Protecting Your Space

Wards and shields can only do so much if you don't first understand boundaries.

One of the types of magic that gets asked about a lot is the category of protective magic. In an uncertain world, the idea that we can magically ensure that no one messes with us, or the people and things that matter to us, is very attractive. Whatever we can do to feel safer, stronger, more at ease, helps ease the stress of this pandemic struck, late-stage capitalistic hellscape, am I right?

And what could be more benign, more positive in its magical energy than protecting what we love? It’s so damned simple.

But, is it really?

Oh, the interwebs and the bookstores and the workshops are all filled with practical information about how to do basic protection magic. Next to money magic it’s probably the most practical thing people want from their witchy practice. And protection magic is fairly simple to perform and usually has a low risk of magical blowback.

Low risk, however, is not the same thing as no risk.

One of the things I teach my students is that while it is true that you are not under an obligation to only do good things with magic that never harm anyone, you do have to accept responsibility for all the consequences of your work, and all the karmic burdens that ride along with what you do. My gods probably won’t immediately and directly punish me if I kill someone, but I will become a killer, a murderer even, and I will have to fully live within that identity and all that goes with it, including the social and legal approbations. My gods will not shield me from that shit — I will have to own it as who I am. All the social, legal, and karmic consequences are now mine to deal with.

And every magical action always bears the risk of unforeseen consequences. Let's say, for example, you want to protect a loved one from an ex boyfriend who is harassing them, or a prospective boyfriend who appears to be trying to swindle her. And so you erect a protective barrier that will categorically prevent anyone with nefarious intent from accessing your loved one. You haven't been terribly specific in exactly how the spell will do this.

You should not be surprised when the ex breaks his leg. You should not be surprised when he develops an infection that requires him to be quarantined. You should not be surprised when his car wrecks. And you might have to start asking yourself what exactly is your karmic responsibility here for some of this. Because while you did the spell trying to protect your loved one, not specifically to injure the boyfriend, you left that door open just enough to let the magic do what it had to.

Yes, this is very much a gray area, and I am not the final arbiter on how karma reads this kind of situation. My point is that what you might think is a categorically benign act, might actually have some harmful impacts if you don't think things all the way through and really vett the work from a number of different angles. If you don't mean for a spell to work injury on others, you need to be specific about that. I am not against causing harm if harm is what you intend. So long as you are willing to own what you do, do what you want. (Just don't whine afterwards when you are held to account for it.) But if you are causing harm when it is not your intention to do so, then it's up to you to figure out how to deal with that. Because you will get stuck with the consequences.

The other thing to realize here is that magical protection is not a substitute for exercising your non-magical protective capacities. It's great to put a ward on your school backpack so that no one nicks your laptop. But that doesn't mean that you can leave your backpack on a bench in the student union for half a day and expect that no one will rifle through it and take stuff. Lock your doors. Walk home by well-lit routes. Don't let people pour your drinks from unmarked containers. Magic works. Magic helps. But magic does not fix stupid.

But it goes even further than that. Protecting yourself is also making good choices about who you allow to engage with you energetically. Shields are great but they have their limits. You can have great personal shielding, but if you choose to spend every working day of your life in an environment that has toxic coworkers and an abusive boss, your shields are not going to be enough to protect you from the draining experience you are placing yourself in. Good, strong shields can take some of the edge off, but they can't turn a bad situation that is damaging your psyche into a good thing, or even a neutral thing. That’s a different kind of magic than simple protective work.

Daily shielding of the magnitude necessary to maintain calm in a sea of trouble is a lot of work. Do you really want to have to work that hard for your peace of mind in the first place? Yes, all relationships are work, and you can't expect to always live your life in a bubble that has no friction, no conflict, no disagreement. Toxic positivity is real. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Facing problems, naming them and dealing with them is a vital part of having healthy relationships. But that doesn't mean that you should needlessly invite difficult situations and toxic people into your personal space or give them space just because they ask it of you. Sometimes the best thing you can do is keep the drama at arms length.

From the annals of failed attempts at protection throughout history, I present The Great Wall of China, which of course, failed to protect the Ming Dynasty and many other dynasties from being invaded. Photo by: zhaojiankangphoto

There are certain people I have consciously sidelined in my life not because they are bad people (they aren't), but they're sources of unnecessary drama. Maybe they are just consistently negative in everything they say -- being with them is being subjected to a constant stream of complaining and blaming. Or they are a pot-stirrer, constantly using rumor and talking out of school to unearth trouble or negativity or conflict that they can feed for their own entertainment. Or they are looking for validation, and to spend time with them is to be subjected to a lot of posturing about how great they are, or how amazing their life is, without a lot of honesty about what is really going on for them. In all of these instances, the behavior boils down to a common thread -- people who are more interested in obtaining something from you than in authentically being with you.

There is a difference between someone who's coming to you with a problem and authentically seeking shelter with you because they know you and feel safe with you, and the person who sees you as an available ear, and really, they just want the attention and the sympathy. You can see it when someone raises conflict because they want to resolve it, and when they do it because they think causing a reaction in someone is a display of their influence and power. There is the person who gives as good as they get, and the person for whom all the goods seem to flow one way.  If you're paying attention, you will be able to tell which is which pretty quickly. You are not under an obligation to scratch someone just because they have an itch.

Protection and warding starts not with applying magic, but with understanding boundaries. What behaviors are you willing to accept in your presence, and what will you banish? What things or people are so important to you that you are willing to sacrifice to protect them? What fears stand in the way of you doing the things that you most want to do? Until you really understand what you are trying to protect and why, none of the magic you apply to the situation is really going to be effective. And protecting something magically that you don’t bother to protect mundanely isn’t going to do much either.  You cannot protect something if you do not understand its  boundaries.

I was recently driving home from work, and the driver in the car behind me was incredibly upset by the stop-and-go rush hour traffic. He was honking his horn, screaming at everything, waving his hands, as if he was the only guy in the whole conga line of cars who really needed to go anywhere. Seeing this in the rear view mirror, I admit I was grateful that I wasn’t him. One of my friends, when I told them, remarked that one should never engage with a person like that, because people under the influence of that kind of road rage are often violent. All I could think was how I had little desire to engage with a person like that, mostly because giving them access to my energetic space would be exhausting and unsatisfying. It wasn’t fear of the man’s violence that motivated me, but the desire to protect my personal space from his needless turbulence.

The point here is that being focused on what I want to proactively cultivate is going to go further towards promoting my well being than trying to be vigilant against every potential threat. Because yes, threats exist, and they can come from anyplace. But you can spend so much effort trying to identify and neutralize every potential threat that you never actually do much else. Being safe and miserable isn’t really protection, it’s a prison.

Protection magic can be very valuable. And when you are feeling threatened, you don’t want to quibble over nuance, you just want to feel safe. The kind of protection you need when you are actually and immediately threatened is different than what you need when you are protecting against inchoate threats that have not manifested yet. And what kind of protection you need is always guided by what it is you are seeking to protect.

Like most magic, what seems simple at first is anything but. And being good at protection magic will demand you take a long hard look at yourself and what you really want. Protection magic is a very necessary part of a witch’s arsenal. It is the one form of magic we must be good at if we want to move from being a beginner to more advanced work. So, don’t think that any of this is me telling you not to do it.

What I am telling you is do it in the most thoughtful way you can. Find the method that requires the least energy expenditure. Perhaps focus less on all the potential threats and more on the line and shape of the thing you are protecting. Vett your methods for potential harmful consequences. But most of all, understand the limits of the protection you can really mount, and know when the job is not really about protection, but transformation.

Blessed Be, my witches.