their own realities. They wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place unless they
created it for some reason, to learn some lesson. If that lesson happens to be learning the
power of faith, that prayer does work, then their prayers will save their butts; but not
necessarily otherwise.
The problem with magic as a spiritual path, and bewitching people in particular, is
that it hangs us up in all the same stupid games of winning and losing that average people
play in normal, everyday society. This is what I ultimately learned from my experiences
with ensorcellment. The only difference is that magicians aim to be winners, whereas
average people aim to be losers – to wallow in helplessness and self-pity.
Fundamentally magic is as much a dead-end street for an aspirant on the spiritual
path as is seeking the validation and glory of society. The only value to magic, which
seems baffling at first but which is learned through experience, by making lots of
mistakes, is understanding the difference between when one is acting on one’s own
impulse, or when one is truly being prompted to act by the Spirit. This is the crux of the
matter, and the reason why learning magic is worthwhile.
Black Magicians and Vampires
I live in Guatemala, a country which is populated largely by Mayan Indians.
There’s a lot of magic going on, both white and black. Every little village in highland
Guatemala has people who know a lot a lot more magic than I do; but they’re not
particularly writing books on the subject, much less in English.
As a result of all this attention, magic works pretty well in Guatemala. What a
society emphasizes is what it tends to manifest. For example, material abundance works
pretty well in the First World (at least for the moment), but not in Guatemala.
I have an American friend here who started out as a Mormon missionary with no
belief in black magic. He married a Guatemalan woman and had children with her.
Eventually the marriage dissolved, and this woman, bent on revenge, hired a black witch
to curse my friend.
His car broke down frequently. Thieves ransacked his house several times when
he was away. Payments due him were defaulted or stolen. Eventually he realized that
all this bad luck wasn’t a coincidence. He went to a witch himself to undo the spells his
ex-wife’s witch was casting. The witch did a long ritual, and at the end of it she told my
friend that there was nothing she could do since his wife’s witch was far more powerful
than she was. Further, she didn’t know anyone who could undo the curse.
It is not true, as the materialists would have you believe, that witchcraft only
works on people who believe in it. On the contrary, it works on everyone; but
materialists view as “coincidence” happenings which magicians view as cause and effect.
Black magic is not essentially different from the selfishness, greed, bad faith, and lying
which take place in our everyday society and relationships. All of our jealousy;
