POSTED UNDER Magick

No Mirror Spells, Please!

September 22, 2009 by Donald Michael Kraig 91 Comments

One of the most common discussions I’ve had (or seen) about magick concerns psychic attack. I deal with this in Modern Magick, and point out that I agree with concept that Denning and Phillips present in their book Practical Guide to Psychic Self-Defense, that real psychic attacks are rare. After all, if someone has the ability to use magick to cause you major problems, they also have the ability make major improvements in their lives. If somebody is really going to waste the time, energy, and effort to try and give you a headache or have you lose a job rather than improve their own situation, then they’re idiots and probably can’t do anything anyway.

Sometimes, we misinterpret events and think something common is a psychic attack. A series of colds or what we consider to be a trail of misfortune may be from our own doing or just coincidence.

That brings me to the discussion of “mirror spells.” The idea of a mirror spell seems to make sense. It’s called a mirror spell because it reflects any negativity back onto the person or persons who sent it. It’s instant karma, right? They’re only getting what they sent, right? They’re only getting what they deserve, right?

Wrong!

Mirror spells, in my opinion, are not advisable for at least three reasons.

1) Sometimes we create our own problems. For example, a bad diet, lack of sleep, the use of alcohol and recreational drugs can lower the efficiency of your immune system, resulting in one illness after another. If you think the repeated ailments are caused by an outside force and perform a mirror spell to return the negative energy to it’s source, you’re actually going to be attacking yourself. I don’t believe that’s anyone’s intent. It certainly wouldn’t be in your best interest!

2) Sometimes we are effected by a stream of energy directed unintentionally against us. For example, a person’s partner breaks up with them. First that person feels sadness from the loss. This may change to lack of belief: “How could s/he?!” And that emotion might change to anger and rage: “How dare s/he?!” The person ends up stomping around their room thinking angry, rage-filled thoughts. This pacing, a method of raising energy known as “circumambulation,” unconsciously forms what the Golden Dawn called a “Vortex of Energy” or what many Pagans refer to as a “Cone of Power” (see The Grimoire of Lady Sheba, for example). This could unconsciously send the energy linked to the anger toward a person the “attacker” never would have consciously harmed. In fact, that might be the last thing they would ever do. Were a mirror spell turned on a person who unconsciously did this it would be punishing a person who had no conscious intention of causing harm. They only thought they were acting out their rage. Is it fair to harm someone who meant no harm? I don’t think so.

3) Many Pagans believe in the “law of three,” that what you send out will return to you three-fold. Even if you don’t go that far, one of the basic concepts of magick is that if you do X, Y will happen. Therefore, whatever you do comes back to you in some way.

If a person does something to harm you, it will eventually come back to them. When I lived in San Diego I knew a Pagan woman who told me she used to be a Satanist. She admitted that she used to attack other people. She claimed she knew her psychic attack had worked when something bad happened to her. It took her some time to see the futility of what she was doing, but she eventually figured it out.

If you perform a mirror spell you are consciously deciding to send negative energy to someone. Frankly, this is no different than a psychic attack with an added “But he hit me first!” cry heard so often from a child.

So to avoid harming yourself, harming someone who never consciously would harm you, or incurring negative karma that will bounce back on you, I suggest avoiding mirror spells. Does this mean you should just leave yourself wide open to attack? Of course not! I’ll be discussing what you can do in future posts.

Have you ever performed a mirror spell? What was the result? Was it effective or did you end up punishing yourself?

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Written by Donald Michael Kraig
Donald Michael Kraig graduated from UCLA with a degree in philosophy. He also studied public speaking and music (traditional and experimental) on the university level. After a decade of personal study and practice, he began ten years of teaching courses in the Southern California area on such ...