I want one of those. Show me where, please.
Counter-Magick is like an argument. The two sides engage in the debate. Casting this kind of spell against a Marine Recruiting station is just like bolstering one’s argument. It doesn’t place a constraint on anyone’s will, only makes the argument more emphatically. They are fighting over convincing the unconvinced more than they are fighting over those who dreamed of becoming a Marine. Anyone who really wants to be a Marine will be unphased by the spell. It is the kids who are undecided about it, and impressionable that the spell would be targetting. From a Chaos-Magick perspective the Marine recruiting efforts are a form of magick as well, so you are just pitting Magick against Magick, your will against the will of the Marine corp, as opposed to putting a constraint upon the will of the parties who are trying to make a decision.
Woodbury now, and count yourself lucky you never got a call back. Dysfunctional work environment.
The Technocracy has been making some major pushes these days.
Yes, and the Republican party was once the Progressive party.
From my teenage neopagan days, I remember a Starhawk binding ritual involving a chant and a knotted piece of rope; the idea was to prevent someone from committing harm against other people. The Law of Three suggested that the ritual would REALLY prevent you from harming anybody else, so you shouldn’t do it if you wanted to have violence as an option.
I can imagine a logic similar to that spell’s being used in this case.
Daniel
Thanks! I find most baby pagan books seriously deficient in the Ethics category, preferring, as you say, to depend on Thou Shalt Nots. Which, y’know, is kind of ironic, since they also spend a lot of time talking about how much more Evolved we are that we don’t need the Authoritarian religions of our forefathers… :rolleyes:
And then I found When, Why…If by Robin Wood. While it is written very simply - so simply that it’s easy to write off as a baby pagan book - it’s the best book dealing with ethics in neopaganism that I’ve found. It’s one I keep going back to - it’s on my “Read Every Year” list. And every time I still go “ah-HA!” about something…and always something different.
I suspect you know what we atheists think about ‘casting spells’. And to reiterate what other posters have said, this is the kind of activity that merely harms the anti-war movement by convincing people that they are just a bunch of nutjobs, not to be taken seriously. Thanks, guys. Why not bring out a voodoo doll of Cheney, next? :rolleyes:
They* are * a bunch of nutjobs, but they are nutjobs who are largely right about something important, while sober and sensible people were totally wrong.
I’ve been thinking about this for most of the afternoon, and I’ve come to the ironfast conclusion that…I don’t know. 
I’m a kitchen witch - whenever I try to study a strict trad with miles of correspondence tables and sigils and star charts, my brain just sort of glazes over until it all goes away. I’m much happier using a butter knife as an athame and some basil from my spice rack in a love sachet, and I can whip up a spell while baking cakes and pouring the ale! You’d probably get a much different answer from a Rosicrucian, or even an eleventyfirst level Gardnerian.
But, that being said, I’ve never been really comfortable with the “intent is all” theory of magick - it just seems sloppy and avoiding responsibility to me. If intent is all that matters, then why are we bothering with ritual or spellwork at all? Why not just wish real hard? OTOH, I don’t think the bells and smells are strictly responsible for anything, either - I think they’re just toys and tools we can use to get our inner child minds (or “subconscious” or “Higher Self” or [insert phrase from your Path here]) on board with what we want to happen - so I don’t think your prosperity spell is doomed to fail if you use a brown candle instead of a green one.
So maybe you’re right. Maybe intent is important, but it’s not the only piece of the puzzle. I think someone who performs a hex or a binding with good intent is still going to feel the effects of it in uncomfortable ways. In my observation, anyway; I’ve not tried it myself, but I’ve seen it mess up other people.
(And can I thank you for starting this thread and taking my answers seriously? I don’t get to pontificate on this stuff much since the SDMB has become my main haunting ground. I kind of miss it, but I don’t miss the catfighting and fuzzy headedness of my old pagan message boards.)
My theory, from back when I practiced, was that intent did not matter for the reaction. The Rule of Three isn’t a result of some mother goddess sitting at the center of the universe keeping track of all the magical energy and sending good or bad back at the caster based on what they were feeling when they sent it out originally. The Rule of Three is a description of an elastic universe, which sends back the energy you send out, inevitably and certainly, without any kind of intelligence or sentience behind it, and not taking any account of your intent. If you send out negative energy, you get negative energy back. It doesn’t matter if you’re sending out negative energy with the best of intentions. It’s an innate attribute of the universe, not the willful activity of any kind of judging being.
Yes, THAT! I like that. Well phrased.
Sounds like Karma. If you suck the air out of a barrel it creates a vacuum that wants to be filled.
No doubt. But they are not doing the anti-war movement any favors, any more than ALF is doing the animal rights movement any favors.
What to I think of that? I think that that site (cite?) has far too much pink on it for anyone’s good. Far, far too much pink.
As for the spellcasting war protestors, I think it’s silly*, and that it makes their protest and their position sound silly. I would be reluctant to be found on the same side of an issue with them (though that wouldn’t stop me if I actually cared about the point being made).
- all you offended wiccans would probably think my lego collection is silly too, so I figure we’re even and all’s fair.
Blind squirrel, meet your nut.
Yes, you’re quite right, silly people, really. Not serious and intelligent like Doug Feith, or Paul Wolfowitz. Not mature and realistic, like Don Rumsfeld.
Now, elucidator, we know you are not obtuse, so you must just be pretending. Opposing war =! nutty. Casting spells on Marine recruiters = nutty and gives non-nutty anti-war protesters a bad name. Advocating going to war against Iraq on false pretences = evil, may or may not = nutty.
Clear now?
What are they right about? They’re trying to prevent the Marines from recruiting people. Iraq war or no Iraq war, we need to have a military in this country. Trying to sabotage that effort is not “right”.
If they think they can cast spells, perhaps their magical powers would be better put to use at healing the wounds between the various factions in Iraq, or if they just want us out of Iraq, they could cast a spell on Bush to make him change his mind.