So, there’s this general fear about magick. It was more clear some years ago, with people insisting that magick is extremely dangerous and if you don’t do everything right, it’s going to end very badly. Clearly, this is an exaggeration in most cases. But I’d like to hear your stories of when magick actually went wrokg, when something “backfired”, or just led to a bad end, if you have stories to share.
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I don’t believe there is one successful obsession work in the history of everything that went well.
Obsession is a terrible thing that most people won’t understand. I think there are only two possible things that can happen, either the person gets a dangerous stalker, or they get absolute indifference, since the target realize they’re acting out of character (or have dealt with real obsession before) and therefore think all day about the person and never act on it in any way, not even saying hi if they can help it.
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I’d like to kindly disagree with @ReyCuervo. Obsession can go right, as long as it’s meant to. So many people do obsessions rites either expecting shit to hit the fan, or wanting something extreme and as you’ve said, out of character. But they can work out as long as both people are willing to match each other in intensity, even if that intensity is reflected back differently.
Lots of people have in mind when doing obsessions that they won’t work, that they’ll fail, that something scary will come of it, that the other person will be in over their head, etc. etc.; or in the other direction that everything will be amazing and without issue and they won’t have to adapt or change anything. The problem with obsessions is either the person casting is afraid, the person casting is incompetent, or the person casting has unreasonable expectations (whether that be in the “positive” or “negative” direction doesn’t matter).
Most obsession get fucked up really easily, I agree. But I do not all of them are doomed. Just the vast majority.
I’ll have to think about something I’ve done that’s gone wrong.
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I can think of a few. Maybe not backfires but misfires. Especially since in my past I fucked around a lot with love magick. 
Re: obsession, I actually did have a successful obsession-lite result once, using the Law. But it was mild, and boring, and went away eventually when I stopped feeding energy into it. I manifested someone “always contacting me” or something along those lines, and it manifested as them texting me random memes and garbage sometimes literally up to 15 times a day, for about 4 or 5 months. Even if I didn’t reply for 5 days straight they would keep sending me random memes and breadcrumbs. It was just weird and annoying, like dafuq, I’ve been ignoring this dude for months now or maybe replying to one in every 15 messages, and he still keeps it up from dawn til dusk.
I did a successful ritual to get me a relationship with a specific person (like “get my ex back” type shit), which manifested in about 10 days or so, but I neglected to consider all the other variables of human relationships. So I got to call him “boyfriend” but he was exactly the same person as before, still ran hot and cold in how he treated me, and nothing changed, so we split up after like a month, a month and a half. No loss anyway, he was not a good person.
I’ve done love rites that have increased my feelings for someone else, but not theirs for me (as far as I can tell), which was annoying.
Later there was someone I was getting close with, we were tuning each other, and in my mind it was only a matter of time before we’d get together. I did a ritual for “bring something to a quick conclusion” or something… he ended up meeting an old flame and basically overnight went cold on me 
all good though, we stayed good friends, and we wouldn’t have been a good match anyway. And I guess that’s not so much a backfire as a “does exactly what it says on the box” result.
I had another funny misfire with one with those “does what it says on the box” spells. Another person I was casually seeing, we were going on dates and getting along well. I used “Get a confession” thinking he’d confess some feelings… he confessed he didn’t want a relationship I look back on these and laugh.
There is one thing… I don’t know if I count it as a backfire, and I honestly don’t think I had anything to do with it. But I was manifesting a move to another city (now complete, here and living rent-free in the most expensive city in the country), and about 4 to 6 weeks into it, some of my family suddenly announced they’d decided to move to the same city. Like it was a very out-of-the-blue decision but when they told me they had already planned and arranged it all and said they’d be leaving 2 weeks from the day they told me. I was shocked by how quickly it happened, the whole “fear of success” thing, and then when I wavered and questioned myself, and whether I had anything to do with it all falling into place so quickly, one of my family members fell seriously ill during the move to the new city and ended up in the ICU of a hospital halfway between the new city and the old one. (Delayed their move by about 2 months but all ended well, in fact far better than expected.) I don’t count this as a backfire but… you know. I had to wonder if I was responsible somehow, for not keeping faithful to what I was manifesting. I felt guilt for a while over that.
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Mine are usually unintended consequences. I get pulled into a lot of stuff and have a tendency to experiment (not necessarily related).
I was using Belial and Paimon for a promotion. It’s really hard to get promoted where I work. It can take 2-10 years to move up one notch, usually closer to 10 at the “level” I was hired in at. Not unusual that I was having issues getting promoted. Hadn’t used any sort of magic for decades until 2018-2019. They came to me to help, not the other way around. I was just going to solo it.
Promotion season rolls around and I get notified of an HR action and got all excited. That’s a $10K bump, if I get promoted and an extra $10K from then on. Seeing dollar signs.
Then I get handed a piece of paper. It was a $2K bonus (still rare here) for doing something well above my role that other departments/orgs found valuable. Wasn’t promoted. Belial wanted some sort of “Thanks” for the whole thing.
On the experimental side, I had a friend I trusted enough to practice bringing them inside myself, similar to doing it with spirits like Hecate, right? Done it before to help stabilize people’s moods that I was doing a lot of work for.
Well, if you pull them in far enough, it starts to lean more towards possession. Hadn’t brought anyone in that far before and, no, there was no struggle or anything like that. It was a JUST step up from doing it those other times, right?
This friend and I already have some bonds that I suspect are past life (slowly giving more credit to this, over time, with experiences like these). There are people on this forum that I’m positive I’ve had past lives with, that I’ve done work with, and the bonds are much stronger and quicker than with “regular” people. They don’t seem to result in strong feelings though. Closeness, a stronger knowing of them and their state, those are the two most common that I’m aware of.
But this time, it went beyond that. Both ways and it was like being connected on several levels, the closeness more like longing lovers, affecting both of us. I know neither of us cast anything like that, so the most logical explanation was that it was due to the experimentation. I only pulled her in 3 or 4 times, with the last being the strongest. None of the sessions lasted longer than 5 minutes and usually 2-3. The 5 minute one was because I was walking outside while doing it and had to slightly break state to act normal and navigate.
If you find yourself in this situation and don’t want to cast to try to fix it, I would suggest focusing in on the person and pulling your energy back that remains inside of them. It’s strictly a calling, a pulling of your personal energy.
Once I did this, the emotion died down significantly, the bindings unraveled, and it felt like there were holes where the energy had entwined significantly. Given all that was going on at the time, there is the possibility that there was an outside influence, but I’m taking credit for this one.
Obviously, if I knew it would’ve resulted in that, I wouldn’t have done it. The only magical act/actions I deeply regret. Probably cost me a close friendship. There is still a feeling of “loss” for me. Not like a rough break up, but the loss of the energetic closeness. The knowledge wasn’t worth the price.
(Has nothing to do with the forum changes, but was around that time.)
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I’m curious, in what Sign was Venus when you were born, and was she conjunct the Sun?
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Venus in Leo. Not sure what conjunct is, but Sun in Gemini.
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Making mistakes in magic is very important. Very. No one should judge if magic was done bad way or right way or backfired or was this or that. It is called life and mistakes is part of life, with or without magic. Not making mistakes is not only impossible but it is also a reason of life and also evolving and growing and making magic better. Not knowing you did a mistake, how then to make things way better after that? Just a thought. It is what I know on this subject.
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We’re largely going to agree here. I think the other intended purposes of this thread is to show that it wasn’t the end of things, lessons learned, and maybe some insight into how to go about not repeating things.
Anybody posting here hasn’t died from their magic , but there are still situational insights to be gained. My reading of the thread meant this was one of the larger purposes for it.
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Two-faced.
I’m a mummy’s boy Cancer with the Moon in heaps of my houses. It’s fucked! That stated, in Chinese astrology I’m a Jade Ashtray.
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What do you mean? PFFT. NOTHING COULD GO WRONG.
My bad results come from spells being taken too literally or not literally enough.
I easily can find examples of the latter:
-
(No judgement zone) Sex spell involving another person. All I wanted was a quick hit and move on. Unfortunately, I used a vague request: “I wish [individual] would feck me.”
→ Well, they did, but metaphorically.
→ Threw me entirely off track for a long time. Fecked my whole life up. Still not over that.
→ Why I’m always like: “You should REALLLLYYYYY think about it before trying to bring your ex back” in the threads. -
Tried to make a pact with my patron to help me smoothly transition into non-aliving. Patron agreed to the pact, convinced me to take a nap, then sent me on an adventure into the “death of my old self” and becoming a better person
I’ve had spells/curses/jars do some unintended things:
- It’s a joke in my family at this point that my curse jars like killing my targets’ fathers. No idea why.
→ Of course, this hurts people I don’t intend to hurt. Wound up having to write more specific terms for my curses.
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Two-faced and arrogant as fuck apparently: Sun and Mercury in Gemini, Leo ascendant, Leo in 1st house, and 3 other planets in Leo 
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A failed pact with Lilith. I said I will sacrifice an addiction of mine and yeah.
I did the whole extensive ritual. Sealed the contract. And three days later who is on that addiction binge?
And worse not even apologizing. Tried to smoothe it over. Needless to say I got very much punished.
But I survived it and now she is more inclined to MAYBE … help with what I wanted in the first place.
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That was certainly part of it, actually, to see exactly how bad things went wrong for those who it went wrong for. The horror movie tropes (And 20th Century fear-mongering) are far from the reality in most cases, and magick is indeed a beautiful art, and it also points towards something wonderful about the entire cosmos.
Interestingly, so far the only ill effects reported on here so far have come from either magicians using their own power or from workings with Demons. I believe it was largely the same on the other forum (And a lot of people on there went through quite a great deal of suffering on their path). Of course, that does not mean any of that is wrong, but it is interesting to note, especially how these results come about.
Certainly, there is no judgement on any of that. I can’t personally say I have had disastrous results from magick, but I do recall a fairly ill effect of something when I was too experimental, and otherwise just strange and unpleasant mental states as after-effects. Although I wouldn’t say mistakes and suffering is necessary to wisdom, but I certainly respect someone who has a lot of experience, with part of that experience being things having gone wrong, and can lead to wonderful insight, with which they can help others wonderfully. This can also prepare a person to receive certain wonderful wisdom if they so happen to have the opportunity to receive it.
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Yes my point also reaches this fact; practice the craft as often as possible and as dedicated as possible.
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That post resonates a lot, actually, it is true that fears are everywhere. The fear of being judged also if we make a mistake. Wicca or any other religious or magical path is for me a way to reach the upper echelon, tools to reach a certain level or spirituality and to make grow our abilities but with all the conditioning we had at Schools, Colleges, TV shows etc. Very hard to rewire the brain, outside the flock or the collective consciousness.
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I’ve experienced and seen real fuckups in Magick. Both paths! Maybe the occult attracts a certain type. And I know from personal experience just how powerful and dangerous is (fucked up) Magick. When I was young (the pre-Internet Age), I read all these books with dire warnings about the occult. As a young bloke I just dismissed these as sales generating hyperbole. Later, I discovered I was wrong.
This is the main reason I go on and fucking on about mastering a Banishing ritual. I know what can happen when you don’t know how.
Back in the 1970s I met this beautiful woman with a gorgeous set of tits who married and went on a honeymoon to India where both she and her husband took the Oath of the Abyss and then – to add insult to injury – began, but never completed the Abramelin working! Get fucked!
I took her out to dinner in the early 1990s and a salutary lesson that was.
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My least favorite part of un-binding right there.
Okay so I’ve come up with 2 things to mention. The first was me being young, naive, and irresponsible; and the second is much the same but someone else participated.
So when I was younger I met someone and when I was 18 we started dating. He was involved in somethings which were dangerous, liked his motorcycle, and was reckless sometimes. I wanted to keep better tabs and bound the fuck out of us. I wanted to know what he was thinking, I wanted to know what he was feeling, I wanted to know what he was getting up to. It worked really well until I didn’t want to be attached to him anymore.
And then I had to figure out how to undo that. And it was really fucking hard. I have a way that I conduct this type of deep, entrenched bindings and it’s not fun. The next two weeks-a month were hell. It took more than a day to do it, and the after-effects fucking sucked (the above hell I noted). That handled the energy entanglement/merge issue pretty well, but didn’t take care of the lingering feelings so feel. Dantalion “fixed” the rest of the issue for me by just kind of pulling out the seeds of those feelings and everything that had sprouted from them.
The second one happened when I was participating in a group working several months back. Some of you may remember this story. I had been over at my grandma’s house and I felt something really scary. I’m known to have premonitions and at first I was really concerned it was related to my grandmother. But I contacted a couple people and one of them had shared the experience with me. It felt like someone decided to light a fire in my chest while squeezing my heart with sharpened claws.
It was a few hours later that I was in the car, on my way back, and there was this thing that just showed up. It was a big eel-ish creature. Red and green. Fucking giant and so visible I thought it was tangible. It took a good look at me, made a scary face, and dissipated. It looked so real I was concerned the car would smash into it. It had so many fucking teeth. Goddamn terrifying.
A few nights later I was in ritual with Buer. Buer, with me, adamantly refuses to be around if I have a certain other type of spirit around (like the murderous kind). It was, as it wont to be with Buer, a healing ritual. GL showed up. To intimidate and to threaten. (S)he came in behind me and the energy was just wrong. So wrong. And I turned behind me because Buer had decided he was gonna leave mid-ritual. And there (s)he was. Behind me. I was fucking angry, I was livid. Who fucking dares interrupt my ritual to fucking threaten me and posture like that? Mind you, I know and have (successfully) worked with GL before (3 targets). I’ll mention that I called Buer back after my tantrum and we finished ritual quickly.
That night, or maybe the next, GL came back again. In the middle of the night. As a dog. To just show her face and threaten some more. I was furious. I have still not contacted GL, I’m still not over it.
As a result of these things, I’ve made a few binding pacts with spirits and made some wards that I didn’t have or find need of before then.
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