The Sacred Art of Saying “Not Today, Oppressor”

(everything stated in this blog is based upon my own research, personal practice, and opinion)

Hexing. The word alone makes some neo-pagans clutch their moonstone necklaces like Victorian ladies spotting ankles.

The idea of using magic to cause harm, or even mild inconvenience, has become so taboo in certain corners of the New Age and Wiccan echo chambers that saying “I hexed someone” can get you excommunicated from your crystal shop’s punch card program.

We’re told that hexing is “low vibe,” “not spiritually evolved,” and definitely not in line with The Rede (you remember, that brittle moral napkin too many keep pretending is divine law).

Here’s the inconvenient, incense-scented truth: hexing can be ethical.
In fact, hexing can be radical, necessary, and even holy.

This isn’t about revenge spells cast because Karen cut you off in traffic or didn’t compliment your Samhain outfit. This is about resisting oppression, defending the vulnerable, and wielding spiritual power like it means something. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is say, “Absolutely not, and may your WiFi always buffer.”

What Even Is a Hex?

First, let’s define our terms before someone emails me angrily in Comic Sans.

A hex is a magical act intended to cause disruption, harm, interference, or imbalance in someone’s life. It’s often used to punish wrongdoing, create consequences, or remove power from someone who is abusing it.

It’s not a prank spell. It’s not “manifesting their karma.” It’s not a “bad vibes” visualization wrapped in spiritual euphemism. It is a conscious, direct act of magical opposition.

And guess what? That’s not inherently evil.

In fact, many of our spiritual ancestors wouldn’t have even blinked at the concept. Cunning folk, rootworkers, brujas, shamans, shamankas, bokors, witches…all had techniques for cursing and hexing. Not because they were sadistic, but because they lived in the real world, where people hurt each other and power needs checks.

The modern Western rejection of hexing as “unethical” says more about sanitized suburban spirituality than it does about actual moral reasoning.

The Cult of Niceness Is Spiritually Bankrupt

Let’s be blunt: “positive vibes only” is not a moral code. It’s a spiritual anesthetic. It lets you avoid the discomfort of real emotion, real confrontation, and real accountability.

The idea that you must always act in love, peace, and sparkles is a philosophy best suited to Care Bears, not occultists navigating late-stage capitalism, systemic injustice, and generational trauma.

Hexing violates the code of “niceness,” and thank the gods for that. Because nice doesn’t mean kind. Nice means inoffensive. Nice means submissive. Nice means complicit. The demand that all witches be “nice”, even to their oppressors, is spiritual tone-policing. Ethical resistance requires moral clarity, not moral purity. Sometimes clarity looks like saying, “You do not get to keep hurting people without magical consequences.”

The Hex as Political Act

Now we get into the real fire.

Hexing isn’t just personal, it can be political. It can be a way of fighting back when all the other systems are rigged against you. When the courts are corrupt, when the cops are violent, when institutions protect abusers, what tools are left?

For many, especially practioners who are BIPOC , queer, trans, disabled and/or otherwise on the margins, magic becomes the last space of agency. Hexing becomes an act of radical defiance.

Hexing the landlord who’s trying to evict your elderly neighbor so they can gentrify and raise the rent?
Hexing a cop who brutalized someone in your community?
Hexing a politician trying to erase your existence? Hexing a group removing science, and history from school textbooks?

This isn’t petty. This is revolutionary.

Magic has always been a weapon of the disenfranchised. If you’re only comfortable using it for herbal tea and affirmations, then you’re treating it like a lifestyle accessory, not a living tradition.

“But Karma!”, And Other Toothless Threats

Let’s tackle the inevitable New Age counterargument: “If you hex, karma will get you.”

Okay, let’s be serious. Karma is not a cosmic point system with immediate refund policies. It’s a complex philosophical principle from Eastern traditions that Westerners love to misinterpret as “what goes around, comes around, especially to practioners I disapprove of.”

Karma doesn’t mean you get punished for defending yourself. Karma means your actions have consequences, yes, but that doesn’t make all consequences equal.

If I hex a fascist to get chronic diarrhea before a press conference, and they stop inciting genocide for five minutes to sprint to the bathroom, guess what? I’ll take that karmic hit.

That’s not imbalance. That’s justice. That’s resistance.

You cannot bastardize another culture’s moral scaffolding just to avoid hard choices. We need to build an ethical structure that actually accounts for power, context, and impact, not some candy-coated cosmic boomerang.

Who Gets to Be “Above” Hexing? (Hint: The Comfortable)

Let’s unpack a little spiritual classism, shall we?

The witches who most vehemently denounce hexing tend to be… well, comfortable. Safe. Removed from direct violence. Often white, middle-class, neurotypical, and living in communities where the worst injustice is someone parking in their space at the farmer’s market.

For folks who don’t need hexes, hexing looks like a moral failure. For those who do, it’s a survival tool. If you have the luxury of choosing not to hex because your environment is safe, your life is protected, and your rights are respected, congrats, that’s privilege. But… don’t pretend your abstinence makes you holy. It makes you comfortable. Don’t shame others for using the tools they have when the world has failed them.

When Hexing Is Actually More Ethical Than Forgiveness

Forgiveness is great. Until it becomes a bludgeon. There’s a dangerous tendency in neopagan and New Age circles to demand that victims forgive too quickly. To let go. To “love their enemies”. To bypass the necessary fires of rage and retribution.

Forgiveness without justice isn’t healing. It’s erasure.

Sometimes the ethical thing is not to forgive, but to act.
To hex the abuser so they can’t keep hurting others.
To curse the institution that enabled harm.
To bind the hands of those who perpetuate cycles of trauma.

That isn’t “lower vibrational.” That’s soul-deep integrity.

The hex can be the ritual of justice in a world where justice often fails.

Consent, Consequence, and the Hexing Code

Let’s be clear: hexing isn’t free of responsibility.

That’s what separates an ethical hex from spiritual sadism. There are rules. Not the Rede’s cartoon rules, but real, lived, relational ethics.

Here’s a working framework for hexing as ethical resistance:

1. Is this hex defensive or retaliatory?
   If it’s to stop harm, it’s probably ethical. If it’s just to satisfy your ego… reflect.
2. Is this person in a position of power or causing harm?
   Punching up is very different from punching down.
3. Have other routes been tried or exhausted?
   Hexing shouldn’t be the first resort, but it doesn’t have to be the last.
4. Are you willing to accept the consequences?
   Because magic always has consequences. Not punishment…ripples.
5. Are you doing this with clarity and intention, not just anger?
   Rage is sacred, but scattershot hexing is just magical flailing.

Hex with discernment. Not because you’re afraid of punishment, but because you understand your power is real.

Reclaiming the Witch as Resister

Witches were not the peacekeepers. They were the edgewalkers. The ones who cursed the nobles, hexed the sheriff, poisoned the landowner’s crops when he raised taxes. They were resisters, outsiders, subverters of empire. If your witchcraft doesn’t challenge power, what exactly is it doing?

The image of the witch as a healing earth-mama with soft hands and a passive smile is a modern construction, mostly made for selling bath bombs. Witches hexed injustice. It’s long past time to bring that back.

The world doesn’t need more docile “lightworkers” with Etsy shops and victim-blaming mantras. It needs warriors. Spell-slingers. Hex-wielding saboteurs of the status quo.

Hexing as Sacred Duty

Sometimes, hexing isn’t just allowed, it’s required.

When you hex, you’re saying:
I will not let this pass.
I will not make peace with this injustice.
I will not wait for someone else to fix this.

That is sacred. That is powerful. That is resistance.

We honor our gods, ancestors, and spirits not only with love, but with righteous anger. Sometimes the most devout prayer is a hex spat through clenched teeth. Sometimes the holiest ritual is a curse written in ash and wine under a moon that understands exactly what you mean.

Cursing Isn’t the Enemy…Apathy Is

To hex is to care. To hex is to refuse silence. To hex is to take spiritual responsibility for protecting what matters when no one else will. Ethical hexing doesn’t mean casting chaos for fun. It means choosing to disrupt systems of harm with precision, passion, and moral clarity.

Let’s stop pretending that “doing no harm” is a viable strategy in a world built on harm. Instead, let’s be brave enough to say:
If they harm the vulnerable, I will act.
If they abuse their power, I will curse their grasp.
If they endanger the sacred, I will hex without shame.

Light that black candle. Chant with purpose. Trace sigils in iron and fire. And when you curse, do it with your full chest, the full weight of your ethics, your gods, and your unyielding love for what must be protected.

Not because hexing is easy.
But because sometimes, it’s right.