Magic, Healing, and the Importance of Consent
Magic, Healing and The Importance of Consent.
By Roman Delgado.
“ If it harms none, do what thou will” is far from specific. ""
Most Pagans and Wiccans interpret that line of the Wiccan Rede as a way to be reminded that we must not use magic for destructive purposes. As well as way to guide our actions in everyday life, to carry ourselves with grace and honor and treat others with dignity and respect. At least that is how I interpret it. However, the world of magic is rarely that black and white.
I have come to know how much damage a well-intended spell can do in my path as a Shamanic Healer. It is through those eyes, the eyes of the Shaman that I will tell my story. My Journey in understanding consent and magic from the perspective of white magic began several years ago. A very treasured and respected friend, teacher and elder had fallen ill, and was in a coma. I was heartbroken and desperate. My mind raced with horror of the fact that I may be losing one of the persons who had made the biggest difference in my spiritual life. I could not let that happen. I took a Shamanic Journey and returned their soul to the world of the living. Only for them to fall ill again of the same illness and die from it a long time later. For me I did not wish to face or understand why that happened, I had the permission of her family to do healing, they requested healing from our mutual community in general. Yet today I come to know I never asked for the permission of the most important person in this healing: The person receiving it. In that Shamanic Journey I missed one of the most important steps, to ask the soul in Non-Ordinary Reality if they wished to return to life, or if their time to shed their mortal coil was finally here for them. As I know it now bringing my friends soul back into their body was a violation of my ethics as a healer and witch both. I feel little comfort from the fact that my own judgement was highly clouded by powerful grief and fear. If the loved ones of this member of my soul family ever read this blog post, I can only hope that one day they will find it in their souls to forgive me, I allowed my emotions to cloud my judgment as a healer. I know now that this why my teachers in the Shamans Path have taught me to never do deep Shamanic Healing for someone you love deeply. Your judgement will be clouded by emotions too difficult to control at that moment.
I have spent several years in my path as a Shamanic Healer trying to come to terms with and understand what happened to my friend and teacher. That understanding came in January 2022, through workshop with The Foundation For Shamanic Studies. In this workshop we were asked to shamanically have our souls exit our bodies in Shamanic Trance, and visit a spirit we have a strong relationship within our paths as healers. In other words, spirits of highly evolved spirituality and energy who help us do our healing work and also teach us about Shamanism. The purpose for this Shamanic Journey was to understand that everything is alive and connected, and how permission is always needed in our work as healers.
I laid down and closed my eyes, the sound of the drum began. The drums rhythmic beat relaxed me. It allowed me to lose track of the world around me and have my soul project itself into the real where spirits live, or Non-Ordinary Reality as my teachers call it. I flew upwards into the heavens passing several layers until I came to where I was meant to rest and learn. There in her own place within creation was a spirit I call Grandmother Spider. A large, gigantic spider in her web with the head and face of an elderly indigenous woman. I posed my questions to her. She responded as follows:
“Roman, do you see my web? Each connection between its strands is a being in creation. Each with its own soul and consciousness. Be them a stone or a human being. It doesn’t matter, everything is alive, and everything is connected. Each being births into reality, into the web lessons and wisdom needed for all creation. Each unique in its perspective; however, all have free will. To do with it as they wish, for constructive purposes or destructive. All of it fits within the energy of the lesson each has to birth into my web. So what happens when someone does not respect that free will? Be it by helping, healing or doing harm? The life lessons that were meant to be learned by that being and echoed through the web are displaced. Displaced but not lost. As such they eventually return, not gently but with immense destructive force for the whole web and everyone in it. Like a tsunami that both destroys and fixes the mess that has been created when free will has been disrespected. This is what humans in the New Age movement call ‘karma’ ”
At that moment the signal from my teacher to return to our bodies came, and we all returned to Ordinary Reality, to this world and began to share our messages from our spirits with each other.
This is how I learned that even the most well-intended form of magic such as healing, can be a deeply harmful act. It can be the blackest of magics, I now understood at a whole other lever what happened those years ago with my Friend and Teacher. I now understand that there is no spell that truly “Harms None” when we do not all work together for the same goal. I will forever live with the lesson from Grandmother Spider, to understand that everything is alive, everything is connected. To disrespect the free will of one, is to do harm to all of creation. Many Witches who are not Wiccan and are mainly spell casters may disagree with my observations here. Many may see me a as a love and light type. Those of you who know me now how far from the truth that is. I have faced my darkness, and I now know to give others the space to do the same; and to do so their own way. Thank you, Grandmother Spider, your lesson has not fallen on deaf ears. I hope that sharing it with the world may please my helper spirits, and that if my words have moved you, you do what is the most fundamental part of the Shamans path is: Act! Share this and discuss it with your magical community. Even if it is because it has moved you into discomfort.
Blessed Be. ------------------------------------------
Roman Delgado is a Psychic Reader and Shamanic Healer at Teotl Tonalli Intuitive Arts. He is an active member of the Keepers of the Flame Coven, ATC (The Ever Green Hearth) Please check our Community Connections page to find ways to connect with Roman or other members and Affiliates of The Ever Green Hearth.