Magick has been defined as the art and science of causing change to occur in accordance with one’s Will. So, when a social clique, community coven, or institutional organization deliberately uses its collective will, intentions, and influence to manipulate circumstances, interfere with another person’s life, or bring about harmful outcomes for someone it has chosen to target, I would consider that a form of baneful magick.

What makes this type of magick even more spiritually corrupt is when the social clique, community coven, or institutional organization stands to gain personally from the very harm it is attempting to bring into another person’s life. And that personal gain can take many forms, including money, social status, influence, opportunities, or greater power within the group, where the mistreatment of another human being becomes something its participants can exploit for their own benefit. And at that point, they are not simply attempting to bring about harmful outcomes through their collective intentions and actions, but are also making another person’s suffering serve their own personal or collective interests.

That’s why having a relationship with God matters to me, because it gives me a spiritual foundation and sense of self-worth that is not dependent on the intentions, desires, or collective will of the groups around me. This means that while social cliques, community covens, and institutional organizations may attempt to exercise their collective influence in ways that serve their own interests at someone else’s expense, I do not have to surrender my sense of direction, conscience, self-respect, or relationship with God to whatever they may be trying to accomplish. Instead, I can continue focusing on my personal growth, establishing healthier boundaries, and refusing to let their collective hostility compromise my integrity, all while embracing my own walk with God and seeking His guidance in how I should respond to the collective pressure, manipulation, and interference that these groups may attempt to bring into my life.

To be completely honest, group-based intimidation, manipulation, and mistreatment can sometimes take a serious toll on us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually before we even begin to understand the deeper psychological and spiritual dynamics that are at work underneath them. And it can take time to recognize those patterns for what they are, to establish healthier boundaries, and to stop internalizing the mistreatment directed at us by these groups. I know that from personal experience, because I’ve had to do a great deal of self-examination and healing to make sense of those experiences without continuing to carry the emotional weight of how other people have chosen to conduct themselves when they use the power of a group to pressure, scapegoat, and discredit someone. So, when I speak about these kinds of group dynamics, I’m not just talking out of my ass. I’ve actually been through experiences that have taught me firsthand how deeply this kind of mistreatment can affect someone’s life and how much it can take to recover from it.

And having experienced that impact firsthand, I also think about the spiritual consequences for those who choose to participate in this kind of mistreatment. This is because the harm that they collectively set in motion does not simply disappear because they have enough people participating in it to make their actions seem justified. This means that even when their conduct is reinforced by the group, each person involved remains responsible for the intentions they contribute, the actions they take, and the suffering that they help bring about. And while they may succeed in protecting their collective interests for a time, I believe there comes a point when the very patterns of manipulation, exploitation, and hostility that they have cultivated begin to take a heavy toll on their own spiritual condition. And I think that is where the deeper spiritual contradiction lies, because even though they may collectively justify their conduct, no amount of agreement can transform deliberate cruelty into righteousness, and no amount of personal gain can substitute for the integrity, accountability, and inward transformation that they have neglected within themselves.

So, one day, when the consequences of what they have collectively participated in finally catch up with them and they start experiencing the fallout of the very patterns that they once directed toward others, I hope they have enough humility to recognize that their circumstances may be directly connected to the choices they made and the conduct that they repeatedly justified within their social cliques, community covens, and institutional organizations. Because having people around them who were willing to participate in the same behavior may have made it easier to avoid confronting their own responsibility for a time, but it never made that responsibility disappear. And if those consequences eventually bring them face to face with the very aspects of themselves that they have spent so much time refusing to acknowledge, examine, and transform, I hope they recognize it as an opportunity to finally begin making meaningful changes within themselves, rather than continuing to use the group’s agreement as an excuse to avoid changing their behavior.

But as for me, if any spiritual consequences arise from the choices that these groups have collectively made, those consequences are theirs to confront, not mine to carry. I don’t need to remain involved in their affairs or spend my time waiting to see whether those consequences eventually catch up with them, especially when my own journey has already given me plenty of difficult lessons to learn from. I’ve had to take an honest look at my own choices, confront uncomfortable truths about myself, and recognize where I needed to grow. And that process has taken me through many dark nights of the soul, periods of profound personal upheaval, and seasons of uncertainty that required me to make meaningful changes along the way. And while those experiences were not always pleasant, they taught me many things about myself, my relationship with God, and the importance of taking responsibility for my own spiritual growth that I might not have learned otherwise.

All I can say is that we each have our own lessons to learn as souls, and we cannot expect other people to do the work of learning those lessons for us. If the members of these groups eventually find themselves confronting the consequences of their collective choices, then how they respond to those experiences will be their responsibility, just as how I responded to the difficult seasons of my own life was mine. And while I hope those experiences lead them toward greater self-awareness, accountability, and meaningful spiritual transformation—things I myself have had to work toward—I don’t need to remain attached to their choices, their collective conduct, or whatever spiritual lessons they may still have ahead of them. I actually have my own relationship with God to continue developing, and I would rather devote my time and energy to the spiritual path that He is guiding me along than to spend the rest of my life waiting for the members of these groups to finally stop justifying their conduct and become willing to take an honest look at themselves.