Hey Occulties,
while still a less obnoxious term than the unfortunate “baby witch” that some very Lolita-wannabe neophyte spellcasters use, this annoying phrase is one often used to describe something manifesting in an undesirable way (example - you ask for a great deal of money and your house burns down prompting the insurance company to cut a large check,) reacting unpleasantly to unintentionally mixed energies (example once did a marriage blessing for an old friend on a personal altar forgetting I’d not ritually cleaned it after doing obsession work for a friend - and became obsessed with me and my friend’s history for like a week before I figured out why that was bothering me lol,) or even just not working at all…the reality is…spells can’t literally backfire.
When we use the term backfire we mean taking an action that gives the opposite result we intended it to. So if I cursed you, and suddenly you were blessed and happy and only good things came your way, I would properly feel as if this action had backfired. Well the interesting thing is if you use reflective magic to deflect my curse, while you may not be blessed, the curse may come back and hit me. Again, this is through now fault if your action. So the action you took to curse was not backfiring, as it was properly done, it is that the target had reflective protection. Your target is not blessed by a curse which would then mean it backfired.
A love spell similarly does not make a target hate you. It does not make them more indifferent towards you. The most common problem causing love spell problems is the petitioner’s lust for results and mishandling of a situation. So if you cast a love spell on your ex, than annoy them repeatedly while constantly obsessing on the situation, and your ex seems even more annoyed with you, the problem is you. You are not letting the spell do it’s work while making your situation worse. The spell is either not even started working or you’re killing it’s energy, while simultaneously you are acting against the work.
it’s not wrong to say sometimes you get what you want but not how you want it. So if I cast a love spell on someone only to realize they are an awful, detestable person, and now they won’t stop chasing me, this is also not a spell backfiring. They were always an awful, detestable person. I was unaware when I cast my spell. Now a jerk loves me.
Or perhaps I curse a person only to realize that their misfortune negatively impacts my own fortunes. I can remember an ex wife who despised her ex husband complaining to me when she cursed him now he didn’t have enough money to pay her alimony. That also isn’t backfiring. If your income is from your target, why curse their income and expect less?
Poor action, self-defeating behaviors, and a lack of common sense are not backfiring. Stop blaming the spell for your mistakes. Be an adult, and place the blame for my upon the person who caused your problem. Yourself. Now that you own it, - that you did this to you - you will learn from that mistake and you wont soon repeat it.
However, a spell being reflected back to you via reflective work or it fizzling may not be your fault. It’s not backfiring, but it may require a different solution. Casting your own work means being willing to learn by trial and error. It doesn’t mean go cry in your hat…because you won’t learn anything from that except how to look stupid and most of us know how to look to stupid from an early age, so unless you’re out of practice and feel you need more, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and quit your crying. Crack that reflective protection, clear off the reflected work while you protect yourself from being hit from your own work (and I mean, you got hit by your own work - was it any good? Have any bite? Good! That means you know how to throw some badass spellwork,) and throw again. Spell fizzled? Well if you were sharing pictures on some internet group or something equally stupid to cause that, this time quietly blast your spell and wait for it to manifest like a real spellworker does, and stop acting like an adolescent show off. Or you can’t see a reason? Do it again. Just do it again.
Crying doesn’t get results, complaining is annoying, and practice makes perfect after all.
Spells do what they are supposed to do. When they do not, the problem lies with the spell caster, the petitioner (if not the same person,) or occasionally we all “shoot a bank” here and there for non specific reasons. They do not backfire.
Hope this was educational!
~Cat
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