Gray magic

Gray magic, also called neutral magic, is magic that is not performed for specifically beneficial reasons, but is also not focused on completely hostile practices.^[1][2] It is seen as falling into a continuum between white and black magic.

Overview

According to D. J. Conway, practitioners of white magic avoid causing any form of harm, even to enact positive outcomes. Gray magic incorporates all the beneficial purposes of white magic but also works towards ridding the world of evils.^[3] Ann Finnin states that many practitioners of gray magic employ the term because of its vagueness, and to avoid having to consider ethical questions.^[4]

A rather different meaning to the term was given by Robert Cochrane, a British Neopagan witch of the 1960s. For Bowers, it was a technique of baffling, bewildering, and mystifying everyone he met to gain power over them; by doing so, he was always more sure about them than they were about him.^[5]

See also

• Left-hand path and right-hand path – Dichotomy between two opposing approaches to magic