Bad Medicine: Meditations on Black Magic

[Ancient History]

What is black magic? What is it mean to be a black magician? I could go look it up in an actual book, but I prefer to work through my thoughts by writing about it.

So there are three general types of black magic: magic that is inherently bad, magic that is used to do bad things, and magic that results from something or doing something bad. There's a fair bit of overlap, but let's look at some specific examples.

Demon magic is bad because it comes from demons. The source of the magic is bad, so the magic itself is bad. It doesn't really matter what you try to do with demon magic, because you're probably furthering the forces of hell just by using it - although maybe there's a bit of room for fighting evil with evil, a la Hellblazer, Ghost Rider, etc.

Necromancy is bad because it raises the dead. Now, there are potentially good or neutral use of necromancy, but mostly people are more concerned about the whole fucking-about-with-corpses-and-immortal-souls bit.

Captain Pollution is bad because he's made from bad stuff. Radiation, toxic waste, smog, all that. He's also a complete asshole, but so are a lot of people. Really, he only counts as bad mojo because he uses his powers to poison the environment and recharges by soaking in toxic crap-baths.

But let's look at these in a little more detail.

Magic is Bad
The idea of Magic is Bad generally requires that there is a Source of Badness. This might be a Big Bad (Satan, Cthulhu, the Lok-Nar, Fu leng), or maybe even multiple Big Bads, so that you can have different flavors of black magic. Of course, by saying that Magic is Bad, we are applying a moral judgment to the source and/or practitioners of this magic, which can make any magical battle basically an ideological conflict (Satanic sorcerer vs. Christian saint, water bender vs. fire bender, etc.). This breaks down a bit with truly alien entities, like the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft - can something so alien really be considered antithetical? And if the "good guys" are assholes themselves, it casts the entire conflict into the light of "this magic is bad because it's not mine, and this magic user is bad because they don't agree with me."

The ultimate expression of this is when you remove the supernatural Big Bad and associate a magic as Bad because of its affiliations with a group or idea - Nazi occultism, for example, or Dark Jedi/Sith. In this case, it's the ideology and actions of the group that are most offensive, and the magic generally is offensive because it is used in support of those ideologies or activities.

In this case, Bad is relative. So to support the argument, Magic that is Bad typically overlaps at least a little with Magic does Bad.

Magic does Bad
Magic that does Bad is either magic used in a bad way, or which does bad things just from being used, and often both. The former is primarily a matter of violating mores, laws, or just plain old taboos - a sex magick orgy to raise is Bad to fundamentalists who have strong mores against group sex; magic to commit murder and violence is Bad because murder and violence is bad. In all cases, it is less that magic is being used than magic is being used to do something illegal/immoral/etc. So again, this is a rather relative measure of badness - old archmarges probably think the graffiti magicians are Bad, while others think their magic is beautiful.

On a more abstract level, magic may have specific rules, limitations, or taboos associated with it (no highlanders fighting on holy ground, no feeding the little furry thing after midnight, no stealing souls, etc.), which may or may not have direct analogue to mundane crimes. Breaking these is considered Bad too.

So we come to the other half of Magic does Bad, where Bad magic has Bad consequences. Maybe casting all those hate spells costs your soul, or makes you grow old, or get cancer, or kills your loved ones. Maybe it doesn't even happen to you directly; maybe every time you use you Hadoken the divorce rate goes up a bit, or every spell you cast Defiles the planet a little more, turning it into a desert. In this case, Bad magic is considered Bad because it does something Bad to you (power with a price, or possible side-effect/punishment) or because it does something bad to everyone.

A special case is That Which Man Was Not Meant to Know - is forbidden knowledge forbidden because it is Bad (obscene pornography), or because it does Bad (making nuclear bombs), or is it only Bad when you break the law and learn the forbidden knowledge (cracking computers)? From a magical perspective this more typically deals with lore of playing with life and death, dealing with things from below or outside, etc.

This can overlap a bit with Magic from Bad - where not only does your magic do a Bad thing, but it comes as a direct consequence of doing something Bad or from something Bad.

Magic from Bad
Earlier, we saw how the Badness of magic is relative - the magic is affliated with/comes from something considered Bad, or is Bad because you used magic to do something Bad, or because something Bad happens if you use it. The ultimate expression of this is that everything considered Bad has an associated magic - so you can have plague witches, cancer mages, necrophiliac incestuous vampire necromancers, etc. Shadowrun just labeled all of these guys "toxic" and that's a fair idea - but again, it's relative. Is a berserker physical adept toxic because they give in to rage? Isn't anger Bad? Maybe! Can you make some sort of magic out of alcohol or drugs? Sure! Crack Mage! Because Drugs Are Bad! (MarijuanaMan would disagree with you, but again - Bad is relative).

On the other claw, you have magic that comes from bad things. A toxic waste spill gives birth to toxic spirits, a horrific murder gives birth to a vengeful Candyman spectre, etc. This ties in with the above because Bad magicians typically get more powerful when close to a source of their particular Badness, and seek to cause conditions that extend their power - a plague witch tries to spread disease, for example. This ties in strongly with Magic does Bad, but the difference is that a mundane act of violation creates the magic, rather than using magic to do a mundane or supernatural violation. So sacrificing a virgin on the altar to summon a demon would be Magic from Bad, but killing someone with a spell just for lulz would be Magic does Bad. Again, this covers broad swathes of human activity - cannibalism, rape, murder (blood magic!), torture, emotional trauma, name-calling, etc. - and not everyone considers every activity bad. It's every New Yorker's God-given right to be angry, after all, river of fucking slime or no.

Putting it Together
Often, the different aspects of Bad Magic are crammed together. So in Warhammer Fantasy, for example, Magic is Bad because it is dark magic (dhar), can be used to kill people/animal/souls, violates various natural laws and mores (raising the dead, fiddling with souls, etc.), causes the necromancer to age and degenerate, increases local entropy (kills stuff), and is associated with stuff considered Bad (ghouls, vampires, undead, cemetaries, Death, undeath, etc.).

The Misguided magican is one with a differing moral viewpoint on what constitutes Bad - they think that they are using Bad magic for a greater Good, or think the magic itself is not Bad, or at least Justifiable. The True Villain magician agrees that magic is Bad, but does it anyway because it is Bad. You don't see a lot of the latter. People like to think of themselves as heroes, or at least as Not That Bad. Lord Voldemort, however, is the Baddest of Them All and wants you to know and fear him.

Bad Synergy
Something you don't often see is a Bad magician making the best out of a Bad situation. Let's say, for example, that the Warlock of the Cult of Eyes developed cancer from improperly channeling the power of the outer spheres. That's Bad. But what if he took a level in Cancer Mage and made that growing tumor in his brain his familiar? Bad Synergy happens when someone embraces something Bad about themselves and turns it to their supernatural advantage - even if it will still end up killing them. A crack addict that turns into a Crack Mage is an example of Bad Synergy; a serial murderer that actually does gain supernatural power from their victims is also an example. Generally there is a cap on their power - the Bad stuff starts to overwhelm whatever benefit they get, and they get into diminishing returns - maybe the cannibal witch gets a degenerative prion disease, or the sex magic worker gets an STD. Otherwise, they get a direct line to becoming more and more powerful.

[FatR]

This breaks down a bit with truly alien entities, like the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft - can something so alien really be considered antithetical?

Yes, of course. Great Old Ones, in particular, are dangerous for the humanity not because they are alien, but because they are total dicks, who don't care if weaker lifeforms are obliterated as the result of their (quite comprehensible, at least in terms of what they mean for the Earth) activities. And they are terrifying not because they are alien, but because they are too powerful to do more than temporarily inconvenience them. In fact 95% of the time, "Alien thinking" is just a more pretentious way of saying "Evil".

[hyzmarca]

This breaks down a bit with truly alien entities, like the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft - can something so alien really be considered antithetical?

Yes, of course. Great Old Ones, in particular, are dangerous for the humanity not because they are alien, but because they are total dicks, who don't care if weaker lifeforms are obliterated as the result of their (quite comprehensible, at least in terms of what they mean for the Earth) activities. And they are terrifying not because they are alien, but because they are too powerful to do more than temporarily inconvenience them. In fact 95% of the time, "Alien thinking" is just a more pretentious way of saying "Evil".

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

That doesn't sound too bad. Actually, it sounds fun.

The Great Old Ones are alien, but they're not evil. They're going to teach us new ways to have fun that we, in our current limited perspectives, cannot begin to imagine or understand. Attempting to explain it to us would be like trying to explain World of Warcraft to a caveman.

[ishy]

Yes, of course. Great Old Ones, in particular, are dangerous for the humanity not because they are alien, but because they are total dicks, who don't care if weaker lifeforms are obliterated as the result of their (quite comprehensible, at least in terms of what they mean for the Earth) activities. (...)

Yet I don't consider myself a total dick even if I prefer all mosquitos to be wiped out (well at least not for that reason)

[CapnTthePirateG]

This breaks down a bit with truly alien entities, like the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft - can something so alien really be considered antithetical?

Yes, of course. Great Old Ones, in particular, are dangerous for the humanity not because they are alien, but because they are total dicks, who don't care if weaker lifeforms are obliterated as the result of their (quite comprehensible, at least in terms of what they mean for the Earth) activities. And they are terrifying not because they are alien, but because they are too powerful to do more than temporarily inconvenience them. In fact 95% of the time, "Alien thinking" is just a more pretentious way of saying "Evil".

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

That doesn't sound too bad. Actually, it sounds fun.

The Great Old Ones are alien, but they're not evil. They're going to teach us new ways to have fun that we, in our current limited perspectives, cannot begin to imagine or understand. Attempting to explain it to us would be like trying to explain World of Warcraft to a caveman.

Did you not see the murder orgy implications?

And I want to play a Crack Mage.

[virgil]

Yes, of course. Great Old Ones, in particular, are dangerous for the humanity not because they are alien, but because they are total dicks, who don't care if weaker lifeforms are obliterated as the result of their (quite comprehensible, at least in terms of what they mean for the Earth) activities. (...)

Yet I don't consider myself a total dick even if I prefer all mosquitos to be wiped out (well at least not for that reason)

Ants, termites, or bees might be a smidgen more appropriate as comparisons go; if only because we work together to build things like they do. And humans aren't judged to be evil when they pave a driveway, benefiting a little as one human a minor convenience at the cost of thousands of ant lives that may be in that location. The difference is more than one of power level, but of extra dimensions of awareness, scale of thought and size, and even technology we can't even begin to understand how it could be replicated.

[Midnight_v]

Reminds me of the Orange and Blue morality thread. If the dominant sentient life for reproduced via ovipositor into live things, the perspective bout evil might be very diffrent.
I disagree about the pretentious way of saying evil in regards to the old ones because I'm pretty sure its the insect rubric with the majority of them we're either in the way or inconsequential, like how the super rich look at the super poor, actually jus the non-elites throught history. Its just on a magnified scale.

[K]

Evil magic really only falls into two categories:

1. Evil consequences. Either using the magic does evil things to unwilling people, it can only be used for evil, or it requires evil actions to work. So examples would be magic that kills innocent people as part of it's effect, magic that can only used to rape people, or magic that requires live sacrifices of babies would all fall into that category.

2. Forbidden magic. At this point, any kind of magic can be labeled as evil by anyone if they have any reason. Orcs will call Elven Tree Magic evil because it perverts nature and elves will call orcish Rage Magic evil because rage is the root of evil.... the actual effects and consequences are irrelevant and the labeling is just cultural prejudice.

That being said, you'll note that Crack Magic is only evil if someone labels it as such (#2). It may harm the user, but the user did have a choice to use it and so doesn't fall into criteria #1.

Being a Crack Mage is only evil if it required you to get other people hooked on crack. Just being magic that sends off crack-like effects at enemies or required crack use is not fundamentally different from magic that sets things on fire or requires rare gems. I mean, you can make an argument that magic that requires rare gems is evil because that wealth could be used to feed orphans, but you'll find few people who'd agree with you. The same goes for a crack-using mage.

Considering the alternatives like summoning flesh-tearing killing animals or covering people into magic acid, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who thought that forcing someone to get high or addicted is terribly evil.

[Ancient History]

I like to make the distinction of bad magic happening from mundane evil as a third category because it is a consistent trope in literature and roleplaying. Like maybe selling all those bad batches of crack that kills people unwittingly results in crack zombies.

[K]

I like to make the distinction of bad magic happening from mundane evil as a third category because it is a consistent trope in literature and roleplaying. Like maybe selling all those bad batches of crack that kills people unwittingly results in crack zombies.

They aren't different.

Magic is mundane actions that have a supernatural effect. It doesn't matter if those mundane actions are special words and rituals spoken by an expert or something as indirect as a random person killing someone in such a way as to make them rise as a vengeful ghost.

I supposed one could break them up into accidental and intentional, but the instant that someone tries to replicate an accident, you get intent. This means that the instant that someone tries to create crack zombies by spreading crack, the act becomes a magic ritual.

[Prak]

yeah, I agree with K that the three categories in OP are actually different enough to count as distinct. Basically Magic is bad because either there is inherent badness to it (does bad things, fueled by demons/murder/virgin blood, calls on negative forces like pollution) or it's bad because people think it's bad (crack magic, any magic that isn't god granted miracles, etc.)