Backlash From Spells - Is it Real?

In this week’s episode of Pagan Coffee Talk, Lord Night and co-host explore the intriguing topic of spell backlash and the unintended consequences of magic. Are spells really “backfiring,” or are practitioners simply encountering outcomes they didn’t fully understand? From real-life stories to practical advice, we break down why spells sometimes go awry, the importance of knowing yourself before casting, and how your intentions can ripple through the fabric of fate.

We discuss:

•  How “backlash” is often just getting exactly what you asked for 
•  The role of divination in predicting spell outcomes 
•  Lessons from healing spells, love spells, and career magic 
•  Understanding unintended consequences vs. magical punishment 
•  Why responsible spellcasting is about knowing your limits 

If you’ve ever wondered why some spells seem to “blow up in your face,” this episode is a must-listen for anyone practicing magic or curious about modern witchcraft, spellwork, and pagan practices.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Welcome back to Pegging Coffee Talk. In this week's episode, I'm sitting here with Lord Knight, and we are discussing from our magical hat backlash from spells and unintended consequences of spells. How are you?

SPEAKER_03 0:52

I'm fine and how are you today?

SPEAKER_02 0:54

I'm good.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

So we're talking about the backlash of spells.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Right. So, you know, you go and you cast a spell and it blows up in your face? Yes. Putting it politely.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Putting it politely. This brings up this whole entire thing of what's causing the backlash. Okay. I mean, let's think about this. I realize, you know, we got physics and stuff like that, and for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Right. And all this other stuff. I understand this. But casting spells, you're actually bringing the few certain futures into existence. Okay. All right. Like we discussed with magic. Most magic's done in a future tense. Right. It's done for a future point in time. And we hope that we eventually arrive at that point. So where's the backlash? What is a real backlash? What really causes spells to blow up in your face? Well, I mean And how bad does it have to be to be considered backlash? I mean, we're we're told a few things about spells from myths and legends. And one of the things we're told is that we are allowed to cast spells for any of our needs. Now, if we start casting spells for wants, that's a little bit different. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

All right. So one of the ways spells go awry, let's talk about a spell that actually did go awry. All right. And Lord Men tells this, and I don't know if I've told it in another one of the podcasts or not, but we're gonna tell it again. All right. Uh a woman was wanting a fresh start in her life. So she casts a spell. Right? And the spell goes as following. All right, she casts a spell, she winds up losing her job, her husband divorces her, her kids move out, you know, in with the husband and don't stay with her. Uh, so she loses her house, she loses her, you know. I think all she wound up having left was her car. And then she goes up to somebody like Lord Min and is just like, here's what happened. This is a spell I cast. And here's the backlash I got on this spell. And Lord Min looked at her and was like, uh really was it backlash? You got exactly what you asked for. See, some people think it's backlash, but it's not. They're literally getting what they asked for.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

So we're back to be careful what you asked for because you just might get it. You just might get it. Just because you cast a spell for oh, I don't know, more money.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Doesn't necessarily mean that Uncle Phil don't drop dead of a heart attack and you get a couple of thousand.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Right.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

But then you've lost your favorite uncle.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Yeah, and people call that backlash. No, that's stupidity because you didn't understand how spells work.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Right. Nobody nobody ever said that just because you cast a spell, it's gonna work in this particular way. Right. You've basically created an entity of sorts and sent it out to do its job. Right. And it's gonna take the path of least resistance.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

And it's gonna do its own thing. It it its only obsession is to do what it was made to do, to get the outcome you wanted. And that's it. And that energy will eventually return to you because it is your energy, it will be in a different form on a lower level because you've it's used up some stuff to do some things, but it's your energy. Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

So still it's gonna come back to you.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

So eventually it will come back to you. It it has to, because it's yours. All right? Now it don't actually affect you one way or the other. What affects you is your guilt because you didn't understand what you wanted. Right. Hence the reason we see this phrase a lot, spoken in craft and all over the place. Know yourself. What we're talking about is literally knowing yourself, knowing what it is that you actually want. I remember a girl that I worked with, and she was just having the worst time with love. And me and her were talking one day, and she's like, Well, what do I do? And I was like, Okay, here's what you do. I said, I want you to put on, I want you to fill out a list of paper, I want you to get a quartz crystal, and put on a list of the perfect guy for you. And told her, I said, don't forget to put stuff like mail straight. Because you, I mean, there's nothing worse than falling in love with a gay man that's never going to give you. You know, there's no use in falling in love with a lesbian that's never gonna hook up with you. All right. She did all this, all right? And then she she finally comes in about three or four months later, sits down with me. She's like, I did that spell, and you told me to be careful when I was writing down certain things. I was like, Yeah, like I wanted a straight guy and this. And I was like, Yeah, you know, to be this type. You know, she's like, and this guy I met checks off all the boxes, except for one. And then I went back and checked my list. And I was like, okay, what was it on your list that it was in this country? Oops. She and I'm I'm sorry, here is a woman that has no idea about spells or anything like this, right? And she saw the fault of what she did. It wasn't a backlash, it wasn't no punishment because she cast a spell. This problem was she forgot this, yeah. I'd like to be in this country.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

She wasn't specific enough on certain things.

SPEAKER_03 6:48

You know, too specific, uh, you start getting into manipulation and stuff like that on people, which never ends well. No, of course not. All right. That backlash on that is just the person's previous will reinserting themselves.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

So basically, what I'm getting from this is that there's really no backlash, it's just unintended consequences.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Right. It's not exactly it's because people want stuff. A person casts a spell to get a job. All right, they get the job and then they're fired like a two months later. Right. Was that a backlash on the spell? Or was this you applied and used the spell to get a job technically you're not qualified to have, and because you don't have the skills necessarily for this job, you just completely failed miserably.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Well, now if you if you're doing that, you deserve to get fired.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Right. Again, casting a spell within your means, all right. So again, I'm I'm sorry if you have no organizational skills whatsoever that some management people need, and trying to get a job to be that logistics person in there, and you don't have these skills, don't know the first thing about it. Either A, you're gonna have to hope that your boss is understanding enough to teach you to think this way, you're gonna have to learn real fast, or you're gonna fail and you're gonna lose the job. You didn't lose the job because the spell backfired, you lose the job because you went for a job that you technically can't do.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Well, and that's another thing.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

You allowed your spell to write a check that your ass could not cover.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

That's that's exactly where I was going. You cannot cast a spell for something like that and not expect to do your part. Thank you. You have to do your part to fulfill that. It's just like in Christianity. You can't pray to God for something to happen and you not do your part to help fulfill it. If you pray to God for a new car, you better have a job. You better have the income to pay for that car. Right. Otherwise, that car is going to get repoed. Right.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

Now here's the story, Lord Men you still. There's a bird out in the field, and the bird is trying to fly up into this tree, and as he flies up, the wind blows, pushing him back down into the ground, and lounge into a cow paddy, gets a little bit in his mouth, accidentally swallows it, and then has this big old rush of energy, so he flies. He finally makes it to the first couple of branches, then the wind blows him back down, so he takes another big old gulp of this cow paddy and flies up, gets about halfway up the tree. Then he gets blown back down, and now he's even more determined. So he sits here and eats a whole entire patty, then flies up, shoots up, gets to the top of the tree, to the most highest branch, and then a hawk comes by, swoops him up, kills him, and eats him. This lesson, bullshit, might get you to the top, but it sure in the hell ain't gonna keep you there. Now, again, uh in a previous episode we talked about this, about the fabric of fate, that there's fate. Now, first of all, trying not to get completely back onto that subject. If we think of fate like one of these open world games where there is an overarching uh storyline that we have to follow, but you can do it in whatever order or go off do this side mission or whatever you're allowed to do. This is the fabric of fate. This is where people sometimes might be fated to be a musician or whatever, and it does happen because that is their story arc. All right. Again, some choices there, all right? Right now, let's pretend for a second somehow people of craft are able to take stones and throw farther upstream in this fabric and change the outcome of that fabric, i.e., a spell. That means everything else in that stream has to start moving different to go around that rock. Even though it's a small pebble, you have completely changed that fabric forever. So again, here's your problem. Okay, I can cast this spell and I can do this, I can get this outcome. But here are the twelve people I'm going to affect in doing this. Right. And yes, some of these people might wind up being related back to us. We get this concept. Basically, the best story I can think of about this is the story about the box and the button. And I it was either a dark side or Twilight Zone episode. And guy shows up and goes, Hey, if you open this box up and press the button, somebody you don't know will die and and you'll get this much money for their death. And the husband and wife argue if they should or shouldn't press the button. Eventually, one of them presses the button. Lo and behold, one of them is pushed in front of a subway train, killed, and they happen to have a life insurance policy just for the same amount that they were offered. Is roughly how the story goes. All right. And again, the question that was asked on the leave-in was I believe it was the wife that did it in the story, but the wife looks at it and goes, Well, what you you said somebody I didn't know would die. Well, apparently you didn't know your husband. Or you wouldn't have pushed the button to begin with. Right. Here is where we're talking about casting spells and affecting us, and we think it's a backlash, but it's not. It's just the odds, it's the averages all starting to sink back in because you cast this spell. Because you changed that fabric in this one spot. Everything else has now to move around it. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah. So basically, you cast a spell in that nature.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

You are you're messing with that uh fabric of fate. That means you're going to change other people's destinies or realities, those who are still stuck in the string. Right. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. So again, I don't think these backlashes are actually backlashes.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

They're just unintended consequences because you didn't really know what it was you were asking for.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

What you were asking for, or you didn't know exactly where in the world this could all go. I I'm I'm sorry. Spells are can be very matter-of-fact and straight to the point.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Which goes back to divination. You should always use some form of divination to before you cast a spell.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Before you cast a spell.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

You need to know every outcome possible.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

Well, I mean, you're gonna you're gonna have to know the least likely path that the spell's gonna take. Right. Who's it gonna affect? Where do I need to maybe watch out for this or that? Because you do cast a spell to get a job. All right, knocking Ted the moth, Ted, out of the running. Right? Mm-hmm. And since Ted don't have that job, Bob, your neighbor down the road, takes twice as long to get that job because now he's gonna have to get it from you. But that's your neighbor, and you don't necessarily want to have have him there. Now he ain't got his job, he don't make his mortgage payment. Right, he's gonna move out because he's gonna be able to do it. He's gonna move out, and now you get neighbors moved in that you really don't like. Why in the world do I have this? This must be karma. No, you fucked with the fabric of fate. You know, which we will we'll have to get into later, but yeah, again, most of the traditional religions, we try to remove dogma, which we will talk about later, as much as possible. Right. So spells are your own fault. How in the world they turn out is your fault, not anybody else's. Right. Again, but I I will also sit there and say, you know, in our tradition, we also teach, you know, if your spiritual life is in order, everything else falls in. Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

So you don't really need to cast spells.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

Most of the people in our tradition do not cast that many spells, besides, you know, our typical things to help with healing and stuff like that. Even with healing. Now I remember a story. Healing spells are a little weird. Because here's how this backlash went for them, supposedly. Which turned out not to be backlash. There was a friend of theirs that had some medical issues. And they kept on bringing them in and and doing rituals and using spells and stuff to keep on healing him of all these problems he kept on having. Then he's rushed to the hospital one day because he's in a coma because he's a diabetic. They've been covering up the symptoms, and nobody could have diagnosed him to be a diabetic to take care of it. That ain't backlash. That's stupidity. Why in the world are you going to cast a spell on somebody who ain't gone to the doctor yet? Where you don't have a diagnosed problem. Because symptoms aren't necessarily the problem. They're just symptoms. Right. They're a byproduct of an illness. You know? Oh, so we we did these spells and we killed the guy. Uh and well, they didn't kill this guy, but i I I can see how easily that could happen. Anything? Anything? Nothing. Nothing. You died. I lost you on that one, didn't I? You're just sitting there kind of like, uh Where do you go from there?

SPEAKER_02 16:51

All right. It's like, whoa, dude, slow down.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

Well, I mean, and again, this is why I sit there and tell people, you know, hey, sometimes you gotta go to extremes. Yeah, if I do this for this spell, but you know, could I be cutting off the next, you know, great poop, whatever? Right. That will do great things. You gotta start asking these questions. Because you got somebody out there willy-nilly casting spells every other day because, well, they just think that's cool. Right. I mean, you you gotta imagine it from my point of view, I'm sitting there thinking, okay, you got this person sitting there casting spells for no other reason than to cast them every day. They keep on throwing stones into this, stream, changing stuff, half-assed and not realizing what in the hell they're doing. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

How many people's lives are you fucking up because you want success or what you think success is? When all you really want is just to make a decent living and get by and have nice and be able to get nice things.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Well, I mean, uh it's I know personally I haven't cast very many spells. I don't do a lot of spell work. And it's not because I don't want to. If I if I do a spell, it's it's because it's needed.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

Yeah. I mean, last spell I did was I think major spell I did was for healing. But then I just had an operation. And that's been how long ago?

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Seven years, I think.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Huh. Well, I think I'm about out of coffee. Guess we'll see everybody next week. Follow us on Facebook or go to our you know, our homepage and tell us what you think of the podcast, ideas, or anything like that. We're on YouTube too. If you want to go leave us a message there, if there's a subject you'd like us to cover. Thank you for listening to Peggy and Coffee Talk. I hope you join us next week.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

We travel down the strode stone and fire. Just hold my hand as we five. That's uh wait a day, that's the right.