Everything about Black & Dark Magic & How it Works

Magic is the practice of manipulating supernatural forces that the common people either do not believe exist or do not want to understand in the first place.

A black magician is one who engages in such practices for sinister ends.

For a black magician, obtaining power is everything.

His motivation comes from a desire for absolute power, and he finds satisfaction in wielding authority. He admires pride, arrogance, cruelty, hatred, and lust—all strong, aggressive feelings— and looks down on modesty, compassion, and selflessness.

When it comes to his own actions, the black magician frequently adopts a double-edged stance, convincing himself that his purpose to kill, harm or frighten is the greatest virtue while dancing with joy at his own clever evil doing.

Just like in the past, black magicians are rare in modern times. Only a tiny number of people regularly engage in black magic with the aim of bringing about a complete inversion of the norms of the society in which they live.

However, misfortunes, deaths, illnesses, and accidents have all been attributed to hostile magic because people find it hard to accept the idea that a universe so chaotic and indifferent to mankind could produce such destructive events as a result of random chance.

The term “black magic” contains both the deliberate sorcery of a select few and the much broader domain of illusory practices and powers associated with fraudulent sorcerers.

Black magic and the rule of opposites

Black magic, in both its actual and perceived forms, is fiercely antisocial, endorsing vices that are opposed to the virtues generally adopted in society. Thus, black magic is associated with things that are inverted, upside down, or otherwise flipped. 

For example, the final rite for a witch initiation ceremony in the Ozark hill country required the candidate to recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards.

An American writer named W.B. Seabrook discovered a witch-doll in France stabbed with pins and covered in toad blood, a magical device meant to kill the person it represented. Nearby, on top of a Bible, was an inverted crucifix on which a toad had been crucified upside down.

These days, some Satanists are recognized by the inverted crosses they wear.

The Left-Hand Path is a common nickname for practitioners of black magic because most people tend to be right-handed.

At their meetings, witches allegedly danced widdershins (counter-clockwise) instead of the regular clockwise direction.

The most common accusation raised against witches in medieval Europe was that they collaborated with the Devil, the sworn enemy of God, mankind, and the divine order.

Outside of European culture, we see the same link between black magic and the rejection of accepted social norms and values. 

Outside of European culture, we see the same link between black magic and the rejection of accepted social norms and values.  

The Navaho people believe that a black magician, in order to gain his abilities, must kill one of his younger siblings. 

The Logo and Keliko people of the Congo believe that witches walk around upside down. The night-dancing witches of the Kaguru in East Africa live their lives naked, walk on their hands, and use ashes to color their black skin white.

All black magicians, whether real or not, are sexually perverse and have an obsession with filth.  

In Europe, witches were frequently described using terms such as “filthy,” “lewd,” and “unnatural” in reference to their alleged sexually perverted behavior, both with one another and with demons.

Modern black magician Aleister Crowley was notorious for his sex rituals with male and female partners and his fascination with human waste.

The use of black magic is often linked to satanism, cannibalism, and incest, as well as abnormal sexual interactions with animals.

Accusations against European witches often focused on their practice of having animal-like familiar spirits that drank their blood, such as that of Jane Bussey of Kent, who was accused in 1583 of sheltering three imps:

“Pygine resembling a mole, Russell resembling a grey cat; and the other, called Dunsott, resembling a dun dog, with the intent that she might enchant and bewitch men as beasts and other things.”

How to cast black magic spells

The arsenal of a black magician can vary as widely as his goals. He may utilize his own innate abilities, request the aid of external spirits, demons, or forces, master the art of mimicry, the power of words and gestures, “weapons” such as the magic wand or circle, “medicine,” and many other such magic tools.

Herbs, plants, roots, animal or human body parts, pieces of paper with words or symbols written on them, knots tied in string, stones, and almost anything else can be used as “medicines” for evil. 

Many such magical tools are outright dangerous, like snake venom, or seemingly innocuous, like bat’s blood.

To perform black magic, the magician must create a connection between the spell and the victim.

In this sense, occult researchers believe that anything done to the victim’s fingernail clippings, hair, clothing, or bed linens will have an effect on the victim just as if it had been done directly to the victim. 

Even intangibles like a person’s name, shadow, or footprint can be used as a magical connection to influence them through black magic.

The Grimorium Verum, a French magical textbook written in the 16th century, claims that a magician can damage an adversary by driving a nail from an old coffin into the victim’s footprint while chanting Pater noster upto in terra, a parody of the Lord’s Prayer that seems to mean “Our father, which art on earth.”

In this scenario, to perform the spell, the magician must take a stone and drive the nail deep into the footprint, then chant: “Cause harm to so-and-so until I remove you.”

In the absence of any preexisting connection with the victim, the magician must forge one. Thus, the black magician could hide a cursed item in his adversary’s home or bury it in a path where his victim will step on it.

When the Roman general Germanicus passed away in the year 19 A.D., his room contained human bones, rotting bits of dead bodies, and pieces of lead, the metal of death, with his name etched into it. This led some people of that time to believe he was killed by witchcraft.

Black magic incantations and verbal formulations

One of the most potent magical tools is language, which is thought to have the power to manifest the magician’s will through the words he speaks.

Some cultures, such as the Maori of New Zealand, consider it a grave mistake to change the words of a spell.

Words in magical spells have power, so the correct spell formulation must be passed down from one magician to another. In most cases however, magicians can modify their incantations as they see fit and depending on the results they obtain.

The magician will use wild mimicry, words, and gestures to generate emotions such as anger, hatred, lust, or frenzy. Then, the magician channels those emotions and directs them at a particular target.

Shamans in some Central Pacific islands enumerate the victim’s limbs and organs while yelling, “I break, I twist, I burn, I destroy” in a raging monologue of magical spells. The shaman then jabs a bone or stick into the air with an expression of violent hatred, as if he were stabbing a man, and then turns and twists as if to make the wound larger.

Similarly, European black magicians would channel their hatred towards a victim through various methods: whipping an animal or another human being, stabbing the air with a sword or knife, filling their minds with images of blood and pain to generate emotions of frenzy and rage; all so they could capture and channel the powers of violence and destruction in the universe. The European magician would then merge with these forces, control them, and unleashe their terrifying fury on his adversary.

Magicians are often vague on the question of whether their magical power originates from within themselves or if they tap into external mystical powers and channel them.

Summoning spirits and demons that will do the magician’s bidding is a particularly major focus in European magical textbooks and magical traditions. Medieval Europeans also believed witches and sorcerers were responsible for having innocent people become werewolves through curses and magic.

The Quiche people of Guatemala believe that if a man spends nine nights in a cemetery praying to the Devil, he will be granted the ability to cast spells. The Nyoro black magicians of Africa conjure up malevolent spirits to harm humans, while African Lele sorcerers force the spirits of recently deceased newborns into making prophecies.

The effectiveness of black magic

When magic does seem to work, it can usually be explained through self-suggestion, where the magician convinces a naive victim that a spell works through spectacle, charisma, etc. As such, tangible results in real life are not caused by the magician’s magical powers.

However, even the most skeptical people can be intimidated by a black magician with a commanding presence, and when a sorcerer casts a death spell on a naive or gullible victim afraid of the magician’s abilities, it is not uncommon for the victim to slowly fade away and die. However, it is not the spell itself that proves fatal, but rather the victim’s conviction in its power.

European ritual magic describes a lengthy and exhausting ceremony performed by a small group of magicians in an effort to bring a spirit or occult power into visible existence.

They work themselves up to a frenzy of anticipation and excitement during the ceremony. They have a detailed mental representation of the demon they expect to see, and sometimes even a drawing or painting of the demon. In the final moments of the ritual, it would not be surprising if they actually saw the demon, but it is more likely that what they saw was a product of their imaginations rather than a real entity.

When it comes to African beliefs, some anthropologists have made a rough distinction between a sorcerer and a witch. Plants, roots, nails, hair, and other natural substances were the domain of a sorcerer. Witches, on the other hand, have access to hidden magical power and can inflict harm by focusing their animosity on a particular victim. Anyone willing to study can become a sorcerer, but only witches are born with the innate power required to wield true magic.

However, not all anthropologists agree with this classification, and the distinction is not always obvious in practice.

This is clearly not the case in the European system of magic, where both witches and black magicians are thought to possess innate magical abilities and both are believed to employ harmful substances in their spells.

The European distinction between witches and sorcerers is based on how those who are magical practitioners approach such magical forces.

The witch reveres occult powers, while the black magician seeks to subjugate and control them. This is reflected by the fact that most witches throughout European history have been women, while the vast majority of black magicians have been men.

Black and White Magic

In theory, the difference between a black magician and a white magician is fairly obvious: the former uses magic for bad, while the latter uses it for good.

However, in actual use, the lines often blur. For one, it’s subjective; often, the white magician thinks the spells they practice are of the white variety, but consider the spells practiced by others to be of the black variety.

Another consideration is that a human being who believes he possesses magical powers will, at times, use those abilities for good and, at other times, for evil.

The Native American medicine man, who can treat illness, is also capable of causing it. A native Papago man once described an episode when “we lynched a medicine man and hanged him. He had been murdering innocents.”

In a similar manner, white witches and magicians of the modern era often openly admit they are prepared to use their abilities to combat other occult practitioners who threaten them.

Magic is morally neutral from the magician’s point of view. Magic is first and foremost a tool, and a person’s reasons for using magic do not affect its potency. Thus, whether a magician uses magic to hurt or heal someone makes no difference.

One of the most interesting aspects of European grimoires or magical textbooks is the very frequent use of earnest prayers to God for assistance in performing rituals designed to kill, inflict pain, or incite hatred.

The Grimoire of Honorius, written in the 17th century, is one such example among many others. It claims to have been penned by a pope, and its user is expected to be a priest.

It is characterized by passionate appeals to God and solemn sayings of Mass, and it culminates in the ritual slaughter of a lamb that symbolizes Christ as the Lamb of God. However, the purpose of this ritual is to call upon Satan and bring him into visible form.

Whatever the magician’s goals may be, the authors of the grimoires passed on the old belief that divine power can be controlled and activated like a light switch.

They also embraced the much deeper philosophical idea that the magician’s ultimate goal is to discover and embrace the divine unity that permeates all things.

Any and all experiences are useful for a magician. Both good and evil, cruelty and mercy, must be experienced and mastered by him. On this path, one becomes a “magus,” and it is the perverted “magus” who becomes the ultimate dark sorcerer.

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References:

• Mythology of All Races by Louis Herbert Gray and John Arnott MacCulloch
• The History Of Witchcraft And Demonologyby Montague Summers
• Man, Myth & Magic The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Mythologyby Richard Cavendish
• Demons and elementalsby John Gatehouse
• The Lesser Key of Solom
• The Key of Solomon
• The Kybalion by Three Initiates
• The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall