The Case For the Magickal Control of Others

When I first started out I thought controlling others was a great misuse of magick. This control can be exercised through energy pulses that stimulate human emotions. A person can send angry energy into someone and watch that person deal with anger engage in damaging behavior. If a person is feeling insecure they can package that and send the energy to another making them feel insecure. That can create similar results to sending anger. Others control peoples’ lives by determining who they are attracted to or whom they will reject. I still feel that if one continually needs to control others that there is something wrong.  At best these actions reflect that the doer feels out of control and needs to control others to compensate. At worst it shows they have no respect for the person they are attacking or the people that suffer collateral damage.

There are people that we cannot tolerate in our lives. Sometimes we feel it is acceptable to reject them using any means necessary including magick. The problem with doing that often is that ignores certain important questions: Why do we keep attracting jerks into our lives? Why do we keep accepting those that take advantage of our good nature? Why do we accept people as friends who make us feel bad? The answers to those questions always lies within. Until we change ourselves we will always attract people that bring us pain. This is why the summary use of magick is wrong regardless of our moral stance on influencing others. We harm ourselves by refusing to learn. We should evolve, do magick ,  and live our lives to the point where we surround ourselves with people we love and respect and who love and respect us in return. Doing that relieves us of the need to perform controlling magicks very often.

That said there are times when it is spiritually and ethically imperative to control an aspect of another’s behavior. This occurs when someone’s behavior draws one into conduct that denigrates one’s spiritual self or one’s mental or emotional peace.  For example, an apartment manager has a tenant that is an ex-boyfriend. She ended the relationship due his toxic belittling behavior years ago. He takes advantage of the proximity and destroys her confidence at every turn. This creates feelings of anxiety and worthlessness. To add to that she feels he may start lodging complaints and jeopardize her job. Making him go away is an imperative.

Being unable to avoid a physically dangerous person also creates a need to exercise magickal control. Such people can be complete strangers to us and still create a danger. A drug dealer moving in next door is a prime example.

While the main goal should be to focus our own behavior sometimes we fail in that. This is part of being human. In any given situation repeated failure can indicate a fixed energy pattern that cannot be interrupted. The only practical way out of this state is to destroy all the energetic connections. In real terms that means getting rid of the person. Repeated long-term failures to properly deal with someone else’s behavior in a constructive way is a sign that it is time to take away their ability to lead one down a negative path. The energy pattern is simply too fixed to allow for any other solution.

This may sound like a cop out and it may be on the short term. Think of it as backing so far off that you get the proper perspective, not only for the interpersonal problem, but for the core internal problem you have. A dangerous person is a good example of this.  A woman gets into a relationship with an abuser. He messes with her head so much that she has no self confidence anymore. This type of person uses the damage they do as a control mechanism. They are very hard to disentangle from. She does magick to get him to go away. He does. Now she has an opportunity to reevaluate what went wrong. She may learn that she is attracted to controlling and domineering men like her father but such attractions are not healthy for her. She decides that she can use a different measure of manliness. That allows her to make better choices. That isn’t a cop out but an act of courage.

Another example is a man that plays the part of rescuer. He sees woman in distress. Helps her. They have a relationship while he helps but that relationship is always missing something. Usually he is used and dumped when she becomes self-sufficient. This time she stays and he is miserable. She is very good at manipulating him and ‘forces’ him to stay in the relationship. He is so compassionate that he cannot say no. He uses magick to make her go away. That way he never had to say no to her. Once she is gone he learns the warning signs and stays away from rescue situations. Again, this is not a cop out but a learning tool.

Even if the core lesson is not solved in the long term the lesson will come around again. If the fellow above doesn’t learn he is going to become caught up in another rescue project.

You cannot -- and should not -- avoid the lesson forever. So there is little chance of not learning in the long run. Should your lesson repeat you will recognize it sooner or later. Instead of feeling helpless you will know there is an emergency way out. That self-knowledge may create a new starting point that helps one learn the core lesson without the use of magick.

Generally speaking humans have an emotional need to feel secure and safe. This is undermined without a certain level of control over some aspect of our lives. When humans do not have that control we will go to ridiculous lengths to give ourselves an illusion of control. This is trick people play on ourselves to obtain emotional peace. A wiser course is to avoid getting caught up in someone else’s coping mechanisms. The first step is releasing your need for control of pointless things. The control freak is incapable of determining what is important and what is not. If you find yourself doing a lot of control magick start asking yourself what would happen if I didn’t control this? If your answer is some nameless fear. Do not do it. If your answer is unlikely to actually occur do not do it. If your answer is so far off the hook that your best friend is flabbergasted into silence do not do it. It is time to look within. If you want to control pointless things you will be doing control magick forever. If that happens overstepping your boundaries is inevitable and you will work yourself into a trap. The long term control of others is onerous.  The second step is to exercise full control over things that truly impact you.  This is second because (until you do the first) it is very difficult to assess what really does matter. If you do get caught in the trap of other people’s illusionary control mechanisms you have to release yourself from that trap.  If you cannot do it by normal means use your control magick.

Here is an example of not getting caught in other people’s need for control:

Not too long ago I was purchasing donuts to bring to my workplace. The shop carries some cake donuts and raised that have blue icing. These are not popular as the icing tastes like a child’s candy. I ordered two dozen and told the woman to include whatever she wanted but not any of those.

I watched her watch me out of the corner of her eye. Curious as to what she was up to I turned slightly away but kept her in view. She deliberately slipped a blue donut into the box! She smiled obviously very pleased with herself and held that expression all the way through the transaction. My response was to say nothing. If someone has so little control of their life that they need to slip someone a blue donut once in a while I let them. Someone eventually ate it. Letting her have her illusion of control was a compassionate thing to do and it really does not impact me at all.

Not getting caught up in other people’s coping mechanism means not reacting to them. Sit back and watch. When you cannot do that you are saying this person is controlling something that controls you. If you react to the blue donut you are out of control. I have since labeled people that do these petty things as sufferers of Blue Donut Syndrome (BDS). It makes dealing with them easier and often more amusing.

Some behavior is not amusing. Imagine the same scenario starting with, “No nut covered donuts please. We have someone with a peanut allergy.” That is something you must to control. You simply cannot let someone jeopardize another’s health. This extends to emotional, mental, and spiritual health as well though these are harder to see than a physical danger. Be careful ‘protecting’ others because sometimes it is inappropriate. Overprotectiveness results inattempting to  control things that are not yours to control.

When someone is controlling something that puts you in any type of jeopardy they become a justifiable target of any sort of magick that will correct the problem. You can drive them off. You can curse them. You can teach them. You can redirect them.  You have every right to create a harmonious and peaceful environment for yourself. That said you should at least try to have an adult conversation before going to these lengths. You’d be amazed by how many people have no idea that they are impacting you when you think it is obvious.

Once you decide that it is time to exercise your personal sovereignty you need to keep your goal in mind. By personal sovereignty I mean that you have total authority to control your own life, to remain healthy, and be connected. The goal is not control of the person. That is the mechanism. The goal is to return to place of peace. You should therefore do magick to that end. Do not do magick that will result in a further disturbance to yourself.

I am sure there is a reader out there that is saying, But what a minute. This guy is always telling us to disturb ourselves into growing. Why the change? The reason circles back to the why we are doing this control magick in the first place, which is that someone is jeopardizing our spirit and all other attempts to grow internally have failed.  The ultimate goal is to put yourself in a healthy place. You can grow more from there but you can’t grow by continuing the original disturbance. 

There are different paths to different magicks.

One school of thought is to control the method of the magick. In the following example I controlled how the person who was my target would exit my area -- by travel. I used hot foot power and charged it with a ceremonial magick ritual of Mars. The entire spell ran “This evil person is driven from this town.” Frankly, while I did not care what happened to this person the spell implies that the person will still be alive. The target did leave town within a week. Had I said, “This person is no longer [where I didn’t want them to be],” that could have implied death. Given the location where this took place that possibility would not be out of the question. Had the person been killed it would have traumatized a lot of people. My guilt for that would have disturbed my peace a great deal more than her presence. This is true even though her being was unbearable to myself and many others. She was not involved in any form of magick so further interventions never became necessary.

This spell worked quickly because so many people were angry at the target (with very good reason). As a result of her mean-spirited behavior she had few friends to protect her and many faults for which she could be blamed. She damaged more people’s employment, careers, and mental health than anyone I have ever seen. All that damage left many avenues through which my magick could work.

Another school of thought is to conjure a spirit and let them figure out what is best. I am not sure what the technical term for this is but I call it the random curse method. Essentially it involves calling a spirit and providing a task to that spirit. “Get this person out of my life permanently without causing me to leave my usual environment and without causing death of or physical harm to anyone.” This gives the magick a wide birth. That charge also would protect the mage from being moved out of the area instead of the target.

This type of spell can work fast because the spirt has a different perspective and can see the other person’s weak point much better than you can.

Given that wide berth you have to consider various scenarios. What if the spirit drives the person crazy and she ends up being locked up long term due to mental illness? What if the person has a propensity for violence that you are unaware of and the spirit gets her to stab someone? She then gets locked up. What if a relative gets severely ill and your target flies across the country to take care of the person?

Some people would be quite upset if these things happened. Other people would see it as the secondary “victim’s” karma. You have to know yourself well enough to know how you will react to these things and word your spell accordingly.

Controlling others is sometimes necessary. Do so while being very aware of yourself and your own well-being. Always keep in mind that your peace is paramount -- otherwise you would not be doing the magick! In order to keep my peace I often curse someone and bless them. For example, may you lose ten times the amount you stole from me and get a job well-paying enough that you are never tempted to steal from me again. I do not do that all the time. Some people just need to be cursed and I am fine with that. Your standards will be different. You know what you can psychology handle. Protect yourself.

The Everything Question

Don't depend on death to liberate you from your imperfections. You are exactly the same after death as you were before. Nothing changes; you only give up the body. If you are a thief or a liar or a cheater before death, you don't become an angel merely by dying. If such were possible, then let us all go and jump in the ocean now and become angels at once! Whatever you have made of yourself thus far, so will you be hereafter. And when you reincarnate, you will bring that same nature with you. To change, you have to make the effort. This world is the place to do it. – Paramahansa Yogananda

I have made that effort for many years now. I am not saying that I have made myself into someone that will become the next great teacher. I have made some progress though. In doing so I have come up with The Everything Question so named because those answers touch upon every aspect of the theurgist’s life. Answering the question helps you refine your nature.

"What brings me closer to the divine?" was the orignal Everything Question, but it is misleading because being ‘away’ from the divine is an illusion. We are always in a state of intimacy with everything that is divine.

Perhaps a better question is this: "What helps me become aware of my closeness to the divine?"

The word divine can be nebulous. For that reason I will frame my comments with three of the eighteen definitions found on Dictionary.com.

Definition 1:

Proceeding from God or a god: divine laws;

Divine guidance

 There are divine laws*. The best examples or divine laws are those that we call physical laws. This universe was created with certain physical constants like gravity, vacuums, molecular structures, the list is endless.The fact that we may not know them or know exactly how they work does not make that less true. Gravity works whether we understand it or not.

Physical laws are a subset of divine laws. A non-physical law may be that humans have emotions. This is just part of our existence. As a species (if not always individually) humans have a spiritual/religious drive. Moses gave us a glimpse of divine laws as they relate to behavior. Jesus provided a glimpse of a law of properly applied emotion love/sacrifice. Perhaps I and many other mystics have revealed the law of that regulates the purpose of human existence. If all things perfectly serve to unfold the soul it may follow that the purpose of human existence is to evolve physical energy into the spiritual. While we may find room to argue about this or that law a body of such laws exist whether we understand them or not. Gravity works whether we understand it or not.

Under this definition “What brings me closer to the divine?” is answered with “that which helps me to learn about, understand or work within divine law”. Sometimes this is a spiritual/intellectual understanding, like my view of Perfection, Jesus’s view of Love, Buddha’s view of Awareness.  Other times it is intuition that cannot be rationalized. Perhaps Gibran’s view of thought “There is a place between right thinking and wrong thinking. I will meet you there” applies. Either way, when you follow divine law you feel no resistance

An example of this may be sympathetic magick, the idea that similar things can impact each other. A doll made to resemble a person can be symbolically imprisoned and that imprisonment will impact the person.  If you do such a thing and it works smoothly, quickly and perfectly you have done something so aligned with divine law that no other result was possible.

Frazer [The Golden Bough] broke down the idea further into two distinct parts - the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contact/Contagion. He said, “From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not”(source)

I interpret my vision of perfection as witnessing a divine law at work because what I saw was so all-encompassing, easy to understand, and immediately life changing that it could be nothing less. That law is that all things serve to unfold our souls. I therefore try to work within divine law as I understand it by living in such a way that the Perfection of the universe is obvious. For example I see the negative purely as a lesson and see the positive in the same way. This has become second nature to the point that I use the terms positive and negative/good and bad merely for ease of communication.

Sometimes in the moment I miss out on the understanding that negative and positive events are teaching moments. This is never fun and I look bad. The upside is that I am usually I am able to regain this perspective given time."

By living a life within the understanding of Perfection I live within that divine law. Even during very rough times that would have been emotionally very difficult, I have been calm and peaceful. This is because I know beyond knowing that the Perfection is doing Its work. I capitalize those words as the Perfection is holy to me.

 Definition 2:

Godlike; characteristic of or befitting a deity

Divine magnanimity

What are godlike characteristics?

Have you seen a miracle lately? Probably not. Actually you have seen them. The question is are you aware of the miracles you see? You have seen people change their lives for the better. You have seen the lazy become suddenly studious, the angry become calm, and the lonely married. Have you seen someone hit bottom and realize they cannot fall anymore? This is the divine at work. One godlike characteristic is the ability to make massive changes without any apparent effort. When the divine interferes we do not think, “Oh the gods (or God) must be tuckered out now!". Those transitions are examples of massive changes whether accomplished of the person’s own will, or the hand of the divine.

Another indication of the divine at work is when one person effortlessly instigates another to move closer to her true self.

My mentor was like that from time to time. People around him would struggle and during a conversation with him they would seize onto a phrase that meant little to him at the time but held deep meaning for them. These people would end up making serious changes in their lives. My mentor was not a god but he displayed a god-like characteristic.

People have told me that my soul and tarot readings have changed their lives. They have left my table crying tears of joy. In those moments, I displayed a god-like characteristic. I am not a god.

Humans that live their lives in ways that have huge impacts on society are also displaying a characteristic of a god. These may include individuals such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Andrew Carnegie, [which? Several prominent people, I don't automatically recognize the last name]Getty, Thomas Edison, and the like. Some people may see some of these folks as real s.o.b.s.

As humans we can display god-like characteristics and be jerks five minutes later. Gods can be gods and be jerks at the same time. Reading the Old Testament or Greek Mythology will confirm that. That which is negative to our understanding is not ungodlike. There have been some people in history that were real jerks that display godlike qualities.

Another god-like characteristic which is inherentin the definition above is  divine magnanimity. Further defined from the same source as: "generous in forging an insult or injury; free form petty resentfulness or vindictiveness. Also, proceeding from or revealing generosity or nobility of mind, character etc."

Those traits need no further elucidation.

Under this definition “What brings me closer to the divine?” is answered with “that which helps me to embody or manifest a divine trait in my daily life”.

Every time I have a moment of moment of intuitional awareness I am living within a characteristic of the divine. So what brings me closer to the divine? Any exercise that builds upon my intuition.

Definition 3:

Heavenly; celestial: the divine kingdom.

As someone that has seen the chthonic realms I would quibble with the heavenly celestial part being an all inclusive answer. You only have to be down there once before you know the term heavenly does not apply. No one would describe that bleak painful place as heavenly. The divine kingdom part is another story that conjures the ghost of a particular religion. I will use my preferred term of "the divine realm” which is everywhere.

Most would see the difference only semantically. I see the term divine kingdom as a very Abrahamic term. It implies a state of rulership. Realm may sound like kingdom to some but it has subtler meaning such as a sphere of influence in which the divine occurs. That form of "realm" is everywhere. 

The Golden Dawn has a few greats line in the Zelator (earth grade) ritual.

“The foolish and rebellious gaze upon the face of the created World, and find therein nothing but terror and obscurity. It is to them the Terror of Darkness and they are as drunken men stumbling in the Darkness.” And later “The Wise gaze upon the created world and behold there the dazzling image of the Creator.”

When you have that mystical moment and behold that dazzling image you will change. For you will know that the divine is hidden by a single molecule of the physical.

Under this definition, “What brings me closer to the divine?” is answered with “that which helps me to perceive and live within the divine realm.” Sometimes that would be disc golf. Playing three or four days a week a few years back allowed me to perceive the subtle changes that foretold the changes of the seasons. The earth and its processes became alive to my awareness.

Having just one experience in life that answers that question in any way is a success. Doing so helps us live a life that satisfies the quote above by actively and willfully working to refine our nature.

*Please forgive me for my lack of education in such philosophies. I fear my explanation is lacking here but am unsure how to communicate more clearly.