Magic 201: Justice Work

Reminder: not only should justice work not be done without supervision, it cannot be done without specific permissions. The lwa petitioned for this sort of work are not patient. They are not tolerant of mistakes or curiosity, nor do they have any desire to talk to anyone they have not chosen for this work, and they harshly punish trespassers.

There is a common mistake made by people hiring magicians for justice work, and one often made by people who do not do justice work—they usually think of justice work as being a matter of hurting someone. They say justice. What they mean is for someone to suffer, someone to be punished in the way they think is appropriate, a way that makes them feel better about whatever happened to them. They think doing this will let them “walk away” from the negative feelings.

This is not justice work. It is revenge. Revenge has nothing to do with justice. Revenge is about expressing a set of strongly negative emotions against someone or some people, as an attempt to make someone feel better. The fact that it doesn’t make people feel better is well documented enough that I don’t feel any need to repeat what has been said so often.

There are many spirits which could take on revenge work. Many lwa have a dark side or a side that can be worked with for revenge, even those which would otherwise be considered ‘good’ or ‘pure’ spirits. There are few spirits which do justice work. Justice work requires a very specific temperament and specific experiences, both in the magician and in the spirit itself.

Justice work is fundamentally healing work, but healing work aimed at the community, not just someone’s specific emotional state. When actions have consequences, the community is strengthened. In a community where people act with impunity, where it is clear that people may prey on each other without anything happening, when it’s every man or woman for themselves, there is no community.

When people know that their situation, whatever it is, is seen and understood, and more importantly that someone is minding the balance, it helps them trust. They trust the divine when they know that they are seen and understood. They trust the lwa more when they understand that the spirit intervenes where things are imbalanced.

People trust each other and the divine better when they are also a component of that justice, which is what people seeking revenge often misunderstand about justice. Justice seeks a balancing of the scales, and everyone involved is also on the scales. If you are seeking justice, you are putting yourself on the scales. When everyone gets the consequence which teaches them that their actions are seen, whether they think they are the victim or the perpetrator, it helps to heal their relationship to authority and their understanding of the world around them.

There is justice in injustice, where something is being healed in a community and people’s understanding of authority and consequence, which is something that, again, people tend to misunderstand about justice. The point of justice is healing.

Healing hurts.

People will generally misunderstand justice. They will mistake it for revenge, or they will demand that everything which discomforts them deserves justice. If you understand that healing hurts and are willing to heal, you are far closer to understanding justice than most people. If you understand why discomfort is no cause for justice, you are also far closer to understanding justice than most.

A teacher helps with that understanding.