On why you can't pick and choose which forms of magic are ethical and which are not based on fate and free will alone.
Love magic in particular has held a contentious position in the contemporary witchcraft community for some time now. A topic of frequent debate, those practicing it are often accused of taking people's free will or even such heinous things as committing 'spiritual assault'. I would like to examine today why people consider love magic unethical, and why I think that opinion is fundamentally flawed, based on cultural and cosmological evidence viewed through a modern lens.
It doesn't take much searching on social media to run into strong opinions against love magic. The common consensus among contemporary practitioners these days appears to be that love magic as a whole is evil and cannot be practiced in ways that aren't inherently extortionary. Many online communities, especially closed communities such as those on Discord, have strict rules against the promoting or even mentioning of love magic. I've seen many unsavory words used to describe this practice: coercion, control, assault, manipulation, abuse.
The logic behind these claims is more or less the same everywhere, the claims ringing that love magic overrides people's free will, that it messes with fate, that it's forcing someone to fall in love against their will, that it creates toxic relationships, and my favorite: that it creates karmic debt.
I'd like to knock the latter out first: if we are to discuss the ethics of magic, let us not be culturally appropriative while doing so. Karma is a Dharmic concept, as seen in such faiths as Buddhism. It has nothing to do with witchcraft, and unless the practitioner is Buddhist, they do not need to worry about Karma. As I understand it, Karmic debt is also plainly made up, there's no such thing within the faiths that the concept originates from.
But what about the rest? What about free will, and fate? Free will is a finicky topic, and it falls apart quickly when inspected with some care in the context of magic. I am not here to take anyone's belief from them, or here to state that free will does not exist. But do consider what is and isn't free will, and how you think free will works. If you can strip someone of their free will, do we really have any? More importantly, there's no universal law that states that love magic is stripping someone of their free will. How many times have you done magic intending to command someone to do something and watched them do it like a robot? Never, I imagine, both out of a lack of desire and out of a lack of faith that that is how magic works, because realistically, it isn't.
The question of fate is just as unbalanced. All magic is interfering with fate, and with people's fates too. If I do a spell to try to make sure my lawyer works hard to help me succeed in immigration, I have interfered with their fate, and not in an inherently harmful way. But it can be even smaller! What if I did a spell to attract more squirrels to my yard, people might have to brake for the squirrels crossing the road to get to my yard, and be late for work. They might get fired for that, or might not. Either way their fate is altered. What if the person braking for the squirrel gets rear-ended? Is that my fault? Should I not have done the magic? Should he have braked slower? Was it fate that I did that spell and it caused him to have a car accident? Was he always fated to have that car accident, and was I just an instrument in its coming to fruition?
There is no action without reaction. There is no action without impact. So the question of altering someone's fate is moot, and if you think altering someone's fate is unethical, you should at the very least cease to practice magic, and likely confine yourself to a room forever. Assuming that doesn't alter the fate of your concerned mother. By that logic, the question of free will also becomes obsolete. If it was never in this person's fate to fall in love with you, no amount of magic you could do would change that. And if you don't make them fall for you, someone else will.
Because that's the next consideration: from this very common cosmological lens, what is really the moral difference between love magic and dressing up for a date? If you go to a date dressed to the nines, with nice makeup on, and you make yourself sound incredibly cool and active, are you not also attempting to make someone fall for you? Is that stripping them of their free will? At what point is the love entirely natural in origin? I could even argue that the act of making yourself look, smell, and sound good is love magic, or at least glamor magic for the sake of love, in its own right.
And there is yet another consideration: the actual nature of most (open) historic love magic. A lot of historical records of love magic that we have from such places as, for example, ancient Greece, is not coercive magic. Much of it is petitioning the gods or praying to them for the love or person you desire. Other spells are intended to draw them to you, simply send out a message on the web of fate and let your future lover follow it to you, such as by placing a basil plant in one's windowsill. The spells that do intend to truly instil love in a single person are rarer, but of course exist, and I readily excuse them based on the points made above.
Another problem with dismissing love magic as a whole is how integral it is to culture. Even if your intention is not to accidentally condemn all magic - which you might well be on accident just by virtue of the cosmology of this claim not checking out - you are denying the validity of a practice seen in nearly every culture, and integral to many magical traditions. There are no universal laws of magic, that is a rather Wiccan notion. By extension, why would there be universal ethics? Why would all love magic be bad?
Lastly, there's the concern of creating a toxic relationship. Yes, love magic may draw a toxic love to you. But I can assure you that it was not the magic that made it toxic. Wearing a nice dress to the club can attract toxic love to you, looking cute at a café can, anything can. Any love has the potential to be toxic. The love being found through magic will not inherently make it toxic, because the love isn't artificial. Love being found through magic is no different than love found on a dating app, because factually, the line between magic and mundane is next to nonexistent. Moreover, I think if love magic only ever created toxic relationships, we'd know that by now. Love magic is as old as the desire for love itself is, and so is mankind's penchant for gossip. "I heard Ethel did a love spell to find her husband, and he beats her silly!" So would the tales go even in ye olden days, and it would spread. If love magic only ever drew harmful love, we'd have figured that out and stopped using it, because ultimately we do tend to eventually notice when things have a habit of going awry.
Much magic was the domain of women in our open traditions across Europe, and by extension there was much care for how love magic was done and what for. I could also argue that condemning a form of magic that was and is often done by and for women, for their own joy, health, and wealth, is just unfortunate. Because of course, as a final note, it is important to remember that folk magic is alive and well across the globe. Outside of the online magical community, there is much magic being done, entirely unaware of our debates. And hopefully it will continue to be done! Folk magic is important and beautiful, and so are its love magic practices.
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