Brock Turner, the former Stanford student convicted of raping an unconscious woman, has been all over the news lately. Angry over his sentencing that they and many others believe was too lenient, a group of pagans organized a magical ritual last week to essentially put a hex on Turner. They posted the ritual on the Internet with instructions for others to join in, and got a lot of viral exposure on a bunch of different websites.
Now here's the disappointing bit. So far, I have yet to see one of these "mass rituals" accomplish much of anything measurable. The Trump-hexers completely failed and the Bernie Sanders ritual didn't result in him winning the Democratic nomination or even the key state of California. There have also been large healing rituals for prominent occultists who have passed away over the last decade, none of which produced anything resembling a miracle.
In theory, with more people casting you should be able to get a bigger result, but for some reason that doesn't seem to bear out in practice. As the healing rituals were basically last resorts, one could argue that the targets were already too far gone for the spells to make much difference. You could perhaps make the same case with the Sanders ritual, as it was performed very late in the primary campaign. But the ritual to stop Trump was performed back in September - and now he's the Republican nominee.
So I'm not exactly sure why this would be the case. The Trump ritual was exceptionally disorganized, and the Sanders ritual was so dumbed-down that it's hard to see it functioning very well. Perhaps both massive oversimplification and lack of technical agreement between casters are both big problems that these large ritual events have difficulty overcoming. The Turner ritual seems to be better designed, and the plan is for everyone to do the same thing, both of which should improve its effectiveness.
Since the ritual was performed, new allegations have emerged that Turner may have texted photos of the victim to his friends, which certainly makes him look even more skeevy and awful than before, not to mention less messed up on booze and more calculating that the trial made him sound. So is this the ritual in action? It's possible in that one way in which magical operations can work is to make things that might otherwise be kept secret come out, and that could be what is going on here.
Since this is Augoeides, I'll be sure to keep you all posted if anything suspiciously paranormal happens to Turner that might suggest the spell is working. If we can finally work out anything about how to make these mass operations more effective, that would be invaluable to the magical community - but we need to see a few of them work first before we can draw any firm conclusions.
UPDATE: I came across this article arguing against the hex based on some assumptions that I think are simply wrong. So it seems like this is as good a place as any to address them.
First off, not all witches and/or magicians give much credence to the "do no harm" or "threefold law" aspects of Wicca. For one thing, not everybody who practices witchcraft is Wiccan, and for another, the whole idea is ridiculous. You cannot even exist in the world "doing no harm." I try to do as little harm as I can both in my mundane and magical life, but I also acknowledge that there are times that it is called for.
Second, and more importantly, the author seems to assume that the hex is some sort of substitute for mundane action. But in fact, the best way to accomplish any objective is to (1) take every possible mundane step you can to accomplish your goal, and (2) take every possible magical step as well. One shouldn't replace the other if you really care about getting results - which has been one of the primary axioms of "blogosphere-school magick" from the beginning.
Melanie Hexen is inviting others to join her June 7 at 10 pm CT to place a hex on Brock Turner, Dan Turner, Judge Persky, while sending love and support to the victim of the attack. The Facebook event says participants can perform the hex in their own home and need only a black candle, a black string, and photos of those to be hexed.
Ms. Hexen says the idea came from discussions that she had with her coven sisters about the injustice of the sentencing, the unrepentant nature of Brock Turner, and the comments from Dan Turner equating raping someone with an object to “20 minutes of action.”
Hexen said, “I think it will raise awareness of not only this particular case but of this rape culture we live in.”
She said that the her action is akin to Christians taking action through prayer, and it is a way to bring women together by doing something powerful. “And witches will stand together against injustice.”
The group hopes the hex results in Brock Turner becoming impotent, his father suffering from nightmares, and for the judge to lose his job.
The event, which was created less than 24 hours ago, is now gaining momentum. Over 100 people have said they will participate with many more interested.
Now here's the disappointing bit. So far, I have yet to see one of these "mass rituals" accomplish much of anything measurable. The Trump-hexers completely failed and the Bernie Sanders ritual didn't result in him winning the Democratic nomination or even the key state of California. There have also been large healing rituals for prominent occultists who have passed away over the last decade, none of which produced anything resembling a miracle.
In theory, with more people casting you should be able to get a bigger result, but for some reason that doesn't seem to bear out in practice. As the healing rituals were basically last resorts, one could argue that the targets were already too far gone for the spells to make much difference. You could perhaps make the same case with the Sanders ritual, as it was performed very late in the primary campaign. But the ritual to stop Trump was performed back in September - and now he's the Republican nominee.
So I'm not exactly sure why this would be the case. The Trump ritual was exceptionally disorganized, and the Sanders ritual was so dumbed-down that it's hard to see it functioning very well. Perhaps both massive oversimplification and lack of technical agreement between casters are both big problems that these large ritual events have difficulty overcoming. The Turner ritual seems to be better designed, and the plan is for everyone to do the same thing, both of which should improve its effectiveness.
Since the ritual was performed, new allegations have emerged that Turner may have texted photos of the victim to his friends, which certainly makes him look even more skeevy and awful than before, not to mention less messed up on booze and more calculating that the trial made him sound. So is this the ritual in action? It's possible in that one way in which magical operations can work is to make things that might otherwise be kept secret come out, and that could be what is going on here.
Since this is Augoeides, I'll be sure to keep you all posted if anything suspiciously paranormal happens to Turner that might suggest the spell is working. If we can finally work out anything about how to make these mass operations more effective, that would be invaluable to the magical community - but we need to see a few of them work first before we can draw any firm conclusions.
UPDATE: I came across this article arguing against the hex based on some assumptions that I think are simply wrong. So it seems like this is as good a place as any to address them.
First off, not all witches and/or magicians give much credence to the "do no harm" or "threefold law" aspects of Wicca. For one thing, not everybody who practices witchcraft is Wiccan, and for another, the whole idea is ridiculous. You cannot even exist in the world "doing no harm." I try to do as little harm as I can both in my mundane and magical life, but I also acknowledge that there are times that it is called for.
Second, and more importantly, the author seems to assume that the hex is some sort of substitute for mundane action. But in fact, the best way to accomplish any objective is to (1) take every possible mundane step you can to accomplish your goal, and (2) take every possible magical step as well. One shouldn't replace the other if you really care about getting results - which has been one of the primary axioms of "blogosphere-school magick" from the beginning.
I think one of the major problems with mass rituals of this nature is that for every one person who believes and or participates in this action to create the appropriate vibration, there are ten people who disbelieve or actively discredit the action, effectively creating a larger wave of anti-vibration to nullify the effects of the action. I've always found that I get far better results when no one else knows what I've been up to. Silence is golden.
ReplyDeleteOr it could be that the majority of the participants aren't properly detaching from the desire...
ReplyDeletePersonally I tend to find that unbelievers do not have much effect on my magical operations. Unbelievers are generally unbelievers because they lack talent, and without talent even ten of them are not going to be able to cancel out the effect of even one talented magician.
ReplyDeleteI will say, though, that I do make a practice of not revealing my operations until they are complete to my peers because most of my peers *are* magicians and therefore people with talent, and under those circumstances I think it is at least possible that if they decide to interfere, they could undermine the spell.
So that would suggest that mass workings are more effective, but only if kept secret by the participants. It would be nice to find an example of one of those that worked well, but of course since they are secret I imagine that would be difficult unless I organize it myself.