This is in regards to an ongoing conversation about consent in the Pagan, Wiccan, and Magickal communities. Mostly because festivals and ceremonial celebrations are open and relaxed spaces, people have open and relaxed behavior, which infringes upon boundaries that are normally kept up by Society Out There. Those boundaries, however, were not put in place because of Society Out there, or even uptight Bible-thumping non-magickal muggles. Consent plays a huge part in how your magickal energy is conducted, and lack of consent can send a large magickal operation into strange energy land. Let’s look at how this happens.
Mistrust. The first thing to appear when someone breaks consent is mistrust. If a jerk is not hearing me say ‘no,’ I must put up my shields in a defense move. I cannot trust my environment. Wearing shields makes my energy heavy, so now my magick is hobbled. And if I’m doing group ritual, that heavy energy is involved in that as well. So with one boundary crossing, one jerk can screw up everyone’s spell work.
Healing. The next thing that stops when someone breaks a boundary is healing. If someone is working on facing things they were afraid of before, if they are processing grief, or if they are letting go of something painful, there is a vulnerability that must occur.This vulnerability is a natural process of doing healing work, and people come to magickal spaces specifically to do this kind of Work. An unwanted advance or boundary crossing stops that vulnerability, and stifles that healing process. If that boundary crossing is made public, many people will feel unsafe enough to stop their healing processes. Sometimes, that is the only safe chance a person will have until next season. One selfish jerk can stifle healing for a lot of people.
Being in the Now. When you request consent from someone, it is about here and now. Today. This moment. Not next week. Not last week. If someone gave you consent last week, and you are assuming that those rules still apply this week, you are not living in the Now; you are stuck last week. Your magick will be looping around into an impossible Mobius strip, and you will be wasting your energy. Why bother? Asking for consent this very moment keeps you in the now, which is when any magickal energy actually is effective. If you are not in the now, you are not manifesting anything.
Power dynamics. Crossing a boundary without consent is taking power away from someone. While that might feel powerful to the person on top of that dynamic at first, it is a dead end. Eventually, they will feel powerless again, and need to go steal more. They will not learn how to build their own power by stealing from another any more than they could learn to fish by stealing another person’s catch. When someone consents with 100% of their Will, they are adding enthusiasm –and power– to any equation. This, in turn, amplifies your own enthusiasm, making the equation even more powerful.
Balance. When creative energy is in motion, it spins like a child’s top. If it becomes unbalanced, it will go off course and create chaos like a juggernaut instead of landing gently at its intended purpose. Sexual energy creates assets when it is controlled; it creates liabilities when it is not. Lack of consent creates uncontrolled juggernauts of creative energy that manifest liabilities in the lives of those who created it.
Your own fractures. If you are in the habit of breaking consent, crossing boundaries, or accidentally pushing yourself on people when you are tipsy, this is a behavior that probably embarrasses you if someone reports it back to you in the light of day. That embarassment is heavy energy, too, and sometimes will add to your defensiveness, internal self-bashing dialogues, and over all shitty feelings. If you can learn to stop that behavior without someone else calling attention to it, you can heal those fractures without incurring further pain.
If you feel that you have the privilege or the power or the skills to convince someone to have sex with you after their initial answer was “no,” you may be right. You may even have some evidence to back it up, and you might even be proud of yourself. But my question is…why would you want that? What is so important about your puny human desires that you would risk toppling everyone’s magickal working?
If you believe that you are so ultimately desirable that no human could say no to you once you turn it on…Prove it! Prove it by getting that consent over and over and over. Insist that your partners give an enthusiastic YES every time, because that’s the only meaningful type of yes. If they don’t…then maybe you need to adjust your beliefs about your sexual prowess. Maybe your shit ain’t so hot after all.
Consent is more than sexy. It is necessary to keep everyone safe. It is necessary for the magick to manifest the correct way. And it is necessary if we are going to evolve into a society of mutual respect and beneficence.