OEITH #218 Conversation on Ethics and Magick

Joined by my good friend Paul, we discuss the ethics of magick and the integration of ethics into magical practice, exploring: a somewhat unethical hexing; retaliation, its justifications and alternatives; proportionality; the lack of an ethical framework in chaos magick; the impossibility of an absence of ethics; ethical integrationism versus technical eclecticism; the postmodernist suspicion of morality; accusations of morality; codes of ethics versus ethical frameworks; the discomfort of autonomous ethical reasoning; the problem of post-hoc justifications; the role of interpretation in understanding actions and intentions; abdication of judgement as a strategy for avoiding ethical responsibility; the inescapability of judgment; the principle of minimising harm; the identity of intention and action in magick; the perils of action at a distance; the example of the sunflower as a sigil for victory for Ukraine; distance and disproportionality; the occult community and the question of who should retaliate when retaliation is justified; the ethics of restraint and non-involvement; avoidance of harm versus taking risks to achieve benefits; the risks and potential benefits of magick; an example in mindfulness-based therapy; when things get worse before they get better; the inevitability of harm in magick; the Faustian bargain; the potential for cultivating compassion; how ethics has begun to shape our magical practice; the uncertainty in balancing gain against harm; the deficiencies of "an it harm none"; how ethical thinking beforehand can make magick more effective; an example of a working for a situation involving allegations of misconduct and racism; the problems of a binding ritual in this context; Mirkachank, our servitor for turning a perpetrator’s actions back against them; the surprising outcomes from using this servitor; the problems of intervening from outside a situation; how certain types of personalities are unlikely to benefit from confrontation with their own actions; ethical discomfort as an important signal; our conclusions and the outcome from the working; the principle of parsimony of intervention; Daoist non-action as ethical rather than mystical; the principle of not being an arsehole; the simpler the working the more effective it might be; the fundamental simplicity of ethics; a developmental arc towards simplicity; the simpler and more ethical our magical practice, the perhaps the more it integrates with daily life; the subtle and long-term effects of magical practice.

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Federico Campagna (2018). Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality. London: Bloomsbury.