Modern Witchcraft: Beginners Guide

Ethics

To will: to want your goal, believe that you are deserving of it, and be confident that you can achieve it.
To know: to have a clear goal, know all of its components, and have confidence in your knowledge and abilities.
To dare: to have the courage to seek your goal, be willing to accept the consequences, and take responsibility for your actions.
To keep silent: once you have completed the spell, avoid discussing it with others or fretting about it. Later mental energy, and other people's energy, could corrupt the original energy and weaken the spell.
The goal: the desired goal will be obtained when all four actions at the base have been carried out.

The Threefold Law

In the previous chapter "Witchcraft & Religion" I briefly discussed the Wiccan Threefold Law. This is a fundamental Wiccan belief that whatever energy you send out to the universe will return to you three times stronger. If you follow this law then that means any magick you cast meant to harm will ultimately harm yourself more than anyone else. There are ways to mitigate the Threefold Law for advanced practitioners, but as a general system it is best to avoid projecting harmful energies.

Please note that not all witches follow the Threefold Law; it is primarily a Wiccan belief, and not all witches are Wiccan. However, in general, most witches believe in some kind of concept of karma (as it is known in Western society).

Manipulating Free Will

Spells meant to coerce someone into doing something that they would not normally do is known as manipulating free will, and this is a form of baneful magick.

Love spells are notorious for the involvement of the manipulation of free will, and are therefore considered baneful magick. It is not advisable to cast a love spell on a crush or potential partner for a number of reasons: it's subverting their free will, it might be artificial love, the resulting relationship is likely to be unhealthy, and you will never know if the resulting partner truly loves you because of a spell you cast on them.

Non-specific love spells, however, are a different story. If you cast a love spell without a specific target then you are not manipulating free will. An example of this would be "a spell to find a romantic partner," as opposed to, "a spell to make [target] fall in love with me". The untargeted kind of love spell is more likely to manifest natural love without any kind of malice or ill-intent. Similarly, self-love spells are an ethical choice because of the value of loving and appreciating yourself.

Spells to get someone to think of you or communicate with you are also considered to be manipulating free will. For these kinds of spells it is important to get consent from the target person first. These spells are still useful when you expect to be apart from the target, and you ask them beforehand if it is okay to use the spell.

Consent

Even if you believe you are doing the right thing, if your desire is to practise witchcraft ethically then it is of the utmost importance to get unambiguous consent from the target (the person you wish to cast a spell on). Not only is it highly unethical to make changes to a person or their life without their consent, but you also do not always have knowledge of the full situation, and so casting a spell without express permission might backfire and cause more harm than good.

The best way to explain this is to imagine that you have a friend who tells you they are unhappy in their relationship with their partner. So you might think it's a good idea to cast a spell to strengthen their relationship. What you didn't know, however, is that your friend is actually in a toxic relationship, and by casting the spell you might have prolonged the abuse and prevented your friend from escaping. You must be aware, as a witch, that there are hidden factors to any situation which might make spellcasting risky, and this risk increases when you cast spells without consent.