Gray Magic
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Gray magic is a term used to describe magic not performed entirely for beneficial, ethical or spiritual purposes, yet not malevolent either. It is seen as falling in a continuum between white and black magic.
According to D. J. Conway, practitioners of white magic avoid causing any form of harm, even for positive outcomes, such as in stopping people committing evil deeds, energies or entities; gray magic incorporates all the beneficial purposes of white magic, but also works towards ridding the world of evils. Still, Ann Finnin states that many practitioners of gray magic employ the term because of its vagueness, to avoid having to consider ethical questions.
A rather different meaning to the term was given by Roy Bowers, an influential British witch of the 1960s. For him, it was a technique of baffling, bewildering, and mystifying everyone he met in order to gain power over them, since by doing so he was always more sure about them than they were about him. In his article entitled Genuine Witchcraft is Defended, Bowers says the following,
“One basic tenet of witch psychological grey magic is that your opponent should never be allowed to confirm an opinion about you, but should always remain undecided. This gives you a greater power over him, because the undecided is always the weaker. From this attitude much confusion has probably sprung in the long path of history.
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