Evil Ingredients

Hey there occulties, 

Today I’d like to have a brief discussion that was brought to mind by a recent request where someone was relatively ignorant about magic, and that is the existence of “evil” ingredients.

While I would go so far as to agree that particular ingredients to particular spells, or that particular actions taken in particular spells are at best morbid and at worst shocking and cruel, I feel I do not present either on this blog. Many of the shocking and cruel ingredients/actions (such as the infamous black cat spell,) come from historical sources which most practitioners would never use today, and in more than one case, much more humane and reasonable methods to gain these items (which do not involve torture or untimely death,) have since been discovered. For example, with the black cat spell, I have heard that using the bone from a black cat who has died of old age and been buried a certain length of time thereafter works just as well… of course it requires one to know where such a cat is buried, and if it is a friend’s deceased pet, permission to obtain said bones. This is a pretty grim ingredient, and I’m quite understanding when people find bones (of any animal or being,) objectionable to some degree. Using a beloved pet or a type animal one is quite fond of is likely to cause distress. I’ve known a fair share of people who would gladly use a chicken foot, but would rather die than use a cat bone (even if the chicken was slaughtered and the cat met a natural end by old age.) 

Does this make it evil to use bones in spellwork? I think how one obtains the bone is important, and if it is obtained without horrifying cruelty, then, no, not really, it isn’t evil. If you had to torture a poor animal to death to get it, then it is immoral, and animal cruelty is evil, at least by my standards. That said, if you’ve eaten a chicken or turkey and tossed the remaining carcass into the trash, you have all sorts of bones there. The vegans in my audience no doubt think you evil for consuming that animal flesh, (I am omnivorous, personally,) and factory farming is a horror in more than one case, but if you are the basic consumer (at least here in the USA,) using those bones of the animal in your magic shouldn’t make you feel squeamish. The animal was (one assumes,) humanely culled. Heck, if your outdoor kitty left you a present (a dead chipmunk, let’s say,) while that animal likely met a hard end, you could use its bone as well. If your kitty kills everything, I might recommend a pull off collar to prevent the decimation of your woodland creatures, however. So, no, bones aren’t evil. It is best to responsibly obtain them, but the item itself us not evil.

Now eggs are interesting. I’ve had many a vegan bemoan the use of an egg. Let me tell you something…many hens (so lady birds,) if not all hens will lay an egg or several when her hormones tell her it is time to lay an egg. Much like a human woman ovulates whether or not there is someone to fertilize her, so does this lady bird make an egg. She will lay this and even sit on it awhile, even if it is infertile as she didn’t have a male bird to fertilize it. So, eggs are being made, even if no baby birdie can ever come from the egg. Is that evil? I mean, fuck you, nature! How dare you make female animals ovulate and make fucking eggs!? Fuck you if no baby animals burst forth because of fucking sexual reproduction and shit! Yeah so, eggs? Might as well eat them and use them in magic. I assure you, eggs are coming out of that bird’s cloaca whether or not they were fertilized, and if they were not fertilized your choices are let it go to waste and rot (because no baby will ever come of it,) or put it to good use. Eggs are not evil.* Spells that use eggs are often even blessing or unhexing spells, actually.

Blood offering is one thing I can understand frightens people. While I will only quickly touch on this, as I can’t think of any spell I would teach using animal sacrifice, I will say that in ATRs which use live animals, the animal is humanely killed in a manner as one would kill an animal for kosher or halal use. The problem here is more to do with the modern person not killing their own meat, and less to do with cruelty. If you had to kill your own food, you would roll your eyes at the histrionics. See where I grew up, it wasn’t odd to have neighbors and friends raise hogs for meat, and to see that hog strung up in the fall. They were harvesting the meat. So, with cultures and traditions which use blood, the difference is that they offer blood and or meat to their spirits. The animal is not tortured. Is it evil? Again that depends on you. I eat meat, so I say if it is humanely done, no. You might not eat meat, so if an animal dies, – even humanely – you might say yes. I don’t teach spells which require you to use this sort of offering, so we need not really speak a lot on this. That said, the aims of systems which use blood offering can be for good, and to bless, so that doesn’t mean the aim is negative because the offering is what it us.

Found blood (like a used band aid,) menstrual blood, semen, sexual secretions, hairs, finger- and toenails, spit, etc – evil or no? Again, it depends why you are using these things. If you were cursed and I asked for a hair on your head, and then used that hair to remove the curse, is that evil? I’m not the morality police, so unless you go about stabbing people to get blood or raping them for sexual secretions, I don’t find this evil. I don’t find the use of images or witness samples evil.

What may surprise you is that I need none of the above to curse the fucking fuck out of you. I don’t need graveyard dirt even. This ridiculous idea that ingredients make a spell evil needs to go. Yes, we can agree that cruelty to animals is disgusting and therefore should not be used for spellwork or any other reason. Outside of that, “evil” is an intention, not an ingredient. Rare is it that people come to me asking for something malicious because they just want to be an asshole. Even cursing is often done out of self-defense when all other avenues to stop the assault by the would-be target have failed. 

So, without wanting to ruffle any feathers of those in other traditions, in my experience, “evil” is a subjective term, and in Hoodoo, this tradition does not try to moralize. What is “evil” is the motives of who is doing the work, not the ingredients used. It is far more complex than simple black or white.

~Cat

*Anyone spouting lectures regarding the evils of factory farming will be ignored. I lived most of my life in farm country, and responsibly sourced meat and eggs taste better, guarantee quality of life for the animals, and are better for you. That you are unwilling or undesiring of locating responsibly sourced meat/eggs is on you.