Taking away protection from another.

This is an ethical gray area – okay, not that gray, we’re slipping a little into the dark here.

There are (rare, very rare) times when this is okay – such as dealing with a very pesky and nagging issue/person who seems to be impervious to it all. So, it’s time to chip away or take away whatever makes them teflon or turn their teflon into kryptonite because they need to fall and preferably fall away from you.

The other (read: most) times, it’s generally frowned upon and for good reason: everyone thinks they are the hero in their own story, even the villain. Sometimes, you don’t know that it’s you who are the villain in the story, not them. And given the kind of emails I generally get from people who want to dabble simply for revenge – a good chunk seems not to care if they are good or bad, someone slighted them and that someone has to pay. Again, this is why it is frowned upon in general. A lot of people, in my experience, don’t have the proper emotional management that it takes to decide if this is a viable route to go down. All they know is that they are mad and someone made them like that.

No matter what, it is always important to note that life is not always straight forward, good guys lose, bad guys die; good guys become villains, bad guys turn new pages. The roles shift in everyone back and forth. In magick, things are even less straightforward, “occult” means “hidden” for a reason. People want to protect themselves but some think “protection” means “everyone is diminished but me”. Others can believe that someone is harmful to them and really, it’s all in their head but now someone innocent is an unwitting target a la “Tell Tale Heart”. Simply because of underlying ego/self-righteousness and the fact everyone has a personal blindspot of themselves, stuff like this can go south pretty fast.

It is difficult to determine when it is time to do such spellwork. It certainly should not be considered overnight and if you’re new to magick (under two to three years at minimum), it should not even be done at all. Not even considered. I think for practiced witches, it should be in the “Last Ditch Effort” category because, again, there could be a good reason why someone is so difficult to take down. However, then there is sometimes the idea that the person simply is an actual, difficult foe that has way too much armor for the awful that they cause. Improbable but not impossible.

Though difficult to tell, it is not impossible to differentiate whether it is time to act. For one, if the wrong doing is objectively wrong and for good reasons. Not simply, “I don’t like this because it makes me personally feel bad.” Yes, you have some who prefer to play devil’s advocate but there are some clear-cut ideas of wrong doing. Such as murdering someone simply because the skin they were born in, no other reason. Even if you can back that rationale with “well, they might have done something” or “everyone tells me that these people do actually commit wrong”, “One person in this group has indeed committed wrong at one point in history. Everyone else in the world is perfect, me included” or “I have never seen a grand, positive display of this group in anything ever, therefore, I can not believe that this particular one in front of me won’t cause wrong doing”, it still is a biased perspective, not an objective perspective. To know the difference takes time and experience. And even with those two, many still make bad calls.

Either way, it’s a choice never to be taken lightly. If you want to do it, please have at least half a decade of magick under your belt and have some streak of looking at issues in a rational, not emotional, way. Make sure it is the last option of all things, mundane and magickal. Especially mundane. If you want to ask someone else to do it because you don’t have the skill – don’t. Find a different solution and don’t drag others into your problems.