- Since ancient times, black magic was the blame for many things that were simply natural events: crop failures, death of livestock, unusual weather patterns, accidental deaths and injuries, plagues and other such illnesses, particularly mental illness. People would seek practitioners of magical arts to fight what they saw as threats over which they had no control themselves, since it was believed that only magic could fight magic.
- Virtually every culture had men or women who practiced magical spiritual arts that people would turn to for help in warding off black magic. The Voudoun and Santeria practitioners, whose religions stemmed from ancient African tribal religions, would perform complicated rituals on suspected targets of black magic. The shamans of North American pagan religions would commune with the spirit world and cleanse evil with chanting, dancing and burning herbs. The "cunning folk" of the Pennsylvania Dutch used hex signs and folk magic for protection.
- Black magic is most commonly used to direct misfortune to a person or send malicious entities after a person. Protection usually takes one of three forms. Warding magic wards off any negative energy sent your way, usually involving some sort of talisman or amulet that keeps misfortune at bay or turns it back on the original caster. Cleansing attempts to dispel and disperse negative energy attached to the victim. Finally, banishing spells attempt to loosen the hold of any malicious entities and send them away.
- These means of protection served as a defense against that which people feared but did not understand. Largely, these defensive rituals and symbols acted psychologically, giving the protected person a sense of security and peace in knowing that something mystical was working in his favor. Most of the time, the result of a protection measure is merely a placebo effect.
- Black magic is actually very rare, and a person becoming adept enough at it for there to be a powerful outcome is even more rare. Working with vast amounts of negative energy or evil entities takes its toll on a person, and most spiritual paths that embrace magic have ethical codes against using magic for harm. Because of this, black magic is rarely any cause for concern, since few skilled and experienced students of magic will attempt it or even condone it.
