Most magick is self serving. I mean even if it's done for others, there's a personal reason for doing them. So everything we do is also inherently self serving.Rungr wrote:I can see the idea of black being service to self and white being service to others.
That said, usually the line drawn between black magick and other magick is when it starts to impede the free will of a person, as far as people have free will and others can impede it.
Sure you could say that any magick that damages a person is black magick. But when you do money magick or magick to succeed in gaining a job, that money and that job have to come from somewhere. And someone else suddenly won't get those because magick was used to give it to yourself.
One could argue that this is damaging to that other person. I mean they're not getting the job they might need. Maybe they'll lose their home and their family through that very action.
Some say that it's the intent with which the magick is done that makes it black or white arts, but that too, isn't really clear. If you curse someone that harms others with jail time or a debilitating sickness, is that black magick because you're harming them or white magick because you're trying to protect others?