This essay talks about Pagan ethics, notably the ethics of cursing, with an emphasis on how we teach magick to children.
My Pagan Spirit Gathering friends and I were talking about Nakiiya's and my plan to continue heading tween workshops at the event due to a dire need for programming for that demographic and the fact that it was in fact very fun. Ben remarked that he should also do workshops for tweens, joking that he could do a workshop... on hexing.
Alright, listen... no, they're not going to do a tween workshop on hexing at PSG, none of us are. But it did bring up something I consider important: We should be teaching these skills to Pagan kids. In an age-appropriate manner, of course.
I know some of you will probably recoil at this, because Witches have a lot of hangups about cursing in general. Because of the way solitary Wicca was initially brought to mainstream society, we have developed a strong belief that cursing is inherently, always bad. I mean, one of the last high-profile things Raymond Buckland did before he died in 2017 was complain that a bunch of feminist Witches hexed a fucking rapist. We have some deep-seated issues here.
I already wrote about this in February, so if you're thinking about things like The Threefold Law or karma or ethics, I'd encourage you to read through that for some background regarding where I'm coming from; the short story is that Pagan moralizing regarding the Threefold Law, curses, and so forth is a form of victim blaming... if the Threefold Law exists the way people claim it does, there is no way to read it as anything other than "people who are oppressed deserve it."
But about kids... well, kids need to be taught simple, black and white ethics... you can't just teach a kid to hex... right?
I disagree. I think we definitely need to teach our kids to use defensive curses, and if we don't, they will learn about those subjects from far less controlled sources.
Some backstory. I got into magick when I was a late tween myself... of my own accord. I had just gotten the Internet and my use of the Internet was not particularly monitored by my parents. I found Witchcraft through a long string of advertisements for love spells and hexes. It eventually developed into me being a well-rounded Witch who doesn't go around throwing hexes at people, but my very first spells? They weren't particularly ethical. Some of the hexes I threw at my bullies were in fact extremely unethical. They're embarrassingly awful. I don't like to think about them let alone talk about them.
Although I was not experienced enough for them to actually work, I was casting some serious edgelord shit... I was collecting spells that were intended to cause people's soul to be trapped in torment after they died and other off-the-wall stuff. And the background noise of Wiccans talking about ethics and the Threefold Law did not prevent this one bit, because I had been tormented at school since fourth grade even though I was a generally kind and loving person and saw through it as total victim-blaming bullshit.
How different could that have been if I were taught Witchcraft in a way that didn't assume justice will just happen? Where I was given magickal tools to defend myself from the get-go instead of just being told I needed to live with it and let the Goddess take over?
Teaching kids to curse should done in the way kids are taught martial arts. People stick their kids in martial arts dojos all the time where they learn to defend themselves while also learning discipline; they learn how to use their bodies in a way that potentially can physically harm others, but also learn appropriate times to use it. Little kids in martial arts are often taught to block attacks first, and when I went to my old dojo a good 75% of what the littlest kids are taught are blocks and not attacks. Teach kids binding and warding first. I know people don't want to think about it, but these are hexes! They're spells that remove people's agency and sometimes even cause harm to them. They're hexes. They're hexes. They're hexes! And you should not only be using them yourself, you should be teaching them to your kids.
And as they get older, as you become reasonably confident they're using that knowledge responsibly or going around saying weird things to their peers, teach them other things. You wouldn't take a kid to a martial arts class and not eventually teach them how to kick somebody back, so don't teach kids to bind and ward without also eventually teaching them how to hex. Teach them to do the minimum necessary to disarm somebody... again, just like most martial arts classes geared toward children and teens do.
Kicking and punching are fundamental martial arts skills... in the same way, hexing is a fundamental magickal skill.
Realize that there are more people hurting children than you know, and that the ways they hurt children are insidious, traumatic, and often perfectly legal if not socially accepted. In my own case, some of the people hurting me the most were teachers, and they were hurting me in ways that I could not fight. Hexing them was a way that I helped affirm to myself that they were doing bad things to me. It is OK to teach kids to have that kind of self-empowering agency. I'm not saying that you shouldn't also fight what's harming your kids, but giving them an outlet that empowers them is super important.
-- Setkheni-itw
