Part One - Magick: Getting Started
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My personal favourite definition of magick comes from famed occultist Aleister Crowley:  Magick is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with the will.  While perfectly discriptive, allow me to elabourate on how magick works, especially for the purposes of this article.

First of all, those who practice the "Art Magickal" do not see it as something supernatural, but as the super within the natural.  We see magick as just another part of the natural world, even if it's one that modern science has yet to understand.  While the magickal interacts with all of us in extremely subtle ways every day, over time there have come a variety of different techniques for acessing and directly manipulating this natural phenomenon.  To trigger the natural process known as magick is the aim of every magickal technique, and to concentrate and bolster this process for more profound results.

To trigger the magickal process, one must raise magickal energy and empower it with one's intent, or will.  LOet's look at these two parts of the process individually:

"Magickal energy", on one level, is really just life energy...the energy generated by all living things.  Being alive ourselves, we all have a portion of this energy at our disposal.  We are always giving off energy - just getting up to grab a soda from the fridge releases a tiny fraction of personal life energy (don't worry, though, we're always making more).  We can add to that energy in various ways...ritual, dance, meditation, etc.  The principle Wiccan method is to create a magickal circle to contain our energy and then build up a "bubble" of our energy within it through things such as singing and dancing.  It's thought that by releasing a large chunk of energy at one time, that one can help one's magickal intent to become manifest that much sooner.  

That brings us to the second part of our magickal equasion, the magickal intent.  This is the purpose one hopes to achieve through the magickal working, whether it be health, love, prosperity, or whatnot.  You can raise an ocean of energy, but if that energy is not programmed, or "charged", with your will, then all you're doing is just exercise.  When raising the energy, you need to focus on what you're intent is.  Really concentrate on it, excluding all other thoughts from your mind.  This basic visualisation is paramount in magick.  An important part of this is to see the thing you desire as already having happened, not as it happens.  For example, if you're doing a healing spell, don't see the subject getting better, see them as already being in perfect health.  

Also, it's important to have total confidence in the efficasy of one's magickal working.  Never say "I hope this works", say "This WILL work!"  Know that ti will work perfectly.  In other words, know it, don't hope it.

Of course, the more people you have adding energy and their will to the mix, the more likely things are to happen.  This is why many Wiccans work magick in covens, ceremonial magicicans in lodges, etc.  

Karma
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For many modern magicicans, "karma" is a term used for the personal repercussions of magickal acts.  Like attracts like, and what we send out WILL come back, often amplified (Wiccans call this the "threefold return", though I personally am not fond of mathematical absolutism).  Send out positive energy, get positive energy back in return.  Send out negative energy, and...well, you get the picture.  Thus, there is always a price to pay for negative magickal workings, if only in the further negative future events they can engender.

The Differance Between Positive and Negative Magick
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Magick, in and of itself, is neutral.  It is neither good nor bad.  It is merely a natural process that any person can access to affect change in their life.  What makes magick good or bad, "white" or "black", positive or negative, is the intent of the person or people doing the magick.  

To put it simply, positive magick is used for power over one's own life: to enrich, enhance, and enjoy the blessings of living for onself.  Negative magick is used for power over others: to control, manipulate, and bend others to your will for personal gain, pleasure, or just for the fun of watching them squirm.  In Wiccan ethics, magick should never be used to overcome the will of another.  For example, casting a "love" spell on another person is a no-no.  Casting a spell to bring the right person into your life (whoever they may be) is fine.  The first spell is attempting to bend the mind of another, while the second just removes roadblocks in life so you can be with someone who would love you anyway, spell or no spell.

The ironic thing is that very few people ever start out on a magickal path intending to become a negative, or "dark", magician.  Most who wind up walking this dangerous and destructive path start out with the best of intentions, but wind up becoming impatient and decide to take ethical shortcuts that divert them off of their original road.  This is true outside of magick as well...how many times have we seen great evil done in the name of great good?  There are certain things that can help lead the magickal practitioner astray, such as:

Fear:  Fear is a basic human emotion, though a hazardous one to use magickly.  It's easy (it often rises unbidden), but it also produces a "fight or flight" response that can cause one to do things magickly that one might not do if clearheaded.

Anger:  Anger is a source of tremendous energy, and very powerful energy as well.  The problem is that it's also very unstable, and can easily cause one to lose sight of the greater good in exchange for the temporarily cathartic.  It may feel really good to break stuff when you're angry, for example, but it achieves no positive end.  And thinking about karma, anger used in service of magick can bring bad things back to you generally.

Hate:  Hate is a very powerful emotion, and one that that can power magick to an astonishing degree.  However, it is a very destructive emotion, internally and externally, and one that will send you down a very destructive path magickly.  Hatered (along with anger) tends to internally justify an "ends justify the means" philosophy, and in magick such a philosophy will bring disasterous results.

For one firmly on the path of negative magick, the more people that one can get to assist in their destructive working, the better.  The negative magicican thinks nothing of stealing energy from others, or manipulating them into giving it to them.  This will be important later on.  Suffice it to say, once someone has embraced the quick, easy, powerful, yet unbelievably destructive and hazardous methods of negative magick, all bets are off ethically.

Part Two - The Christian Right and the Dark Arts
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My purposes in this section are not to simply demonise my opponents.  After all, the most common grounds for accusing most people of baneful magick throughout the ages has been "we don't like them, they must be evil".  No, my purpose here is to illustrate the methodologies of the religious right that correspond, in a most troubling fashion, to the methodologies of negative magicians through the ages.  These are correspondences that are troubling for any magickal practitioner, and should be extremely troubling for the Christians themselves, many of whom are most probably completely ignorant of the fact that they're being used.

The Changing Face of Prayer
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For those of you who have read other pieces I've written on magick, you might remember my insistance that prayer is not magick.  This has always been because the kind of prayer that most associate with making things happen (what a theology student friend of mine once derisively called the "Santa Claus prayer"), the "I'm-a-faithful-person-please-do-this-for-me" kind of prayer, lacks several important elements that are a part of real magick.  The most important thing being absolute certainty that what one does will bring about the desired result.  The traditional prayer process asking for Divine favour has usually consisted of making a request of God, and then hoping that your wish will be granted if God believes it to be worthy.

This, however is changing, especially in the born-again community.  Over the past couple of decades, various "power prayer" methods have become popular that are radically changing the way some Christians approach prayer.  Health and wealth ministries, activist movements, miracle manifesting theologies and more are encouraging Christians to approach prayer from an angle that takes it out of the realm of devotion and takes into the realm of magick.  

For example, I once looked through a booklet put out by Pat Robertson's 700 Club on miracles.  In it, Pat talked about how to manifest God's miracles in your own life.  One part really floored me.  It said: "...in your mind, see (whatever miracle you wanted to have happen) manifest in your life.  Don't see the miracle happening, but see it as already happened.  Know, in your heart of hearts, the God will do this for you, and have no doubts."  I felt like I was reading a textbook on basic magickal technique, but this was written by Pat Robertson!

One only has to skim modern right-wing Christian web sites and literature to find exortations for people to pray with a  magickal focus.  "Know that God will deliver"..."it will be done"..."God shall rain down his blessings upon you"...have no doubt that it will happen"...these and many other phrases pepper writings on "power prayer", "positive prayer", health and wealth ministries, and more.  It's almost as if an entire generation of believers are being trained, serriptitiously, in basic magickal technique.  It's one thing to ask for God's blessing and to be happy if your request is found to be worthy, but these techniques seem to be equating your will with God's will...a basic religio-magick technique.

Such "magickal prayer" techniques can transform prayer into a rite that triggers the magickal processes of the universe.  While not absolutely terrible, other forces can cause such will-working to take an unfortunate turn.

Into The Shadows
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I'm not saying that ordinary Christians are out to use prayer for nefarious ends, but those who are being led by less-than-ethical leaders may find themselves in some pretty "dark" magickal waters without even realizing it.  It's unfortunate that practitioners of the "dark" arts often manipulate others into being unwitting accomplices in their unethical workings, and even more unfortunate when those being duped have only the best personal intentions.  The more I look at things, the more I'm convinced that many leaders in the religious right are taking their flocks down some very shady magickal paths.

How are they doing this?  Let's look at some techniques:

Fear:  Religious wingnuts are big on fear and fear-mongering.  To hear them talk, the world is an unceasingly hostile place that's constantly gunning for their eternal souls.  There are enemies around every corner and under every rock.  This kind of paranoia isn't always nebulous, oh no.  After whipping up an aura of threat and fear, there are always specific boogey-men trotted out to shock and terrify.  One of the most popular in recent years have been homosexuals, and their "dastardly gay agenda".  To hear groups like Concerned Women for America rant, you'd think that Christians everywhere need to live in fear of rampagaing hordes of homosexuals knocking their doors down and indoctrinating their grandkids.  

Anger: When living in such a state of fear, it's easy to start to get angry at people for "making" you live this way.  The religious right loves to use anger as a motivator, even when it has to manufacture sources.  Take the recent campaigns against "activist judges".  Outrage over this issue has been so whipped up that a D. James Kennedy supporter once told me that the Supreme Court was "nothing but a bunch of left-wing radicals".  I'm sorry, but  if someone can call the (then) Rhenquist court a bunch of "left-wing radicals", then that person has a serious disconnect on reality (either that, or they're just a little to the right of the John Birch society).  By doing things like taking portions of rulings out of context, or cherry-picking the most outrageous quotes from 30 years worth of judicial rulings, modern fear and anger-mongers have gotten some people whipped up into a rage over what is really a very little issue.

Hate:  There's only so much fear and anger one can endure before it starts to smoulder as hatred.  While they may still pay lip service to the idea of hating the sin, not the sinner, it's not hard to sense a cool, white hot hatred towards different groups.  Ask your avarage wingnut about Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, or others, and if looks could kill you'd get nailed in the crossfire.  Hate is dangerous, because it can cause us to do things that we might not otherwise.  

Yes, I realize that many fundie ptreachers use these things to snare members (and thus doners) to their causes and ministries.  However, when they combine these powerful emotions with the techniques of magickal prayer, they are playing with spiritual fire.  By hyping up the big three negative emotions...fear, anger, and hatred...and then telling people to engage in prayer that triggers the magickal processes in the universe to do something about it, they are leading their flocks into the practice of what most people call "black" magick.  This brings serious ramifications for:

Our Nation:  There's a reason why people perform negative, unethical magick...it works!  Yes, it can be simple to counter (especially when cast by inexperienced practitioners), but if gone uncountered it can have grave repercussions for it's target.  "Dark" magick is destructive by nature, and our nation has enough problems right now as it is.  The last thing we need is millions working low-grade hexes constantly.

The Practitioners:  Every culture has a concept of karma.  Even the "golden rule" basically says that people will treat you as you treat them.  When mixing magick into the mix, the results tend to be magnified.  Wielding power has it's consequences, and throwing buckets of "black" magick around will have disasterous results for those playing with that cold fire.  That so many are doing so without making the concious decision to accept the repercussions will lead to a bitter day of reckoning for the decieved.  

What Can Be Done?
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We can and should do something about this dangerous dabbling...just what depends on who we are.  Foe the Pagans, Wiccans, Ceremonial Magicians, and apostate magickal Christians out there we need to do some serious counter-magick.  Being schooled in the mystic arts, however, we have much we can do to counter the effects of this modern "black" Christian Lodge without resorting to attack.  We can bind their negativity, neutralize it, and keep it from reaching it's intended target to safeguard our nation from their destructive efforts.  There may be more of them than us, but I'd pit one well-trained Witch against 100 of D. James Kennedy's "prayer warriors" anyday.  We can keep them from doing harm.  

We cannot, however, stop these people from doing what they're doing.  That job falls to the mainstream Christians reading this.  If you care that your faith is being perverted by charlatains in such a way as to put you co-religionists in spiritual peril, then you must speak out.  Even if you think that all talk of magick is mere superstitious nonsense, then you should also be concerned that these people are being led into a very shady path of superstition that can be corrosive to their mental well-being.  They will not listen, however, to Pagans.  They may not listen to other Christians either, but at least you speak their language.

There is hope...I have seen an increasing wariness about health and wealth ministries as of late in many Christian circles.  This is a start.  Make unfavourable comparisons between this fad and negative magickal prayer techniques, and you might just get through.

Conclusions
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The shock tactics of the religious right are dangerous for the country, this we know.  They are also a time bomb waiting to explode in the faces of many who just want to do right by God and family.  We must all work together to effect change...it's the most ethincal thing we can do, for everyone.