Let’s Talk About Hexing

Before I start, this was written as I talk, which means if the F word makes you blush or offends you, you probably should stop here and not go any further. However, if that sits perfectly fine with you… let’s crack on!

Right, let’s get into hexing, because I am so done with people acting like it turns you into some kind of villain the second you mention the word.

Casting a hex doesn’t make you evil. It doesn’t make you dark, dangerous, or the witchy equivalent of a Bond villain stroking a cat in a darkened room somewhere. Half the time hexes are done out of protection, not malice, and that’s the bit everyone conveniently skips when they’re being all dramatic about it. Someone’s been harassing you, someone won’t leave you alone, someone’s actively trying to cause you harm, and you decide enough’s enough and you do something about it. That’s not villainy, love. That’s boundaries, with a bit of candle wax involved.

I’ll be honest with you, I’m not really a hexer by nature. It’s never been my go to, and I’d still rather reach for protection work before I reach for anything sharper. But the older I get, the less patience I have for letting things slide, and the more I’m willing to protect myself properly when something really does warrant it. That shift is real and I think it happens to a lot of us. You spend so much of your life trying to keep the peace and being endlessly understanding, and then you hit a certain point and think, do you know what, no, I’m done absorbing other people’s bullshittery for the sake of being nice. So no, it’s not my default setting, but it’s there when I need it, and I’m not precious about reaching for it, should I need to, or for someone else.

I get why the word makes people twitchy, it sounds theatrical, spooky, dark and foreboding, it sounds like you’re plotting something in a basement somewhere. But the actual reasoning behind a lot of hexing is protective. It’s defensive. It’s “you don’t get to keep doing this to me, so back the fuck off.” It’s the magical version of putting your foot down hard and not apologising for it. Noone bats an eyelid when someone takes out a restraining order, but say the word hex and suddenly you’re public enemy number one. What the fuck is that all about?

It’s not just a British folk magic thing either. In New Orleans Voodoo, the same exact principle sits inside crossing and jinx work, and people get just as jumpy about those words too, maybe even more so because for some bizarre reason people hear the word voodoo and assume I am all up in someone’s face with a voodoo doll, scratching their hearts out or some other absolute nonsense. Anyway, I digress… a crossing is putting trouble on someone, a jinx is a smaller dose of the same idea, and if you’re working with the Loa, you’re not doing this alone in a corner either. You’re calling on power that’s bigger than you and you’re asking for backing because you need it, not because you fancied causing chaos on a Tuesday. However, this isn’t a free for all. Crossing and jinx work in New Orleans Voodoo and hexing in British Folk Magic, come with rules attached. There’s structure, there’s tradition, there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it, and you don’t just decide one morning you fancy crossing someone because you woke up annoyed. It’s considered, it’s deliberate, and it’s done within a framework that’s been passed down and respected for generations, not in the middle of Tesco because someone ran over your foot with a trolley.

And here’s the bit people really don’t get, hexing has levels, and so does crossing and jinx work. None of this is a one size fits all nuclear option where every single working ends in someone dropping down dead, because that’s not how any of this works and that’s not what most people are even going for. Sometimes a hex is mild, in fact mostly it’s a slight slap. Sometimes it’s “may every traffic light you hit be red for the next month” levels of petty, or “may your favourite jumper shrink in the wash” energy, just enough to be a nuisance, just enough to make a point. A jinx can sit at that same level, a bit of bad luck, a string of small annoyances, just enough to get the message across loud and clear. Sometimes it’s stronger, because the situation calls for stronger, and that’s when a proper crossing comes in, the kind of working that matches real harm with a real response, and is treated with the seriousness it really deserves rather than thrown about casually. You match the working to what’s actually happened to you, the same way you wouldn’t call the army out over someone nicking your parking space. There’s a whole sliding scale here.

What I really can’t be doing with is this idea that hexing, or crossing, or jinxing, means you’ve crossed some unforgivable line and now there’s a naughty list somewhere with your name freshly added in red ink. There isn’t. These are workings with reason, focus, ingredients and intention, same as any other. Protecting yourself, protecting your home, protecting someone you love, none of that is evil. That’s just looking after what’s yours, the same as anyone would, and the strength of the working should match the size of the problem, not the size of your imagination, or ego. People need to get over themselves.

Also, here’s a fun little nugget of information for you, the word hex actually comes from the German word hexe, meaning witch, which itself traces back to the Old High German hagazussa. So technically, every time someone gasps in horror at the word hex, they’re gasping at a perfectly ordinary German word for witch that’s been knocking about for centuries, not some sinister curse conjured from the depths of hell. It didn’t arrive trailing smoke and bad intentions, it arrived doing exactly what witch does in English, a spell caster, just describing a practitioner and what she gets up to, in my case, a complete herb whore. So next time someone tells you hexing is too dark and scary for their lovely glittery practice, you can tell them they’re essentially terrified of a German noun, and watch their face try to process that one.

Don’t even get me started on “white magic” and “black magic,” because people throw those words around like they understand them and most haven’t got a clue where they came from. Originally it was just duality. Light meant clarity and order. Dark meant mystery and change. Neither one was good, neither one was evil, they were just two halves of the same coin, the same way day needs night and loud needs quiet. Neutral, that’s all it ever was, all it should have ever been, until someone decided it needed a moral spin, and then Hollywood ran off with it and never looked back, and now we’ve got grown adults convinced that lighting a black candle is basically a criminal offence punishable by side eye.

Magic isn’t good or bad. It’s a tool, the same way a knife’s a tool. A knife butters your toast and a knife can do damage, and the knife itself doesn’t sit there having an opinion about which one you’re using it for. What matters is you. Your intention, your reasoning, whether you can look at what you’ve put into motion and stand behind it without flinching. Just as a side note, life is too short not to butter your bread with a thick layer of the good stuff. Fuck margarine!

So if you’ve ever hexed, crossed, or jinxed out of protection, out of self-defence, out of finally saying no more to someone who had it coming, you weren’t being evil. You were being someone who’d had enough and decided to do something about it instead of just sitting there taking it, with the Loa, your ancestors or just your own intention right there backing you the whole way, and done properly within the rules that govern it. And whether that was a small petty nudge or something with a bit more bite, that’s not a villain origin story, whatever certain people from other paths might tell you. That’s just magic doing exactly what it’s meant to do, which is show up and do the fucking job when you need it most, no apologies and no explaining yourself to anyone who didn’t earn the right to an opinion about your life.