There are many reasons why I sometimes remain awake through the night. At times, it may be the full moon, keeping every member of the household more or less awake and restless. At other times, I simply want to spend my weekend and my night in peace, closing myself within the surrounding darkness and reflecting on the world and those who live in it.
Tonight is one of those nights when Unenkulkija stays awake through the darkest hours, thinking.
In this deepest part of the night, I thought I would write about a subject I encounter constantly: the ethics of witchcraft.
It concerns the many different ideas about what witchcraft should be, what a witch should be, and, most often, how a witch should behave both morally and ethically. Witchcraft contains an almost endless number of different paths, and I am not going to argue about which of them are good and which are bad. I will speak only of what I have found to work, and what I know does not.
The matter is this:
A witch cannot be good.
When I write that a witch cannot be good, I am speaking of the universe and the way it is structured. Many who practise witchcraft swear by the Rede or other similar codes and teachings, according to which everything you do or cast returns to you many times over.
I can tell you that this is not true. It does not work that way.
Nature does not follow binding moral rules. Neither do spirits, Gods, or animals. It has never worked that way. By binding themselves to a compulsive moral law that demands they always act rightly, no witch will ever reach the full extent of their potential or abilities.
Why?
Let us think and speak about it for a moment.
What is witchcraft?
It is the use of your own power and ability to guide the tiny grains of sand within the waves of the universe, turning them slightly toward the direction you desire. It is the blowing of small, falling snowflakes toward the place you wish them to go.
Beneath all these symbolic phrases lies a simple fact: whatever you believe witchcraft to be, you must understand that witchcraft is, and always will be, the skill and desire to alter your surroundings and the events within them on a level that does not require physical interaction or control.
The world is neither good nor evil. Your surroundings are neither good nor evil. Animals are neither good nor evil, and neither is anything happening around you.
By binding yourself to acting only for good, you will ever know only one side of the coin. You will be capable of touching only one side of the tree.
Interpreting and understanding all this confused, night-struck rambling will probably be difficult for many people, and it does not help that this is not one of the easiest matters to explain. Let us therefore use more metaphors to untangle it inside our heads.
For a witch to use the full range of their abilities and sense their surroundings completely, they must recognise and accept both the good and the evil within themselves.
Looking only toward the light will never be enough. How could you even know what light truly is if you have never looked into the darkness?
I am not saying that everyone who practises witchcraft must use it to cause harm, or that they should deliberately commit evil deeds. That would simply be stupid.
The point is that no one should create an obstacle within themselves against using witchcraft for harm any more than for good. A witch must accept that they are capable of doing evil just as they are capable of doing good, and that nothing will return to them beyond the consequences they themselves create.
By binding yourself to rules and sayings claiming that everything returns threefold, you lie to yourself and move responsibility away from your own hands.
Many witchcraft religions are praised for their moral code or rule of “threefold return,” but in the end, everyone who relies upon it is only deceiving themselves.
You should not avoid a harmful spell because you fear it may return to you. You should avoid it—or choose to perform it—while accepting the knowledge that you are the person casting it.
If the purpose of your spell is to harm someone, then you are responsible for that harm, and you must carry the responsibility for your actions.
Spells generally work with almost complete certainty, whether they are called “good” or “evil,” when you are also prepared to perform the same act physically.
If you want to hurt someone through a spell, you must be prepared to do yourself whatever you want the spell to do. If you cast a spell intended to break the arm of someone you hate, then you must be prepared to break that arm with your own hands.
Only when you admit both sides of yourself, and admit what you are capable of, will your spells work fully.
A witch will never be whole unless they recognise both the darkness and the light within themselves: the ability to commit deliberate harm as well as deliberate good, and the willingness to do either.
I know what I am capable of, both as a witch and as a human being.
When I cast a curse—sometimes one so severe that it may harm someone permanently, even leaving them disabled—I do it after consideration. I do it knowing that I may ruin the rest of their life for a long time, destroy their hopes, and hurt the people close to them.
But I also do it knowing that I would be prepared to carry out the same act physically, standing there in person.
And because of this, my spells work almost every time.
Even the unpleasant ones.