Hexing 101
What you should know if you are going to engage in baneful magic.
Rule of Three, yea or nay?
First of all, I am pro-hexing; baneful magic has a place in my own practice. I have engaged in a hex or two and never have I worried about “the hex/magic coming back three-fold”. I do believe that karma is real, but I also believe that in the case of someone who is posing a threat or causing great harm, it’s difficult to wait for karma to intercede. Our current justice system shows that sometimes it is necessary to take shit into your own hands every once in a while. Also, karma is complex, and likely not a thing that those of us who have not studied its religious context understand (myself included). But I do know that hexing has been around a long ass time. Longer than Gerald Gardner and his Wiccan rede. All of that to say, hexing cannot be isolated from your other acts of magic and intention, but you are not going to cause harm to yourself just by engaging in baneful magic.
One thing that I have learned, and greatly appreciate, is the understanding of the “rhizomal” nature of magic. This is the understanding that the energy we put into one spell or act of magic, is not limited to that one specific working. For example, if you are trying to do a working to generate more abundance in your life, you have to make sure that you are mitigating any baneful magic that might seep into your other work. For more on this, I am pretty sure that Aiden Wachter/Jason Miller have spoken on this in the books Six Ways and Elements of Spellcrafting, respectively. If you are doing simultaneous workings, it is a good idea to take every precaution to negate any “bleeding” of one working into the other. Use appropriate containers for spells (circles, bottles, cleansing between rituals, disposing of materia magica appropriately, etc.).
Be prepared for success.
It’s a good idea to have very sound ethics in place before engaging in baneful work. What results are you okay with, especially if they may be unintended? Do you feel secure in your assessment of the situation/person you are trying to harm? Is the work in alignment with your overall values? For example, are you wanting to subject someone to the carceral system if you claim to be for abolishing the police? In order for magic to work, you have to be committed to the working and the potential outcomes, and any hesitancy will likely decrease the effects of the work you are trying to do.
It is of the utmost importance that you are confident in your situation and committed to tragic results. You will not want to spend your time regretting your decisions or burn yourself so intensely with magic that you are deterred from practicing anymore. In summary, there are a lot of moving parts with any magical working, and it’s best to be as rooted in your values, ethics, and intentions as possible. Also, please be aware of the energy you are prepared to commit to your working. Magic, like any other “living” thing, needs energy in order to function. Do not energetically overextend yourself in workings, otherwise you will burn out.
Be prepared for failure.
There are a lot of ways for spells to go awry. It depends on the complexity of your ritual, how clear your petition is, and fate. When we use magic, we are seeking to influence fate and reality with our will. If you are newer to spell work, you should prepare to have some magical missteps and even full-blown magical blowups. There are many, many ways for the magic to go right, and I sincerely recommend that you expose yourself to examples of successful magic to bolster your confidence. It is also highly recommended that you keep detailed notes of every ritual so that you can keep track of what works and does not work. Detailed notes are important because there are a myriad of factors you can assess in magical workings. To name a few:
Timing (moon phase, astrological placements, planetary hours, etc.)
Ingredients. Know what you can and cannot substitute in magical practices. Know what is suggested and know what is mandatory. Learn to identify appropriate substitutions.
Check your correspondences! If you are trying to do baneful work but you are using herbs, flowers, colors, and deities associated with love or abundance, you may need to reconsider.
Speaking of deities, consider what allies/spirit beings you want to call in for your working. If you have never worked with a spirit before, it is recommended that you build some kind of relationship with them, rather than using the “dial-a-deity approach”.
There is a lot ot keep track of, so write it all down. The time you did the ritual, the lunar phase, the placements of the planets, the color of the candle, the oils you used, the incense fragrance, try to keep it all recorded so if you need to try a ritual again, you can consider what may need to be adjusted.
Know your options.
It is best to know a few different approaches to your goal. Do you have to go as far as harming another person (let me emphasize—no judgment here, if that is what you need to do). Would a binding be better? A protection spell? A freezing spell? Is there any work that you need to add to your hex to ensure your own protection or the protection of other involved parties? Have you tried other non-magical interventions that could remedy the situation? Let me pause here and reiterate this point; if you are just trying to use magical interventions to try to *poof!* away your problems, I strongly encourage you to reconsider, or to at least implement mundane approaches alongside your magical work. Because of the potential risks for both the practitioner and other folks, it is good to bolster yourself and others with as much protection as possible and to have several lines of approach or defense for the hex work.
Some alternatives you can use as you approach hexing (laying magical approaches):
Freezing: the simple act of placing a person’s name in water, which you then put in a freezer, in order to “freeze” the person, preventing them from doing further harm/interference.
Protection magic: creating magical & energetic boundaries for people who are being victimized by the subject of the hex (consider getting consent before doing magic on someone’s behalf… this is up to you. A lot of magic is non-consensual in nature).
Banishing: Do you have someone just irritating the hell out of you? Consider little things like hot foot powder, or other ways to just drive the person from your life.
If you have applied mundane solutions (if it is safe for you to do so), and you know that hexing is the way you want and need to go then proceed with the confidence that you have bolstered your magic with the necessary mundane support, or put the energy into investigating every path towards success.
Getting down and dirty.
So we are going to do the hex. Here’s what I recommend: do the research, or consult with someone who knows their shit. At the very least, you are going to waste your time and accomplish nothing. At worst, you will “blow yourself up” with magic, which can go REALLY BADLY1 There are obviously a multitude of possibilities in between, but you want to be as prepared for success as possible. As alluded to above, there are many, many factors to consider in between.
When you are ready to do the thing:
Pick your timing. For lunar cycles, dark moons are best. Imagine if you were trying to launch a sneak attack in real life, you would not want the moon illuminating your actions. For astrological purposes, there are hosts of variables to choose from. You could opt for a time where the moon is void of course (transitioning between signs). If you are favoring justice, think about Libra’s placement. Saturn is the Great Malefic planet, so considering Saturn’s position may behoove you (this is an astro pun… Saturn is associated w/ the sea-goat. Har har). Magic is ancient. ANCIENT. People have been using magic to fuck each other up for millennia. So just know that there are endless resources for planning your magical assault.
Be clear with your intention. It would be impossible to be specific enough to preclude any negative fallout, and if you are over-zealous in minimizing harm, you could weaken your work. It’s worth considering that there is no magic that is harmless, hypothetically. If you are doing a spell to increase your chances of getting a job, you are taking that job from someone else (Jason Miller explains this “All sorcery has a body count”). An example of a non-great intention: “May Mr. Z get what he deserves!” Give the energy a time frame and a direction for its flow. For example, for a hex against someone who is hurting others, or who has hurt others “May Mr. Z be prevented from causing further harm by binding his actions immediately.” Or “May Mr. Z’s bid for this position of authority be prevented at next week’s election”.
Be realistic. This may seem counter-intuitive, but we are not trying to bend or break the laws of physics here. It’s why spells for winning the lottery aren’t that great. You want to encourage probability with your working. If someone is in an inherently dangerous profession, you could try to nudge misfortune through the inherent danger of the work that they do. Or if they are already engaging in illegal/illicit behavior, you could try to have them stopped through the already-in-place “justice” system, but again, make sure what you are trying to accomplish is in line with your values.
Have a specific link to your target. If you have bodily fluids or hair or anything else with DNA, that is your preferred choice. A picture works great. A signature is okay. You want the energy or spirits to have a very specific target for the action you are trying to accomplish, something imbued specifically with the target’s energy.
Protect yourself. Some rituals may call for oils or other materia that can be literally harmful or poisonous if you come into contact with it. Call upon kind and benevolent ancestors to protect you from any negative repurcussions of the spell itself. Take a bath immediately following your spell to rid yourself of any potential physical or energetic attachments from your work. When you have accomplished your deed, burn or bury all the materia you used for the spell and do not dispose of it on your property. If you need to source graveyard dirt, leave an offereing for the dead, and take a different route home than the one you took to the cemetery. If relevant, create a physical container for your spellwork, be it a jar or a box to hold the energy.
Check probablity with divination. Run your plan against your preferred form of divination and see what the outcome may be or what may need to be adjusted or where your focus may need to be shifted.
Additional Resources
For more information on the basics of spellcrafting:
Anything by Jason Miller, specifically “The Elements of Spellcrafting”, “The Sorceror’s Secrets”, and “Protection and Reversal Magic”. Jason also writes on his blog and offers classes.
Josphine McCarthy has extensive magical resources, a lot of them for free on her website.
Aiden Wachter is also a tremendous wealth of knowledge, and you can find more of his work here.
I am certainly not posting this article as any kind of legitimate resource, but this story set the magical online community on fire when it happened. I will always advocate for folks staying the fuck away from closed practices. If you are going to work with a deity or spirit, make sure that you are NOT working with practices and beings that are for the initiated.