Will or Won't Do

written: July 10th

2016 Grimoire Challenge Question: What do you feel comfortable doing?  What won’t you do?

Honestly, what I’m comfortable doing or not doing changes with the tides.  I know that many would call me fickle, driven by ego, someone not to be trusted.  They could name me a black witch, because in their Path, there is no room for anything but the light.

They would not be wholly wrong, but neither are they wholly right.

I embrace the Dark in life, the Night, the Predator, and the Scary.  I do not deny that.  

I will hex and curse (and am fairly good at it, in my not-so-humble opinion).  But, that is a weapon of last resort.  

But then again, I use magic rarely…as a tool of last resort, or when something needs an extra push in life.  But I always do the work.  A spell will not magickally make something happen.  The gods help those who help themselves.  

I have my own code of ethics that I follow.  Like when a portion of the Pagan community rallied together to hex Brock Turner (a rapist who was convicted by a jury of his peers, but the judge only sentenced him to SIX MONTHS because the judge worried about the “damage” it would do to the rest of his life), I did not participate.  Not because I don’t believe he was undeserving of a hex, but because I was not personally invested in the situation.  Instead, I elected to call upon Ma’at to bring righteous justice swiftly to all those who have done wrong in that situation.  Because, in my eyes, Brock is not the sole guilty party.  The judge was horribly gross in his negligence of carrying out his proper duties.  Brock’s father was guilty for publicly trying to sweep the entire thing under the rug.  All should be held accountable.  And I asked for divine protection for the victim.  I applaud her strength in seeing the entire thing through and my heart utterly shatters for the way the Law shamefully let her down.

It was interesting to see how polarized the Pagan community became over this public call for hexing.  Some were gung-ho about it.  Some were utterly appalled.  There were cries that only “real” witches know how to hex AND heal.  And cries that “real” witches NEVER hex.  That is one of the issues of neo-Paganism – there is no centralized governing body, so it really is an organic religion that evolves and moves and its followers do.

Mostly, on all of this, I say, Do what you are comfortable and compelled to do.  You will have to account for your actions and inactions before Deity (if that is your belief).  And right now, I feel my actions and MOST of my inactions are defensible.  And the ones that are not?  I will pay penance for them, as Ma’at and Sekhmet dictate.