground? Would I do everything in my power to protect my life, the lives of my children, and my home from a group of rage-filled bigots?

If the answer is yes, then I feel ethically justified doing binding or hexing.

It is also critical to examine how far you would go in a hex. If you wouldn’t do something by nonmagical means, don’t do it with magic. I advocate nonviolence as the most useful and practical mode of resistance, so I would never do magic that would physically harm or kill someone, like cursing someone to get cancer or to get hit by a bus, just as I wouldn’t slip a carcinogenic poison into their drink or shove them in front of a bus. I would most definitely do magic to nonviolently impede their actions from harming me or others I care about.

If, however, someone physically attacked me or the people I love, I would do whatever it takes to stop them. Full stop. Self-defense is always justified.

Magic has always been the tool of the oppressed, the downtrodden, and the persecuted. African American Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure are prime examples. They grew from enslaved people who had little agency in their daily lives and no recourse to justice. Their magic required curses, jinxing, and tying (binding) to fight injustice in their communities and to resist the oppressive slaver class. It arose from necessity.

White-light magic is fine. Some people are naturally resistant to doing anything that could be seen as harmful or negative, and they should heed their instincts. Binding and hexing make up only a very small part of my magical practice. But refusing to use magic in self-defense or in the defense of the voiceless, marginalized, and oppressed because of a law of dubious historicity seems extremely foolish to me.

Magic is a tool for healing and for defense against injustice.

Binding

Binding is the magical equivalent of a cease-and-desist order, a straitjacket, or putting a toddler into time-out. Its goal is to restrain someone from particular actions to others or to themselves. In the Hellenistic world, binding was one of the most common uses of magic, as evidenced by the abundant curse tablets (defixiones) uncovered by archaeologists. The binding spell would be written on a piece of lead, folded, then pierced with a nail or other sharp object, before being buried (often in a graveyard) or thrown into a well or pool (please do not do this, because lead poisoning is a thing). Human figures made of clay were frequently used as well, sometimes pierced with pins or nails.

If you do a binding spell, it is important to bind only the negative or harmful behaviors of your target, otherwise you are verging on more harmful magic with greater potential to generate psychic or karmic blowback. Many witches and magicians believe that malevolent magic is “sticky,” meaning it can leave unpleasant residue on the caster. Therefore, your binding should be very specific about the behaviors it targets. Let’s look at some of the language in the Trump binding spell, for example:

So that his malignant works may fail utterly

That he may do no harm

To any human soul

Nor any tree

Animal

Rock

Stream

Or sea

Note the careful language: not that his works may fail utterly, but his malignant works. If his policies turned out to be beneficial to citizens, the environment, liberty, the political system, and truth, the spell would have no effect. Aim for the same specificity in your bindings.

Just as importantly, always incorporate the ideals you are working for. Again, from the Trump binding spell:

In the name of Justice

And Liberty

And Love

And Equality

And Peace

Calling upon the highest ideals that drive your spell adds further focus and energy and serves as a safety valve to guard against any “sticky” negative residue. You are, after all, doing your magic in service to important ideals and for the greater good. Be sure to always integrate that into any binding or hexing.

Another safeguard is to add a prayer to your preferred deity or deities before and after the working. Pray that your actions manifest the highest good for all those concerned, and trust that divinity will bring the required balance and justice. Adding a cleansing salt bath, both before and after your working, is another useful tactic.

We cannot possibly know the ultimate outcomes of our actions or their potential unintended consequences. But inaction has its consequences, too. Those who fail to vote allow crooked politicians to rise to power and enact dangerous legislation. Those who failed to act as the Nazis rose to power enabled the unprecedented horrors of the Holocaust.

So we must act. The future hangs in the balance. Pray, weigh all the possibilities, and get to work.

Hexing

Because hexes can be so destructive and unpredictable, I advise using them as a last resort and only in extreme situations. I also do not hex individuals but save hexing for the most destructive, dangerous groups and organizations and only when all nonmagical means have been exhausted.

My Hex the NRA spell (page 201) came about because of the reprehensible response of the National Rifle Association (NRA) to the murder of seventeen students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018. It was a tipping point in the national dialogue on gun safety laws for a huge number of American citizens, including many of the kids who survived. Instead of accepting what had happened as another inevitable tragedy, the young adults began speaking out, condemning the NRA’s antagonism toward any and all gun safety legislation, its intensive lobbying and funding of local and national government representatives, and its embrace of extreme-right politics.

The NRA turned against the kids, denying their sincerity, questioning their maturity, calling them naive and misguided, and suggesting they were pawns of radical socialists and fanatics who wanted to repeal the Second Amendment and disarm all citizens. Encouraged by decades of the NRA’s fear- and conspiracy-mongering and aided by the sewer-dwellers of 4chan and other online propaganda mills, the young activists were tarred as “crisis actors” and the deaths of seventeen young people deemed a hoax.

I had reached my breaking point. After years of advocating for gun control and contributing to groups fighting the NRA, I swore I would do what was necessary to prevent one more drop of innocent blood from being shed in the name of gun manufacturers’ lust for profits. I wasn’t alone. Many people sensed that this was more than just another school shooting that would be mollified with the usual conservative “thoughts and prayers” before fading from public consciousness. Those like me who had finally had enough were drawing a line.

But the NRA seemed impossible to defeat, entrenched as it was in the halls of power in Washington, DC, and in statehouses across the country. For years, organizations had lobbied for improved background checks, banning of assault-styled semiautomatic rifles, and raising the age to purchase guns—only to be soundly defeated, again and again, by the NRA and the lawmakers it buys with blood money.

While thoughts and prayers do not bring back the dead or stop future massacres, hexes, I believe—especially when cast by large numbers of committed people—can drive a stake through the heart of a wicked organization. At the very least, I felt we had to try.

As previously stated, I’m averse to cursing and hexing, as I believe magic is best employed as a tool for healing and creating positive change. But I’m also averse to watching the needless slaughter of innocent children because the NRA has bought our government with its piles of industry money and spends millions to silence all opposition. Hexes and curses are a magician or witch’s last resort, when you’ve tried everything else and bad shit keeps happening.

I’m not willing to watch the NRA take one more life.

So don’t hex until you’ve exhausted all other options. But when all other options fail and the cost of failure is measured in innocent lives, don’t be afraid to do what you need to do.